Ephesians 4:20

Paul is writing to believers in Ephesus, and in the verses surrounding this one, he paints a picture of life without God — people spiritually numb, disconnected from truth, chasing empty things not through dramatic rebellion but through slow drift and hardened hearts. Then he pivots sharply: 'You, however, did not come to know Christ that way.' The implied contrast is powerful — coming to know Christ is fundamentally different from that aimless, hollow way of moving through life. It wasn't simply adding a new belief to an old life. It was an entirely different kind of encounter, pointing to a different kind of knowing altogether.

Lord, don't let knowing you become ordinary to me. Remind me that I did not come to you the way I came to everything else — and that you are not like anything else. Keep something alive in me that remembers what you changed, and what it cost, and what it still means. Amen.

Five words do a lot of work here — 'You did not come to know Christ that way.' Especially that word: 'that.' Paul is pointing backward at something hollow and dark — a life of numbed-out thinking, going through the motions, chasing sensation because nothing ever quite fills the gap. And he's saying: Christ came to you as the opposite of all that. Not as a lifestyle upgrade. Not as a self-help system. As something genuinely other. But here's what this verse quietly presses on: do you still treat knowing Christ as something genuinely different — or has it gradually blended back into the background noise of your life? It's possible to have a real, life-altering encounter with Christ and then slowly drift back toward the same hollow rhythms Paul is describing — not dramatically, just gradually, one ordinary Tuesday at a time. 'You did not come to know Christ that way' carries an almost wistful tone — a gentle nudge: remember what you actually encountered. Don't let it go flat. Don't lose that.