“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.
But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
-Timothy Keller
The goal of this activity is to give people space to explore how they are known. This includes how they are known to others and how God knows them.
Supplies:
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Pens, and paper for journaling
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Make copies of scripture and reflection questions for each group member
Invite God into your time together and ask for insight as you explore what it means to be known by God and by others.
How do you know yourself? How would you say that you are known?
Have people get comfortable and give them the reflection sheet. Invite members to take time and read the passages. Have them highlight what stands out. Give them 10-15 minutes to read and journal. Invite them to answer these questions openly and honestly. Quietly play reflection music in the background.
Invite members to gather back together.
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What came up for you as you did this activity?
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What was challenging?
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Do you feel known by God? By others?
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What is holding you back from being fully known? Fully loved?
 Did anything strike you about others’ insights?
Open up space for the group to offer prayer requests. Designate someone in the group to prayer for each request. Close by asking God to let all be known and fully loved.

Take some time to read through these passages:
John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
1 Corinthians 13:12 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.
Corinthians 8:1-3
—“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.”
This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”
I Corinthians 13:8-13 —“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known .
So now faith, hope and love abide; but the greatest of these is love.”
Galatians 4:8-11 —“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
What does it look like to be fully known? To be fully loved?
Who knows you the best? How did that happen?
What do you do to keep people from not knowing you?
One way I will let myself be known this week by others:

One way I will be mindful of God knowing me:
I will assume that I am not unique in the admission that one of the great, recurring fears in my life—a fear that runs so deeply through my being that it often arises unconsciously in dreams—is to be “known” by others even (especially) in the very worst deeds and thoughts I have committed. Indeed, my only desire at the memory of the shameful realities that have been produced by my heart and carried out by my hands is the desire to hide them, the desire that they would remain unknown to all others. I would prefer even to forget them myself, to be ignorant of what I have done and been in my life. From the vantage point of this common experience, an experience that virtually all morally aware human beings participate in to some degree,
1.
Why should being known by God not immediately cause us to run in the other direction, away from Him, as furiously as we can?
2.
What does it mean to be “known by God”?
3.
What did you discover about yourself while journaling? (Share your answers)