February 12, 2021
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Our son had just finished his first day of high school and he thought he had found the "happy hunting ground." For girls, that is. He regaled his sister, then a junior in high school, with stories about all the incredible girls he'd seen that day. The more he talked, the more disgusted she became. Finally, she just blurted out, "You are so superficial!" To which he immediately replied, "Well, of course. I'm a freshman! We're into superficial!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Looking For a Love You'll Never Find."
Most of us aren't into superficial. We've experienced enough superficial in our relationships for a lifetime. Now we just want something real. But there's more superficial and less real than ever.
A Newsweek writer said "The greatest challenge of this century is going to be to avoid becoming a faceless society." She went on to describe our modern online relationships with acquaintances or friends that we've never really met, or who may not be at all like the person they say they are. We're more connected to more people than ever before, but in many ways, we're more lonely than we've ever been.
Anna Quindlen, the Newsweek columnist, tells about a memoir entitled "The Autobiography of a Face," in which the author describes her childhood after cancer left her with much of her lower jaw gone or distorted. The author said there was one night of the year when she felt the happiest and the most free: Halloween, when she could wear a mask. Quindlen says, "This is the age of the mask." Our superficial world has become a place where, in her words, so many are "looking for something more, someone who will see them across a field of restaurant tables, really see them...looking for that one face in the crowd. Maybe everyone is."
Once there was a woman with an incurable medical problem who was desperate for someone who would care - someone who could cure her. With her money and her medical options all used up, she pushed her way through a crushing crowd to get to a man called Jesus. In faith, she touched the hem of His robe, sure that Jesus would never know in the middle of so many people pressing on Him. But He said, "I know power has gone out from Me." The Bible says she found out that "she could not go unnoticed" by Jesus (Luke 8:43-48). Neither can you. Jesus is the face in the crowd who offers you the authentic love you've been looking for your whole life.
1 Samuel 16:7, our word for today from the Word of God tells us that "man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart." Jesus doesn't care about the superficial stuff that's so important to everyone else. He cares about your heart. And because He's God, He knows all the hurt, the darkness, the sin that's there. And He loves you. How can you know that? He's offered living proof - actually, dying proof. The Bible says, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
We didn't care about Him, but He died for us - for the sin that separates us from Him. That's how much He loves you. That's how much He desires to have a relationship with you. His love is the only one you can never lose, because it's not based on your performance. It's based on His promise, "I will never leave you." (Hebrews 13:5). The One who knows you best loves you most!
He doesn't force His love on you. You have to choose it; respond to it. In the Bible's words, "We love Him because He loved us first" (1 John 4:19). Your relationship with Him begins as an act of total trust in the One who loved you enough to die for you. When you say, "Jesus, I'm done running my life. You run it from now on. You're my only hope of being forgiven. I'm yours beginning today."
You want that? Let me encourage you to go to our website today. You'll see an explanation there how to be sure you belong to Him. That website is ANewStory.com.
No one on earth has the love to fill that hole in your heart. It's a God-shaped hole, and only He's big enough to fill it. You don't have to do anything to impress Him or to get Him to love you. He already does. Jesus...He's the end of your search.