Sometimes when I am at church, I honestly look around and begin to wonder, “What’s the point?” 

Why are we here?  Why do we sing?  Why do we serve?  Why does the pastor preach?  Why do we listen? 

When we invite the Holy Spirit, do we expect Him to come?  When we ask Him to guide, do we expect Him to speak?  When we bow our heads to pray, do we think that He listens? 

What is the point unless we remember, unless we know, unless we really believe that God is a Person, that He lives, that He is who He has always been?

What is the point if we walk out the door unchanged?  What is the point unless we are the Bride and He is the Bridegroom?  What is the point unless we seek Him until we find Him?

He is breath and life to those once dead in trespasses and sin.  He is love and hope to the heart that has been broken.  He is Friend, Father, Savior to those who need Him.  Who is He to you?

I walk a narrow path that is apparently seldom used, thickly overgrown, and that leads steeply uphill.  And I wonder why you do not walk with me.  I do not want to walk it alone.  I do not want to leave you to your own path.  Grief pains my chest and tears blind me.  Yet I know not what to say, how to plead, what I can do to tell you of the end of my path and yours.

I hope you hear what I do say.  I pray you see the truth in my eyes—the anguish of why I say what I do.  I hope you realize, too, before it is too late, that there is really no point in the things you say, do, and know unless you  know the One who alone can save you and unless you walk just as He walked.

I hope that someday you, too, will be unable to go through a single day without hearing the sweet tones of His Voice, without enjoying the strong embrace of His Presence, without knowing all that you may only know upon fully abandoning yourself to Him, upon falling at His Feet, falling completely in love with Him.

“What’s the point?” I sometimes wish I heard others ask.  Because they miss the point.  Because they miss Him.  And they’ve so lost their way, that they don’t even know that they’ve missed Him—they don’t even realize who He is or what it could mean to know Him. 

They say all the right things, they look right, they may even act right.  Yet they miss Him.  And I fear there will come a day when they will say, “Look what I did!” or, “But don’t You remember what You did for me?” and He will say, “I never knew you.”

When I have a friend who is famous I hesitate to say I know them or to call them my own friend unless I first have assurance that they want to know me and have called me their friend.  I’ve been thinking we would do well if we were as careful in calling ourselves Christians. 

We may own the Book He wrote and be able to boast of having read it completely through multiple times.  We may belong to a local chapter of His fan club—we get together to discuss His Words, share stories of the times we’ve each briefly met Him, talk of how we may live out one or two of the things He suggested that we think applies to our life, superficially sing His praises.  We may know countless things about Him, know a quote from Him for every situation.

But does He know us?  How closely linked are we with Him?  Enemy, stranger, fan, servant, child, friend, bride?  He is a Person.  He speaks and wants you to listen as He listens to you.  He seeks and aches to be sought after as the Treasure a man would sell all to find, the Prize a runner would trade all comfort and train hard to win, the Freedom a prisoner would risk all to obtain.  He Loves and longs to be loved by a Bride that is head-over-heels taken with Him.  He is a Person.

Do you know Him?

Would He say that He knows you?

There is no point to life, to church, to work, to friendship, to love, to anything at all unless you are different from the world in that you know Him, really know Him, and He will say that He knows you—rather than what one must say of a betrayer, a fake, an enemy: “I never knew them.”

What’s the point?  He is.  And unless He is . . .

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