This week, the Mariners Mission Viejo staff team is attending the Catalyst conference (at the Mariners Irvine campus). Thousands of leaders have converged in an event that is part inspiration, part worship service, and part pep rally. The conference is built around a single, central guiding theme: being KNOWN.
To put it differently, we’re being asked to consider who we are — really are. Being known sounds like a terrific idea until we realize all its implications. What if people really knew us, the real us? What if the people who are supposed to know us, don’t? What if being known means living with a level of vulnerability we’re unprepared for? In truth, we live our lives with a measured skepticism about how much of us should actually be known, while concurrently longing for an end to our experience of loneliness and isolation.
Yet, it is Jesus who has made (is making, and constantly re-making) us into the people He intended us to become. He’s aware of us — not merely aware of our physical presence. He is aware of our needs, our fears, our insecurities, our failures, our dreams, our hopes, our heartaches, and our longings. In short, we are already known. He’s got us. He’s got us even when we lose ourselves.
The world doesn’t have the last say about who we are. We don’t have to be defined by our employment. We aren’t the sum-total of all we can possess. We aren’t merely the collection of what everyone says we are. We aren’t the mistakes of our past. We are not shame. We are not regret. We are “more than conquerors”… That is how we are known.
As we approach Easter, consider that you are already known by God. It is precisely for that reason (not in spite of it) that God would come, in Jesus, to initiate His global restoration project. It is for that reason we are not merely intended to be the passive spectators of His great work in the world. People who follow Jesus and are a part of His work in the world are called “followers” and “disciples”. Jesus calls the ones He already knows — normal, imperfect, frightened people — be a part of His work. Join us this week as Doug Fields gives us a clearer picture of what it looks like to apprentice ourselves to Jesus in His work in the world.
See you Sunday,
Jeff
