Known Well

Devotion for the week...

When Aiden was an infant, we lived in Igloolik, Nunavut (a small community on a small island in the Canadian Arctic) and our TV satellite dish allowed us to access a whole bunch of radio stations. Paul discovered that we could listen to a Christian radio station he knew from visiting his grandparents in St. John's, Newfoundland as a kid, so he started listening to it now and then after work. I wasn't a believer at the time, and I thought the music was so weird. Why were they singing about God so much?

At 5:00 in the evening, the radio station played a half hour program called Adventures in Odyssey. It's a radio drama for kids, so we joked that we were listening to it for Aiden to hear, but he was less than a year old 😅 We quickly came to love the fictional residents of Odyssey. Before long, we were making sure to tune in every evening so we wouldn't miss an episode. Sometimes we didn't turn it off right away when the show was over, and so we found ourselves regularly listening to Focus on the Family, which came on at 6:00. Before long, we were also regularly listening to Chuck Swindoll's Insight for Living program, which came on at 7:00. 

While I give most of the credit to Chuck's teaching, my journey to faith in Jesus started with those Adventures in Odyssey episodes. God used stories to reach me, and He specifically used radio stories because He knows me. He knows I wouldn't have sat down to watch a TV show, especially right at suppertime, but I would get drawn in by a story played over the radio while I cooked. Those stories cracked open the door to my heart, opening me up to the possibility of faith.

The Bible tells us a story of another time God used His knowledge of individual people to draw a group to Jesus. After Jesus was born, "some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him'" (Matthew 2:1-2). The wise men were men of learning, men who studied the heavens. God knew they'd notice the appearance of a new star in the sky, and that they'd search for the meaning of its arrival. Some scholars believe that the wise men would have been familiar with Jewish prophesies, which explains how they figured out that the star told of the birth of a new Jewish king.

The star in the sky didn't draw everyone to Jesus. There wasn't a rush of people from all over coming to meet Him. We don't know why the wise men were chosen, but God put the star in the sky as a sign designed to make them set off to find Jesus, and they followed it to Him. God also sent an angel to the shepherds because he knew they wouldn't notice or understand a new star. They needed a simple, clear invitation. In both cases, God wanted certain people to meet Jesus, and He tailored the invitation specifically for them.

I find it comforting to know that God knows us so well, and that He uses that understanding of us to reach us individually. While I may not be able to see how He could reach someone, He knows them and knows how to approach them.

How did God bring you to Jesus? Did He use His knowledge of your personality, interests, or quirks to reach you?