Reach 5:59 PM

I've been listening to the song, "Cielo" by Phil Wickham and the chorus goes "I can't lift my hands high enough, when I'm reaching for you, my God". I'm not sure if this is what Phil intended, but today, I realized that line is very terrifying for me. I think it's easy to romanticize statements of unreachability and the inability to understand God, but honestly, it scares me.
It's more like "I can't lift my hands high enough!$#$%$ I can't life my hands high enough!@#@$@#% When I'm reaching for you, my God!!$@#%@#". To me, it sucks that I can't reach high enough.
I feel like an accurate picture of college for me is me reaching more and more for God every year, trying harder to know Him. I'm in no way discrediting reaching out for God, I actually see that as evidence that God is working in a heart. But I will make a confession that may seem cliche and obvious to many, but is painful for me;

To know everything of God is impossible. I think it leads me to want to understand his infinite sovereign will, and instead of leading me to be in awe, it ends up making me feel hopeless. I can't reach Him, I can't attain him. I can't reach high enough. I know in my head that I should be in wonder of him, but for me, I feel that much further.
I think that's the difference between trying to know God and being known by Him. It's a very scary thing to try to know him because the more you know, the more you realize your lack of goodness. In other words, the more you try to know God, deeper and greater you realize your sin is. It shows alot of yourself, so much so that many times, I just don't want to know any more about my self. Funny that the culture stresses knowing and pleasing yourself so much, but that's a different story.
So now, to know that God himself knows you... what kind of reaction do I have? It tastes like a kind of freedom that just wasn't there before. Maybe that's what worship is.
I treat God as if he is some anomaly that I can figure out to my satisfaction. Now it's very obvious to me that it is never-ending. I can never know infinity. Living it out further complicates things. Every time I feel like I'm beginning to understand something, stuff happens and all of the sudden, your whole concept of what you thought you had grasped is way deeper than what you first thought. Me and an old childhood friend meet up every few months and every time we meet, our general consensus is; 'wow, we thought we understood last time. We had no idea how little we knew." That's every time we meet up. It's a constant re-realization of how much we don't know.
I must be known. Being a follower of Jesus feels impossible if you don't know for sure that he loves you. The difference between focusing on who God is to me and who I am to God.
It is a circular struggle that I suppose will keep happening over and over until I die. All this talk of surrender, belief, righteousness etc. is all good- but it's meaning is diminished in the end of the day if I don't actually trust and believe that God- who gives me my worth- loves me and desires that I be with Him. How much we must grieve him by keeping him at bay when He's made the way for us to freely and fully be with him (Hebrews 10:22). I must be known because left to my own strength- I can't reach high enough. But God has already reached down to us (SO CLICHE BUT SO, SO TRUE).

It is a weird feeling. I've spent my whole life reaching to him, yet I overlook that simple fact; That while we were still his enemies, Jesus died for us. He made a way, he did the reaching. It used to be that we had to be completely obedient (the old covenant) in order to even have his presence. Jesus became that obedience in a sense with the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) and now we have this insanely complete and open way to God.

"And no longer shall each one teach his neighboar and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more"

I guess reaching out for God means something different then, doesn't it? I've spent my whole self trying to reach for him because in the core of my mind, I believed that I could attain him. But I can't. But now, I reach because he has already reached out and finished the saving. Jesus accomplished the obedience that used to be required of us, and was crushed to make it final.

If I learned anything in the last 23 years, it has to be the single fact that I couldn't reach him. But I can't reach high enough, I can't sing loud enough or long enough.. because Jesus has done it. God, help me learn to be in awe of that for the next 23.

Next? 3:44 PM

It's more like a punch in the gut when I realize that a part of my life is coming to an end. It used to be that whenever I finished a grade or finished a school, it'd mean me going to another school or another grade. This time there's no more school, no more grades to pass. All that structure is done with.
What kind of change is supposed to happen after all of this? My entire, very short life, has been made up entirely of school and now it's all done (for now). I don't know what life is apart from this pattern. It's such a weird feeling because I have very little real context for what things should be like. I guess being an only child doesn't help either.
It lines up with much more important things, like what it means to follow Jesus now. I think I've grown exponentially in the last 5 years compared to the rest of it before. It's weird to think that 5 or 10 years from now I'll be saying the same thing about where I am compared to college.

 College (at least for me) was never about doing well at a particular class, but it taught me how to learn. Actually, more than that, it gave me an environment where I found out what I was made of. Sometimes I used it as a means to define or distract myself, but I guess that's the human tendency to idolize and feed off of environment. I can't say my college career was that stellar, nor did I accomplish what I dreamed I would. But  I know myself better than I did a few years ago. I know what I actually care about and what I don't. I'm finding out what makes me tick and what my real motivations are.

I don't have much processed right now, but something that is very apparent to me today is not just how much I need God, but how much I should want Him. I think it's easier to say that God is a necessity rather than He is everything I want. I know more now than I did 5 years ago, or heck, even last week, that I need him. I know that because everyday, I realize that in the lens of being holy, I've got nothing in myself. To quote a friend, 'my realization of how sinful I am is a continually growing void'. But I think that in a bigger way, I am seeing, if only a little, that the things I want are cheap toys and replacements for God. The older I get the more I see that everyone actually wants God, or something like him, but whether or not they actually will go to him is a different story.

It's easy for me to be in love with the little moments I had here, to hold onto what things were like. But I suppose it can't remain a crutch or comfort for me. I don't really know where I'm going with this, with this spiel nor with what happens next.