Know Thyself

Knowing God is what enables us to know ourselves. But it occurs to me that we must also choose to know ourselves. We must choose to exercise the faculties of reason and decision that God has given us to know ourselves well. We must choose that we know what we believe and why. We must choose to see who we are as reborn people by the cross and say there is no question: I know who I am. Once I have done this, once I have seen myself by the cross—leaning wholly upon it for my standing with God—I have asked God to hold me in this self-knowledge. I have believed in God to hold me.

The Apostle Paul states in his letter to the church at Philippi that he knew he had not reached fully maturity in Christ Jesus, yet, he did his utmost to take hold of full maturity, as he could. And he did this because Christ had already taken hold of him. In knowing ourselves, we believe, then, in what God has already done to take hold of us. Isn’t the truth that God has taken hold of us a beautiful one—calming, kind, wondrous, true, marvelous? So, he has taken hold of us, we make every effort to know so, and I believe He holds us in knowing it too. For He is that kind and that gentle and that present—ever-present to our spirits.