While sitting in a Mexican restaurant with my family, our assistant pastor at the time leaned across the table as he talked to two of my kids about their newly professed faith. He was attempting to clarify what they said they knew since they were asking to be baptized.

He told them to imagine Jesus walking into the restaurant.

“Would you say, ‘I know him! I’m with him!’?” he asked.

I could feel my own excitement growing as I imagined it with them and watched their faces. They agreed eagerly. 

These were the early steps of a new found faith, the beginnings of knowing the God of the universe.

My kids were just beginning to grasp that.

Knowing Jesus is a big deal.

It makes me think of my eighth grade bible teacher and when he told our class that Matthew 7:23 was the scariest verse in the Bible. It is when Jesus tells his disciples that not everyone who says they know him actually know him.

“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

The older I have gotten and further I have grown in my faith, the more clearly I have understood the horror of those words. 

Matthew 7 explains that the people Jesus does not know were ones who claimed they had rebuked demons and done miracles and prophesied in His name. They had mastered looking good on the surface. His name was useful. 

Invoking his name did not equate to being known by the Savior.

Really knowing someone is serious business.

Being known by Jesus, that is the relationship that makes all others possible, fruitful.

It often alludes me when I try to grasp or explain what it means to know and be known by King Jesus. I can quote you scripture and point to evangelical tools that explain the steps to coming to faith, but the magnitude is missing if you haven’t experienced, worshiped Him.

Our recent trip to the Grand Canyon reminded me of this inability to communicate relationship with the Creator of everything.

You hear so much about it, you see the pictures and think you want to see it, but like so many things in this world there is often a disconnect.

Standing at the edge of the spectacle, my stomach did flips and I grasped the railing, white knuckled. Tears immediately came to my eyes as my tiny brain tried to compute, take it in. Gasping I looked around at the other people and everyone with their cameras and phones. 

We all started jockeying for position.

People posed and took selfies and set up tripods. We took our own photos. 

When I put the phone away again I could barely breathe. My insides felt like they were melting as my husband continued to reassure me we were okay in the face of this unparalleled spectacle. As terrifyingly beautiful as it was, I could not process it. Can it even be real—something so magnificent, so massive?

I could only think I was not okay.

My helplessness has been fully revealed. My minuteness completely exposed. I have no power or ability or any control in this scenario. 

I was afraid.

Later in the car, I began to swipe through our photos and though they were clear and in focus, the impressiveness was not in them. 

All I could think was that I was appropriating the name: #grandcanyon

Like so much of God’s creation, God’s intent, we humans have found a way to make less of Him and less of His name, instead of more.

Was this what those people were doing when Jesus said He did not know them? There was no relationship, no worship, just the taking of a name to try and appropriate the power for themselves. Without life-altering worship, buckling of the knees before the power of God, and a recognition of their own tininess, they could not really know the Savior.

Knowing Jesus is a big deal.

When we come face-to-face with God, there is no appropriating His name or power for ourselves. When we know Him, there can only be awe, reverence, fear before the depths of His presence. 

It is like nothing else. 

Being in the presence of the canyon let me know my proper place. It could care less if I tripped and flipped over a rail and was burst open on the rocks below. My existence was irrelevant.

That feeling of awe and reverence, however, immediately made me think of my relationship with my Savior. It is as if I were given a glimpse of His power and majesty and suddenly more fully understood my place. 

When we really know Him, we worship.

He is not a name I invoke, He is a person I know. 

That Person graciously didn’t let me trip and flip over the edge of the railing. 

That Person, His depths beyond any canyon, will not ever be fully understood while I walk on this Earth. Yet, He is all too pleased to have me seek Him. 

He knows how tiny and helpless I am.

Before Him I am exposed for what I really am, but He does not turn away. 

He can be known, wants to be known by us.

He sees beyond the surface and He undoubtedly knows us.

And when He returns, I will be saying “I’m with Him!”