Looking for the real thing
Interactive Internet (chatting, forums,)
Reality TV shows
Experience Shopping centers
Cafes and restaurants
Theaters (IMAX)
Virtual Reality games and experiences
People are looking for and desiring to experience life, to be in some kind of control with happens around them.
- If we are going to live and operate in this world we must understand what is happening around us.
- If we are going to understand how people think, we have to understand what they want out of life.
- I read a science fiction book when I was a child that fascinated me but also scared me.
It was about a society that lived for only experiencing pleasure.
Everything was throw-away and disposable. It was getting more difficult to find people who would work. There was a favorite entertainment, people would go to this place and lay down in this machine and they could experience anything they wanted to. They could travel anywhere, do anything. People paid for this experience and slowly but surely they became addicted to this virtual reality world.
What is scary about this is, we can see things headed in that direction today. “It’s the mind drug.”
The Company of the Discouraged
Not too long ago, the Hayden Planetarium in New York City issued an invitation to all those who were interested in applying to be a part of the crew on the first journey to another planet. Eighteen thousand people applied. They gave the applications to a panel of psychologists, who examined them thoroughly and came to the conclusion that in the vast majority of incidents, those who applied did so because they were discouraged with their lives here and hoped they could find a new life somewhere else.
- But the Church of Jesus Christ has something that the world cannot produce. REALITY!
More and more we live in an experience seeking society that will become hungrier for reality.
People are looking for answers, a way of escape. Jesus has a made a way for people to find what they need.
Colossians 2: 16 therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
· Some people get caught up in the shadow of things.
o I guess that would be a good description of virtual reality
o There are Christians that are still living with the shadow instead of the real thing. Maybe they were valid things in the Old Testament, but still only shadows.
· Maybe that is why people without God cannot relate to us. If we are living a shadow of a life and they want he real thing will they choose what we have?
o But the world also has only a shadow. Maybe it isn’t packaged in Biblical terms, but most people are looking for the same things we are. (Love, life, happiness. A future, family, friends, a hope, etc..) Their shadows are just different!
18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.
19 He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
· There will also be people who go too far in the religious and spiritual search, far past Christ into strange behaviors.
o So complicated, so detailed, so sincere, but so wrong! Unspiritual, prideful and empty ideas.
People are searching for Jesus Christ but can’t recognize the packaging. The contents may be real but if we don’t show people reality they will never know.
Contents = the world + container like the world = False reality
Contents = the world + container looks Christian = Hypocrisy
Contents = Jesus + container looks Christian, but is unreal = Religious
Contents = Jesus + container like the world = Fleshly, only a Shadow of reality
Contents = Jesus + container lives like Jesus = Reality
So what are we to do? We need to show people that there is a real thing! That they are on the same search, as we are and even though there have been many bad examples, hypocrites and political religious games, there is REALITY!
The reality, however, is found in Christ
Isaiah 46: 3 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, an have carried since your birth. 4 Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. 5 “To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared? 6 Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it. 7 They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles. 8 “Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. 9 Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. 10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.
God is the beginning, he knows the plan and purpose for your life. Without God your life can have no REAL meaning. Come to him!