Have you ever felt like you weren’t loved, seen or valued? Well, that was me. I was the baby of the family with two older brothers who didn't always treat me as important with busy parents who eventually got divorced when I was very young. I grew up going to church, learning about God, and believed God existed. Yet, I didn't know God in a personal way, like a person knows a good friend. Eventually, I read my Bible cover to cover in college, which is where I had a real encounter with Jesus that transformed my life. The encounter took place when I went to a collegiate prayer group and silently, internally, prayed specific words to the Lord. Within ten minutes a girl about my age came over and shared with me the exact same words I had just prayed silently only to God. I was shocked! How could she know what I had just told the Lord in a silent prayer unless God wanted me to know that He was real, listening, and cared? If God cared so much for me that He let someone else know what I had prayed, it showed me I mattered to God! He didn’t need to show me he cared in this way, but by doing so, I woke up to the fact that His love for me is individual and personal. Now, I look at life very differently. Instead of distanced religion, God gave me a new relationship with Him that is personal and intimate. That moment in my life reminds me of the Biblical account of two men talking as they traveled to Emmaus with the resurrected Jesus, but they initially did not recognize Him. Luke 24:31-32 says "Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him, and He vanished from their sight. They said to one another, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while He was talking with us on the road and opening the Scriptures to us?” Similarly, that day as an undergraduate student, my eyes were opened, and my heart was set on fire for Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I realized I was the lost sheep that Jesus talked about when he said the shepherd left the 99 sheep to go looking for the one that was lost, and then rejoiced just like the joy in heaven over one sinner who repents compared to the 99 righteous who have no need to repent (Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:1-7). Now, I see myself as loved, valuable, and precious as a child of God, the same as the one sheep He went after to rescue and protect. It is my hope that you can also know the Lord in such a profoundly personal way and to know that your life is extremely precious to God.