Choosing to Know

There come times - many of them, in fact - in every relationship where you have to make a decision whether to press on in the light of new information. Every relationship - friendship, dating, marriage, partnership in business - has to go through a number of barriers on the way. Consider the purchase of something valuable. At a number of points in the negotiation the purchaser is likely to encounter potential deal-breakers. She has to decide to press on with the relationship because the goal of purchase is worth it to her. Or not.

Similarly, in dating, things tend to flow along reasonably smoothly for a week or two - but then you discover something about your date that sets you back on your heels. Now you have to decide if you are going press on past this barrier and seek to know them more - or if you are going to pull the plug and just remain “friends”. It doesn’t change after you get married. Over the course of building a life together, all kinds of barriers become apparent - things that, had you known about them sooner, might have been a deal-breaker. But now, you are well down the road with a lot invested. Some couples decide that the price of pressing on past the barrier is worth paying for the closeness and intimacy that opens up to them on the other side. Other couples stay in the shadow of the barrier, their growth to intimacy halted. Life presents a number of chances for choices like this.

If this is true in our other relationships, we shouldn’t be surprised when it is true about our relationship with God. If it is a dynamic and vital relationship, it will ebb and flow in intensity over time. We will find things out about Him that we might not like. We will find things out about ourselves in relation to Him that we might not like. Having invested a lot of time and energy in getting this far, we might not want to completely cut off the relationship - but we could decide not to press on past the barrier. We live on the way to intimacy with God - but never quite there.

On the other hand, we might choose to know Him - to press past this barrier, as painful as it might be to do so, knowing that intimacy and closeness with God is worth whatever price we have to pay to get there. It is part of seeking him with all of our heart - only in doing so will we find and know Him. And that is worth everything!