I laughed as a woman shared her behavior while shopping at Walmart. When she needs to get her shopping list or something else out of her purse, she pulls it out and then holds it slightly upward toward the nearest surveillance camera. She wants to remove any doubt of whether or not she’s trying to sneak something into her purse instead of out of it. She’s done nothing wrong, but she doesn’t want to appear as if she has.

I’m considering taking it one step further and writing notes on the back of my shopping lists, so I can hold them up with encouraging words to whomever might see the surveillance footage. I can hold up the note with a big smile to help someone’s day become a bit brighter. The only problem is my behavior might look suspicious to all the other people around me!

The church I grew up in had a balcony. I remember thinking God sat in the balcony, waiting for me to misbehave, ready to pop me on the back of my head.

God is all-knowing. He has 24/7 surveillance, but it doesn’t need to make us nervous – unless we’re doing something we’re not supposed to be doing. God is all-knowing because he created everything. We are because God said so. Often times, we’d like to say so. We want to be in charge. We want to control the surveillance equipment. We want to decide what’s right and wrong. We want to know it all.

But do we really?

What would it be like to know everything?

If you could know just a little more than you do, what would you want to know? What questions would you ask?

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Bruce Almighty in which Jim Carrey is given a brief taste of what it’s like to be God. To say it’s overwhelming is an understatement. We think we want to know it all, but do we really? We want to pick and choose what we know. We want to know if and when we’ll get a job when we’re unemployed, if our friend or family member will survive a battle with cancer, if the conflict will be resolved, if we’ll get married, stay married, and have children. We want to know the when’s and how’s that consume our thinking. We think peace will come with more knowledge. But would it?

To be honest, if I’m going to get into a life-altering wreck today, I don’t want to know. If my phone is going to ring in the middle of the night tonight with the news of a major emergency, I don’t want to know. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I care deeply. And I hope that I am living life in a way that doesn’t depend on a crisis to make significant decisions about what I’m currently doing, saying, and thinking. I don’t want to be anxiety-driven. I want to be Jesus-driven.

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. 1 Peter 4:1-2 (NLT)

God not only knows every moment and detail of your life, he knew every moment and detail of Jesus’ life, too. He knew he would have to suffer…for you. Pause when you try to comprehend your all-knowing God. Instead, wrap your heart around your all-knowing God. Our hearts, our minds, our whole beings should wrap with God’s so intimately that we have difficulty telling where one stops and the other starts.

Our hearts are entwined with his heart, and we ache to know him more, share him more, and impact the world for him. Our thoughts are entwined with his thoughts, because we become so accustomed to listening to his Spirit’s guidance. Our behavior reflects his character, so others see the character of God through the transparency and authenticity of our lives.

We share attitudes with him. We share suffering with him. We share will with him. Just as 1 Peter 4:1-2 instructs.

God the Father planned long ago to choose you by making you his holy people, which is the Spirit’s work. God wanted you to obey him and to be made clean by the blood of the death of Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be yours more and more. 1 Peter 1:2