SCRIPTURE

Galatians 4:9a (NASB95)

9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God …

John 10:27–28 (NASB95)

27My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

COWBOY WISDOM

Anybody who’s helped work calves in the spring knows the racket that comes after. You gather the whole herd into the pens, sort the cows off the calves, brand and vaccinate all day, and then turn them back out together. For the next hour the pasture is pure chaos — hundreds of cows bawling, hundreds of calves bawling back, most of them the same color, all of them milling in the dust. To a visitor it looks hopeless. But one pair at a time, it sorts itself out. Every mama cow finds her own calf by voice and by smell, and she won’t settle until she has. Cowboys call it mothering up, and the remarkable part is that the calf isn’t doing most of the finding. The mama is.

Paul seems to catch himself mid-sentence in Galatians 4:9: “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God.” It’s as if he stops to set the record straight. Yes, the Galatians had come to know God — but that wasn’t the deepest truth. The deeper truth was that God had known them first. He had picked their voices out of all the bawling of a lost world and claimed them as His own. “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Our knowing Him always starts with His knowing us.

That kind of being known goes all the way down. “O Lord, You have searched me and known me … You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways” (Psalm 139:1, 3). Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” He isn’t squinting through the dust, guessing which one is His. “Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, ‘The Lord knows those who are His’” (2 Timothy 2:19). There’s no confusion in His pens.

That’s exactly why Paul can’t make sense of the Galatians turning back. Why would a calf that’s been found, claimed, and fed wander off hunting a mama that was never his — or worse, crawl back into a pen he was sorted out of? Living like you know God starts with resting in the fact that God knows you. You don’t have to bawl louder, work harder, or keep a calendar of rituals to get His attention. He found you in the dust. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. Paul says it matters even more that we are known by God than that we know Him. Why do you think that order matters?
2. Psalm 139 says God is “intimately acquainted with all my ways.” Is that a comfort to you, or does it make you uneasy? Why?
3. Are there ways you’ve been trying to “bawl louder” — earning, performing, or proving yourself — to get God’s attention, when He already knows you by name?
4. Who in your life needs to hear that God knows them personally? How could you let them know this week?

PRAYER FOCUS

Good Shepherd, thank You that before I ever went looking for You, You were already looking for me. You know my voice, my path, and every one of my ways, and You still claim me as Your own. Quiet the part of me that thinks I have to earn Your attention. Help me hear Your voice above all the noise, and follow wherever You lead. In Jesus’ name, Amen.