Knowing You Jesus

This weekend I had a song stuck in my head...a song called Knowing You Jesus...a song that we "coincidentally" happened to sing at Church on Sunday night. A song that I had not heard for a long time until Sunday night. I don't know how it got in my head on the weekend because I can't even remember the last time I sang it previous to last night.

I think the lyrics are pretty rich.


All I once held dear, built my life upon,
All this world reveres and wars to own;
All I once thought gain I have counted loss,
Spent and worthless now compared to this.

Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You
There is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best,
You're my joy, my righteousness,
And I love You Lord.

Now my heart's desire is to know You more,
To be found in You and know as Yours,
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh to know the power of Your risen life,
And to know You in Your sufferings;
To become like You in Your death, my Lord,
So with You to live and never die.


I love how it this is a Christian Hedonist kind of a song (like a number of songs that we sing, if you really think about it). It says that everything is worthless compared to knowing Jesus - in other words, if we are looking for joy, we had better look to Christ because nothing else satisfies. And of course the chorus says that Jesus is my joy and that there is no greater thing than Him. Sounds very hedonistic to me.

And I love how true the song is. Knowing Jesus really is the best thing in life once He has been tasted and seen.

I wonder how honestly we sing the last verse. Do we really want to suffer and to become like Christ in our death?

This song makes me think too of the address that Piper gave to The Evangelical Theological Society for their fiftieth anniversary annual meeting in 1998 where his job was to talk about training the next generation of Pastors and Missionaries and the thesis of his message was "Knowing God and Enjoying Him is the Greatest Need".


Speaking of Piper, he really made me laugh today. I listened to a couple sermons of his from 1987 and in one sermon he made me laugh even more than Mark Driscoll made me laugh in his latest vodcast that I watched this afternoon on Paying Your Pastors. Piper made me laugh because he said, "I took my four sons to the Twins [baseball] game on Friday night...pretty good game...I took a book along to read...." hahahaha!! That's what I'll do next time I go see the Jays play! What a great idea!!