He Knows Me By Name...

I am an unabashed Andrae Crouch fan. Have been most of my life. What passes for "Worship" music today is watered down kool-ade compared to Andrae, Keith Green, Rich Mullins, Rick Elias and the generations that came before. They were the last group of artists to actually be in it for ministry and not for fame.
But this isn't a rant against CCM...not this time anyway.
I was sitting in my kitchen, thinking back over the past 7 years. 7 Years ago this month, my career in the mortgage industry ended when the company I worked for closed it's doors in TN (eventually closing altogether) and I was jobless. By May I would be homeless. And so began a 6 year journey through the darkest, driest, most lifeless desert I had ever walked.
I wondered, many times in fact, if God had entirely forgotten me. My faith...feeble as it would become sometimes...was the thing that kept me going. Faith and my love for my daughter. Had it not been for those two things, I would have given up.
There are times I wish I had done things differently. There are moments within that 6 years that I handled wrong. But overall I think I came through okay. I got my degree, something that had bothered me for years. I reconnected with my passion for writing. And my faith got tumbled, beaten, reshaped and refined.
Through all of this...God never forgot my name.
There is a line in Andrae's classic song "Soon, Very Soon" that says: "We have come from every nation. God knows each of us by name. Jesus took His blood and He washed our sins away..."
When Dannibelle Hall sings that line it brings me to tears every time. Because her voice was so amazing and lovely, and because the line says so much truth. God knows each of us by name. He knows YOU. By name. You matter to Him and the thing you are going through right now...that matters to Him too.
Live in light of that truth.