This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “Does He Know Me?” promises that Jesus “calls his own sheep by name” and knows believers personally even when they fail to recognize Him, claiming that those with “personal history with Jesus Christ” will experience His “personal touch” and maintain “intimate connection with him, a knowledge of Jesus Christ that nothing can disturb.”
Here’s what having a personal history with Jesus actually delivered:
Margaret had built her entire identity around her personal relationship with Jesus Christ. For thirty-four years, she’d cultivated what Chambers called “intimate connection”—daily devotions, prayer journaling, worship experiences where she felt His presence so tangibly she could almost hear Him calling her name.
Like Mary Magdalene, Margaret knew she had a personal history that no amount of doctrine could replace. She’d been delivered from depression at nineteen. She’d felt Jesus guide her to her husband at twenty-five. She’d experienced miraculous provision during financial struggles in her thirties. She was absolutely certain that Jesus knew her by name.
But then came the diagnosis.
Stage four pancreatic cancer. Six months, maybe nine with treatment. At fifty-three, with two kids still in high school and a husband who’d never balanced a checkbook.
Margaret had waited for Jesus to call her name through this crisis. She’d waited for the personal touch that Chambers promised would be “indescribably precious.” She’d waited for the intimate connection that nothing could disturb to carry her through the valley of death.
The silence was deafening.
Not just the absence of miraculous healing—Margaret had been prepared for that possibility. It was the complete absence of the personal Jesus she’d known for three decades. No whispered comfort. No sense of presence. No calling of her name in the darkness. The intimate knowledge of Christ that had defined her spiritual life had simply evaporated when she needed it most.
“He knows you even when you can’t sense Him,” her pastor assured her. “Sometimes the shepherd leads through valleys where we can’t hear His voice.”
But Margaret had begun to suspect something more disturbing than divine silence. What if the voice she’d been hearing for thirty-four years had never been Jesus at all? What if her “personal history” was just a series of coincidences and emotional experiences that she’d interpreted through Christian language?
The thought terrified her more than the cancer.
Margaret remembered her dramatic deliverance from depression—which had coincided with starting college, moving away from her dysfunctional family, and making her first real friends. Her sense of divine guidance toward her husband—who had been the kindest man in her social circle and the obvious choice for anyone with decent judgment. The miraculous financial provision—which had come through her husband’s job promotion that he’d been working toward for months.
Had any of it actually been Jesus? Or had it been Margaret, living a normal human life but crediting a divine narrator for every good decision and fortunate circumstance?
Now, facing death, the personal Jesus was nowhere to be found. No intimate touch. No calling by name. No restoration like Peter experienced. Just the stark reality of dying cells and medical statistics and family logistics.
Meanwhile, Margaret watched her oncologist, Dr. Patterson, navigate terminal diagnoses with dozens of patients every month. Dr. Patterson made no claims about personal relationships with Jesus. She didn’t promise divine touch or intimate connection. She offered honest medical information, genuine compassion, and practical support for end-of-life planning.
Dr. Patterson’s presence felt more healing than Margaret’s absent Jesus. Her straightforward kindness was more comforting than thirty-four years of imagined divine relationship.
In her final weeks, Margaret stopped waiting for Jesus to call her name. She started paying attention to the actual voices around her—her husband’s worried whispers, her children’s tearful conversations, her friends’ awkward attempts at comfort. Real people, with real presence, offering real love.
For the first time in decades, Margaret felt genuinely known. Not by an invisible shepherd, but by the flesh-and-blood humans who were staying up nights to care for her, who were rearranging their lives to be present, who were grieving her death even before it happened.
They didn’t need to call her name. They were right there.
Reflection Question: When have the real people in your life provided more comfort and presence than your personal relationship with Jesus?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 