My husband and I went to watch ‘Prometheus’ earlier this year. I’ve never been much of an ‘Aliens’ fan but I did find the premise behind it quite interesting. It was one in which man goes in search of God, in the case of this movie “the gods” to discover why he has been created. There was an underlying hunger to know their makers, to understand where they came from, why they were made and why they had been left without any communication. It may have been a sci-fi movie, but I found this portion to be true to life.
I think most of us have wondered at one time or another if there is a God, and if there is, where is He? Why can’t we see Him? Why don’t we know Him? How can we know Him? What is He like? Why doesn’t He interact with us? Does He want to know us? Does He even care about us? Has He abandoned us? Every religion has a different answer to the same questions, ‘Where is God?’ and ‘Who is God?’ Our curiosity reveals a great gnawing distance between us and God. It has often been said, that the absence of God is the deepest hole in every man’s heart. It is a hole that he spends his entire life seeking to fill or to explain away in one way or another.
According to the Pew Research Center poll, 68% of millennials in 2012 have never doubted the existence of God. This number is lower than what it was five years ago, but it shows the majority of people still believe in the existence of a God. Most people believe that God does exist in some form, in some place, though they may not know much else about him.Why is it that so many people believe in a God they have never seen? The most simple argument is that God must exist simply because we exist. It is not much different than being sure of the existence of our own biological father being out there, even though we may never have set our own eyes on him or known him personally. We know our biological father exists simply because we exist and we could not have possibly come into existence apart from him. We do not need to lay eyes on our earthly father to know that he existed, though our heart yearns for such a revelation. It is the same way with God, our Heavenly Father; our own existence points to Him and our hearts yearn to know Him.
God’s absence in our lives reveals a broken relationship between us and God. Something is wrong and we know it was not supposed to be this way and at some point in our lives we go in search of Him. We begin asking questions such as, ‘Where is He?’ ‘Who is He?’ ‘Does He care?’ ‘Can I know Him?’ ‘Does He want to know me?’ ‘Does He know about me?’ ‘Did God abandon us?’ ‘Did He forsake us?’ ‘If God is such a great, loving and caring Father, then where is He?’ I know of no greater hurt than the abandonment of a father. No greater question than the question of ‘where is God my Creator and can I know Him?’
We desperately desire to know God, yet we are hindered by our fallen nature. Most of us have broken & torn photographs hidden deep in the dark recesses in the wallets of our hearts, pictures of what we think God looks like, or what we think He should look like, based on information outside of the bible. We are much like a small child who has a father they have never met, a child who has gathered images held within their heart, images pieced together based on feelings, hopes, wishes, stories, rumors, broken conversations and perhaps a few faded and treasured memories; a child who hungrily pockets even the smallest tidbits of information in their eagerness to learn about their father, to learn what he is really like. Unfortunately, without the reality to compare the shadow to, the images can often be far off, the sources skewed, the pieces missing, the picture blurred, broken and false.
There are many people who are willing to tell us what our heavenly Father is like or what they think He is like. Each religion would hold up a different picture and even in modern Christianity it would seem that each person would hold up a picture of what they think God is like based on their own taste and preference and everyone would exclaim ‘Excellent, that is Him exactly!’
We must put all these false images aside for they are all false gods of our imagination. According to the bible, there is only one true Living God, who cannot be captured by any image that we can create, nor is it possible to even describe who He is with mere human words, because He is far greater than what we can ever imagine! But the good news is that He can be known and He wants you to know Him! To not only have a clear picture of who He is in your heart, but also to communicate with you daily!
In his Son, Jesus Christ, God has revealed Himself to us; for Jesus Christ himself is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) and with this purpose, came to make God the Father known to us through reconciling our broken relationship with him, so that it might be possible for us to know Him.
“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18 NIV)
“He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who come from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.” (John 3:31-33)
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10)
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:18-19)
“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
Thanks to Jesus, unlike in the movie ‘Prometheus’ we don’t have to develop elaborate and expensive technology to travel light years away in order to search for God. God came to us, by becoming one of us. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God.” (John 1:11-13)
Did God abandon us? No. Absolutely not! This world would have us believe otherwise so that we might never seek God, so that we would never know Him or His great unending love for us. This world would have us settle on false images and false gods in place of the one and only True Living God “who is not far from each one of us for in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28).
His promise still rings true. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 and He further promises that if you “seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.” (Deut. 4:29). But it takes faith, for “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Heb. 11:6).
We all need to know who God is, as much as we need and yearn to know who our earthly fathers are. We need to see and know them in order to know who we are and to understand ourselves. How much more so with God the Father? We cannot begin to even understand ourselves until we know God and He reveals ourselves to us. If the absence of a physical relationship with our fleshly fathers is so damaging to one’s heart, how much more so is the absence of knowing God the Father! Won’t you seek to know him through Jesus Christ today?
-
Call: 1-888-Need-Him
