The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. And when you don’t know, you don’t know that you don’t know. I feel like I’m learning that a lot these days. For so long, I thought I knew God, I knew Christ, I knew the bible – how foolish! It only goes to show how little I truly know of Him. This pride actually inhibits us from going deeper and the knowledge stays in our mind without ever seeping into our heart.

As a child, I used to have terrible asthma but I ran cross-country anyway. As I wheezed my way through the race, each step more gruelling than the last, I’d look up at the sky and tell myself “one more step”. It was always comforting to look at the sky because it doesn’t show how much farther you have to run; it doesn’t move as you do, it’s always there, the same. Before I knew it, the race would be over. I’d be handed my number, miraculously usually in the top 30, and I’d pee in my pants and collapse. 

I feel like I’m living one of those races. Every day hard, every day is a battle not to live fatalistically, but to live faith. We hear it a lot, but what does it actually mean to live by faith? The righteous will live by faith. Faith is what matters. So what is it? Faith is being sure in what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. What is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal. What we see is the difficult situation the problems. God and his promises – these are what are eternal and unseen. Our reality can’t be what our eyes see but what God has said, that his word is actually living and true and will come to pass. 

The word that come to mind so often these days is Galatians 2: 20, “….I no longer live but Christ lives in me.” The same power that raised Christ from the dead – this Spirit actually is living in me. It not my job to muster up my willpower to overcome, it is my job to surrender to the living Spirit and let him take lead. The same Jesus who loved his enemies, who was meek before his prosecutors, who forgave as he suffered on the cross, who had the courage to love to the death – this Jesus is living in me. When I am so tempted to react in frustration, or to become silent under stress and burdens, or to judge others because I don’t feel good enough about myself, this is the very moment I am to remember Christ lives in me. It’s not a matter of changing others, it’s about letting God change me. I realize this is what it means to know God, to have a relationship with him, to live by faith in my “here-and-now”. Endless surrender, endless victory. 

Other words that have been coming to my mind are “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well” and “Delight yourselves in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart”. These words are related in that they are about sanctification of our love for God. To know God is to love God, as 1 John says. It doesn’t mean love God more than you love other things. It means only love God. In that, we will love what he loves. When we seek his kingdom, to please him above all else, when we delight in him as our everything, when our love is 100% to him, we are supremely happy. And when we’re supremely happy, we’ve gained it all because nothing can be added or taken away that can change that joy. Not only so, but we then come to truly love others – not with a selfish love that tries to gain for ourselves, but out of a love that comes from our love for God. It’s his love. It’s a real mystery. 

I thought about this in the context of my marriage. I didn’t know how to love God, love my husband, and love my daughter at the same time. I just felt stretched thin, my mind and heart and time compartmentalized to accommodate. It’s tiring, and it’s impossible. How can I truly love God and others at the same time? Meditating on these words, I realized that all is contained in love for God. When the focus on my heart and mind is God and living to please him, my vow to Him to love my husband unconditionally because all the more weighty. My love to my husband, my unconditional devotion to him, stems from my love for God. I submit and respect, not because he is necessarily respectable and worthy, but because my God commands it. In that love for God, I find the fountain to unconditionally love my husband, even when it is hard. To an extent, it is easy to love babies because they are adorable, chubby, funny, cute. But even that “love” is not love love. It is selfish. Even love for children has to come from love for God. We love them and care for them, sacrifice for them, and teach them, because ultimately they belong to the Lord. They are his. 

To know God – this is my desire and purpose. Of course, I don’t know what that truly means, but I am learning. I am coming to know this infinite God who loved me and gave himself for me – not just in my mind, but in my heart, in my spirit. By the grace of God, I am being changed. I want to know him more, I want him to take control of my entire being that I might love as he loves, I may overcome as he has overcome. It is an invisible work, this dying and re-living with Christ, but praise God because what is invisible is eternal. 😉 

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death.” Philippians 3: 10