Pastor's Corner: What do you know for sure?

During my first year as a college student, a fellow student from my chemistry class would always greet me when we walked past one another on campus with the question, “What do you know for sure?”

A hymn I learned a few years later gives the hymn-writer's take on the answer to that question. She wrote:

I am not skilled to understand

What God hath willed, what God hath planned;

I only know at His right hand

Is one who is my Saviour!

I take Him at His word indeed:

“Christ died for sinners,” this I read;

And in my heart, I find a need

Of Him to be my Saviour!

That He should leave His home on high

And come for sinful man to die,

You count it strange? So once did I

Before I knew my Saviour!

And was there then no other way

For Him to take? I cannot say.

I only bless him day by day

Who died to be my Saviour!

Yes, living, dying, let me bring

My strength, my solace, from this spring;

That He who lives to be my King

Once died to be my Saviour!

- Dora Greenwell, 1873

It has been argued that nobody knows anything for sure, but I am sure that nobody knows that for sure. The Apostle Paul wrote that in following Jesus he had lost everything he once held dear, but added “I consider everything a loss for the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord...I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings...” (Philippians 3:8-10, NIV) Paul thought it possible to know Jesus for sure.

Who am I to argue with Paul, especially since my whole life has taught me the same thing? So, I ask you, what do you know for sure?