Does Anyone Truly Know Me?

We go to a lot of trouble to hide who we are. We fear rejection if people really knew us. They may view us through different eyes and think less of us. They may ridicule us or share things with other people we don’t want shared. We might even lose a good friend or a job.

Though we can work overtime to protect our inner self, we have a deep desire—and a need—for someone to know us. If someone knows the messiness of my life and doesn’t run away, then maybe I’m okay as a person. And unless someone knows me, I feel unconnected and alone. I need to be known.

Even if we are aware of our need and overcome that first hurdle of exposing our deepest self, we cannot force a person to know us. Before CW and I were married, I offered him an old journal of mine to read. I had kept it during a rough time in my life. He knew all about that, but I thought if he read my thoughts during that time he would know and understand me better. Let me just say . . . Awkward. He had been through his own difficult times. I don’t think he wanted to relive anyone’s hard times, his or mine; he wanted to move forward. Smart guy. I don’t believe he read much at all, and we never spoke about the journal contents again.

Few people want to know us as deeply as we want to be known. Nor is it even possible to know another person that completely. After decades of marriage, a husband and wife may be closer to this kind of knowing, but they will never reach the pinnacle. Some deep down thoughts will ever remain hidden. Even from the one who owns them. Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) He was saying we can’t understand everything in the human heart, including our own. Even the apostle Paul couldn’t totally figure himself out: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).

This, then, is our quandary: We have a need to be intimately known, but no person can fully know us, not even ourselves. God has the solution, though. It’s Himself. He is the One—and only One—who knows everything about us.

The psalmist said,

 1 O Lord, you have searched me
              and you know me.
 2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
              you perceive my thoughts from afar.
 3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
               you are familiar with all my ways.
 4 Before a word is on my tongue
               you know it completely, O Lord.  (Psalm 139:1-4) 

God knows everything I do or ever did or ever will do. He knows my thoughts before I ever formulate them in my brain. He knows what I am going to say while I’m still trying to track down the right words. Nothing is buried so deeply in my heart that it can be concealed from Him.

And God’s knowledge is timeless. I love a commentary explanation for searched in verse 1:

“Searching ordinarily implies a measure of ignorance which is removed by observation; of course this is not the case with the Lord; but the meaning of the Psalmist is, that the Lord knows us as thoroughly as if he had examined us minutely, and had pried into the most secret corners of our being. This infallible knowledge has always existed . . . There never was a time in which we were unknown to God, and there never will be a moment in which we shall be beyond his observation.”

(The Treasury of David)

And if you still aren’t sure God knows everything about you, who else knows how many hairs are on your head (or in some cases, how many empty hair follicles)? Jesus said, “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Luke 12:7). This is a convincing statement as to His omniscience.

It makes sense that He would know us inside and out. He created us. “¹³For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:13-14).

A custom car builder knows every component down to the last bolt that makes up his creation. He knows the specific purpose of each part, how it fits with all the others, and how to get the best performance from it. When God “knits” us together, He not only connects all our parts, but He makes them as well. How can our Creator not know every intricate detail about us?

God sees the ugly as well as the beautiful. Though He knows each detestable thought we have and every grain of deceit in our hearts, He still loves us. Paul says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Sin is hideous. It’s dark and dirty, despicable, and defiant against God. Yet seeing all this in us, He doesn’t run away. He stayed and gave His life so we could become who He created us to be. We will never experience rejection from Him.

Not only does God know us like no one else can, He wants us to know Him. It isn’t a need for Him since He is perfectly complete, but He wants our fellowship.  He wants us to know who He is. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

After God sent His chosen people, the Israelites, into exile for their recurring disobedience, He told the prophet Jeremiah about the time He would bring them back to Judah. “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart” (Jeremiah 24:7). No matter how wayward they had been, God still wanted his people to know Him.

God said through Jeremiah, “Let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight” (Jeremiah 9:24). In verse 23 He expressed disapproval of self-confident boasting in wisdom, strength, or riches. But this boasting in the Lord brings glory to Him. It isn’t feeling good because we have knowledge about Him. It is knowing His character and what He delights in, seeing our surroundings through His eyes, recognizing His voice when He speaks to us, and walking in obedience to our understanding of Him. This knowing means we will “trust in him and depend on him alone in all conditions” (Matthew Poole’s Commentary).

Nestled within Jesus’ prayer to His Father before He was crucified are these words: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Jesus wants us to have the best life there is, a relationship with Him now and eternally, and it comes only through knowing Him.

It is indeed wonderful that God meets our need to be intimately known yet, knowing all, He continues to love us. And it’s even more glorious that He deeply desires for us to know Him and makes it possible by revealing Himself through His Word.

Scripture quotations are from NIV.

Commentary notes are from Bible Hub. See Resources.

Feature photo by Kaspars Eglitis on Unsplash