People Want an Explanation for Life

Pray

IN minute we’re going to hear from Tim about the Engage Minisntry Stream and how we can pray for them,

so it thought it would be good to think a little bit about the community around us and what the bible tells us about them.

Engaging with non-Christians about our faith, about God is often hard.

ONe fo the reasons for that is that we tend to assume that they don’t believe in God - and see no reason or evidence to even think about it.

But one of the verse we came across in Ecclesiaties in last years series but that we didn’t have much time to think about, was this.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV 2011

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Now, we can’t tell a non-Christian that they have ‘eternity in their heart’ and expect them to admit it,

But we can trust God’s Word and believe that deep down there are no true atheists!

Every human with the ability to think and reason, deep down will believe in, or certainly struggle to truely reject - the idea that they are made for more than just this life.

There must be something more!

They are all living a dilema of this inbuilt sense of God and eternity, but desperately want to supress it and deny it!

They are lost - truely - even in and of themselevs.

They live in an inner turmoil however hard they hide it - or put it down to other things.

Romans 1:18–19 NIV 2011

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

Blase Pascal the French philosppher of the 1600’s put it like this:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

Jesus in John 4 thinks of the lost as being thirsty.

John 4:13–14 NIV 2011

Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

What a helpful illustration.

pause

If you knew a time when you didn’t believe, think how Jesus has quenched your thirst.

If you’ve always believed, imagine the thirst you’d experince if Jesus was taken from you!

Our job, is not to be nervous of people’s thoughts or actions if we speak of Jesus or invite people to church.

It’s to know that deep down, they want to know the truth, they want us to bring to them, in our jars of clay, the living water, the gospel of Jesus.

So Next time we are tempted to dodge an oppertunity to be bold, to talk, to invite.

Let’s remember the truth - even if they want to deny it.

God has also set eternity in the human heart.

They are thirsty - they just don’t know that Jesus is their water yet.

Interview