AIMLESS SEARCH

If we don’t know what we’re searching for, we won’t find it. To search without a destination is pointless. To seek without the purpose of finding is fruitless and vacuous. Taking the first step of a journey towards nowhere ends before it begins. 

LACKING STRUCTURED, FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS

Many people find themselves in difficult life situations lacking a clearly defined belief system about nearly anything. It’s as though their beliefs about belief itself are as relativistic as their beliefs about morality. We ask them what they believe, and they don’t know, but they give moot answers that are more vague than explanatory; short-sighted, not very well thought-through, or missing intentionality.

What’s more staggering is how their lack of interest in searching for answers seems to be replaced with the presuppositional mentality of assigning underdeveloped ideas to the world around them, rather than attempting to understand the world as it already is. Most frustratingly, this lack of definitive beliefs doesn’t seem to be have enough weight to push them towards discovering answers to counter their fundamentally inept belief calibrater.

CHOICE, AN OBJECTIVE GOD, & MORALITY

There are large numbers of people who don’t like the idea of any absolute belief, such as a God who is the God of all, or morality that is objective and unchanging. We don’t like to be out of control, and we don’t want to feel as though we don’t have a choice to be in control. But without objective morality, without a God above all else, we have absolute chaos while lacking any answers or reasons as to why. And we don’t want that either, but we can’t have both.

We either come to understand what choices we have, and make one, or we get lazy and decide not to choose, which is itself, a choice. The choice to believe in the God above all gods is the choice to surrender who we are to something bigger. Not just anything bigger, but the biblical God. This choice is the most complex choice, because it means seeing with faith what we cannot see with our eyes.

DEFINITIVE BELIEF LEADS TO BOUNDARIES AND DISCIPLINE

This choice means putting God’s desires above our own, and trusting His will for our lives rather than trusting our own will. It means pursuing Him instead of the world, forsaking anything that does not bring us back to the light of Christ. It means not associating with people who believe in making something of ourselves here in this world, rather than making something of God by using our lives to glorify His presence through us.

To live without definitiveness is to live without precision, direction, or boundaries. To think about it a little differently is to put it this way: it’s impossible to be disciplined when there’s nothing we say no to fundamentally, and when we make excuses for anything we want in order to make it fit the way we like it. Discipline forces us to see what truly matters and cancel out what doesn’t. It requires us to have a sense of focus that enables us to put on a particular type of lens that permits certain things while capitulating others.

ONE PATH OR THE OTHER

We have to choose one goal, one destination or the other. We can’t love money and God (Matthew 6:24). We can’t walk the wide and narrow gates simultaneously (Matthew 7:13-14). There are certain lifestyle choices we have to cut out in order to walk upright with the Lord. Our destination is intimacy with God in the name of Jesus Christ, which means saying no to many things that the world tends to tell us to love instead.

THE WAY OUR FAITH CHANGES HOW WE LOVE

Answers to hot topic questions aren’t the road to salvation. Arguing over controversial Bible verses isn’t the foundation of Christianity. Faith in Jesus Christ is. Faith in Christ doesn’t mean having every answer, but it does mean living and searching in such a way as to find the wisdom of God in our lives necessary to be a testimony for Him.

Faith means that how we love God and our neighbors is more important than who we vote for and what our stance is on a pressing worldly subject. Think about that. How we love God and our neighbor is, in fact, reflected in the way we stand with these subjects. For if we love God first and foremost, and we pursue His kingdom above this world, we will no longer see the topics of this world as intimidating, because what matters most is pleasing God, not pleasing ourselves or any one person or constituent of humanity.

REPRIORITIZING AS A BELIEVER

Once we are a born again believer, once we are made new in Christ, pleasing God becomes more important than what the world thinks and believes. What they say matters less than what God’s Word says. What the world yells about and argues over has little substance compared to the substance of God’s commands in the Bible. We have a new priority now. We don’t put time and energy into what matters less anymore. We place who God is at the front of who we are, we put ourselves away and listen to God before anything else. How else do we put off our old self and put on the new self? (Ephesians 4:24)

THE DEVIL WOULD HAVE US UNUSABLE IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

There’s no confusion when we listen to what God has to say on everything before we even begin listening to the world’s noise. God isn’t the author of confusion, only the devil would have us believe that (1 Corinthians 14:33). We either fight this war of nonchalant Christianity with a fire for Jesus in our hearts, or we accept that the fight we’re bringing to the table is weak and lukewarm and unusable by God in the kingdom of heaven.

Our every breath and moment here is an opportunity to bless God and to serve others, and when we decide that we don’t know what we believe, we formally declare God a liar, and that we don’t want to truly live; we just want to function and do what our hearts desire without really placing an understanding into the eternal consequences for saying no to a holy, sentient, eternal God, outside of time and space.

That is truly unwise, and we can’t live that way. Our appointed time is coming faster than we know, and we’re throwing it away because we don’t want to put the world away and embrace the truth of the treasure of God’s love for us, hidden in the Good News of Jesus Christ.

A SPIRITUALLY BLIND CHOICE

Let’s reiterate. When we don’t know what we’re looking for, we won’t find it. If we’re aware of what we could find and we choose not to look for it, we’re choosing to remain spiritually blind despite knowing that there’s more to this life than meets the eye. We’re saying yes to the flesh in the name of believing that being a self-defined good person is the only criteria for an eternal life apart from isolation in hell. But that’s demonic, because it doesn’t come from God.

NO FULFILLMENT IN AN AIMLESS SEARCH IN THE DARK

It takes knowing where we’re going to get there. It takes having a plan and strategy to get from here to there. We can’t travel blindly, spiritually; without a map, without a goal, and hope we’ll reach a destination. But who wants to stay lost in the dark? We can’t just stay in the dark and expect to live any kind of fulfilling life, no matter what we believe. So if we’re going to believe in something bigger, we have to know what we’re searching for. There’s a LOT of Bibles in the world now. We all need one. We all need to accept God’s offer of grace in the name and person of Jesus Christ to find that life. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except through Him (John 14:6).

STILL LOST IN THE DARK

There are many of us still lost in the dark. How many of us will continue to live in the dark because we’re too stubborn to start seeking God, and find Jesus as Lord? There are many of us who stay away from church based on a bad experience, or from the fear of ever encountering one. While understandable, avoiding the community of Jesus won’t help us any better.

There are churches that will foster us and not abuse us. We have to be willing to search and find and give churches a chance to show us that they’re only here to help us grow, not to tear us down. God is moving but He can’t reach us when we keep saying no. Eventually, we have to open that door and listen to what He has to say. If we don’t, if we stay in the dark our whole lives, we’ll be in the darkness of hell for all eternity.

THERE’S ONLY ONE GOD TO SEARCH FOR

God didn’t create us for eternal darkness. He created us for eternal life, and He even gave us His only Son, Jesus Christ, so we could depend on that hope of forever with Him. Let’s not choose the darkness. Let’s choose the light of Christ. We find Him when we know who we’re looking for. We’re looking for Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who paid the wages for all our sins.

We don’t have to ask the world, or seek worldly experiences to find Him. We just need a mustard seed’s worth of faith, to deny ourselves and follow Him. He will never abandon us or forsake us. Believe in the name of Jesus, seek His truth in the Bible, and follow Him in every part of your life. It’s the only way.