As a living creature, I need a few basic things to thrive. I need food and water, oxygen, some protection from the elements, and sleep. Maybe I can live with that. But as a human being, a person with a higher thinking mind than some creatures, I need a few more things to thrive.
First, I need love. I need to know that somebody else cares that I am alive and value has been ascribed to my existence. It is tough to be an island, needing no one, though many attempt to do it. Because we are sinful creatures by nature, many things can go wrong with our normal channels of love. Family life can become a nightmare.
Our church tries to help people out with basics like their utility bills and rent. Other organizations tackle food and clothes. When people come in for help, I insist on finding out about their life situation. Everybody has been happy to be asked. I want to know that they are not alone in the world. Some are. Yes, they have physical family, but their families are so dysfunctional that they offer no support or love.
It is unlikely that perfect strangers will love you, except for one fact. God loves you, and the love of God filters into perfect strangers sometimes. Why does God love us? We may feel perfectly unworthy of such a thing, and we wouldn’t be wrong. God sees the now broken remnants of His image in us. He also sees the potential of what we still can be on Earth and what we will be if He can bring us to Heaven. It is also His nature to love. He choses to do so. The primary expression of that love is Jesus and all that He did. Jesus is the divine Son of God choosing to become a human being permanently. He did what people need to do but can’t–keep the Law of God perfectly. That sacrifice is only eclipsed by one other thing. The Law requires that sinful beings like us be cast off by God–forsaken, damned. Jesus experienced that for us. His motivation was love for us. Not just the species, but you as an individual. To reap the benefit of these acts of love, one more step is needed. God needs to convince you that this is real (the story of Jesus and the promise of forgiveness through Jesus) and He needs to connect you to Jesus via baptism.
You may not feel loved by God because of the circumstances of your life. Perhaps the intangibility of that love makes it to tough to experience. But the objective fact remains–you are loved by your Creator. Maybe nobody else does love you. I doubt it, but maybe. The most important form of love is God’s love for you, however. Believe it.
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10 (NIV)
Love is a big thing, but so is purpose. If you feel useless, it is hard to go on. Whatever your circumstances and whatever your disabilities, you are not useless to God.
I recently watched a movie on Netflix, The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. In this story a man, who by his own admission had never done anything, decides to walk across England to visit a friend who was dying alone. Along the way a group of people start to follow him because they lack a sense of purpose themselves. A similar storyline is found in the movie, Forrest Gump. We can manufacture a purpose for ourselves or desperately follow somebody else in their purpose, but isn’t the best purpose the one given by our Creator?
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)
How do we find such a thing? God-given purpose is found is a broad spectrum of tasks. We provide value to others through our work. If we have a family, we are God’s tool for their care and for helping them to know God. God can place us to counteract evil in this world. God creates us have a relationship with Him in prayer and worship. God places us a stewards of things like this planet, our bodies, our skills, our relationships, our time, and more. Ultimately, we are to create disciples for Jesus and thereby lead people to eternal life with God.
God prepares us for higher level purpose via teaching us through the Bible, shaping us through our experiences, and giving us abilities through the Holy Spirit. We are responsible only for what we have and what God places in our path at the moment. It is a million little things and a few big ones that make life worthy living.
Specific purposes change over the course of time: children grow up, we retire, our health changes. Still, purpose from God can be found until our dying day. After that it really changes.
It also helps to have an understanding of certain things. Life needs a framework through which to understand what is happening to us. This is often called a “worldview”. If a worldview is not accurate to our situation, then it can seriously mislead us. Understanding can come through methodologies like science. Science is good for understanding how things work. It is not so good at understanding the past. It is useless for understanding the spiritual. Some things need to be revealed to us, or we would never know.
God teaches many things, but a critical piece of information is what we are and what is our situation. We are eternal beings consisting of a body, soul, and spirit https://afterdeathsite.com/2024/03/26/your-body-soul-and-spirit/. Another is that we and the world around us is impacted by sin (which is internal to us), the curse (which is external), and spiritual, hostile, cohabitants of this world (Satan/demons). Many would deny all three. The Bible urges us not to dismiss this bad news. It explains why the world is as it as and it points to our personal need for Jesus. This leads to the final need–hope.
I use hope in the biblical sense–confidence in something yet unseen. I don’t mean wishful thinking. If all we have is this life, we don’t have much. Because of Jesus, we can have a certainty that the best part of our existence is still ahead of us. We don’t end. Our death is just a necessary step to rid ourselves of a sin-tainted, failing body. Much better bodies and environments await.https://afterdeathsite.com/2019/03/25/do-you-get-a-body-in-heaven/. With a hope like that you can conquer any problem. Everything is just temporary.
I am often with people going through difficult situations like ill-health or grief. They often ask, “How do people who don’t know Jesus handle situations like this?” I’m not sure. I just know that because of these things I thrive in any situation.
Giving Christ 