To know Christ: Part I

To meet with Him on your knees, desiring at the latest hour through the aches and pains of life to lay your burdens and joy all the same at His feet, 
To hunger for His sweet wisdom to be crowned on your head and filling your thoughts despite the sting of discipline carried with it,
To incline your ears in eager anticipation for His leading whispers,
To dwell richly upon the gospel that resets your wayward heart,
To arise each morning to find a Savior who seizes your heart daily,
To struggle  and wrestle both in prayer and action for those who stumble so they may be set firmly on the path of truth you've found,
To breathe Love Himself into conservations instead of assuming and dancing around Him,
To increasingly understand His love completes your soul in a way no other relationship can,
To trust that through the tears and struggles, your heart grows steadfast and is refined by this flame,
To humble your standing as an unlovely creature made beautiful and lifted to reflect true glory
To whole heartedly believe His brilliant plan draws you to participate in redemption of the brokenness all around,
To confidently risk, believing His love will catch you thousandfold,
To embrace each season of your life with open arms as a chapter of your ministry to be fulfilled.

To know Him is more than motions,
more than a hollow song,
more than an empty fleeting prayer.

To know Him is to release the seen and tangible dying in your grip to obtain the fullness in the glory of the unseen
To know this God is to raise your hands for the depth of gratitude your heart now sings
To know this God is to continuously lift up your shattered shards of brokenness to the God who makes all things new
To consistently bring to light a sinful heart buried within to be made new by a Healer
To be wrecked on a daily basis so that He might increase within.

To know You, Jesus, is to never have enough, 
to never be satisfied, 
to press deeper into Your tender heart,
to catch the desperate and saving flame of Your name,
to allow this fire to burn so intimately and deeply that we choose to look outward and upward to your calling on us, beholding the glory of Your name and treasuring every moment we are gifted with to know You more.

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."