Resources/Articles
A "LOST" Look
You are entering a store at a shopping mall or local department store. You go to the section of the store where you assume you know where what you are looking for is located, but it isn’t where you thought it would be. A clerk at the store recognizes this “lost look” on your face and asks, “May I help you?” You respond by saying, “I’m looking for...” You then describe the item. The clerk assists you in finding it, you pay for it, and you exit the store content. It would be so great if the same outcome were true in religion: Everyone leaving this world very happy, because they found what they were looking for, thanks to the guidance of God to the One they needed for salvation - Jesus Christ.
God’s grace, love, and mercy provide all we need in the “store” of life. His desire is the “make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things” (Ephesians 3:9). His purpose is easy to see once you are guided by his understandable revelation (Ephesians 3:3-4). God is not going to force a person to ask for help, and neither will he literally ask you, “May I help you?” He does want you to trust in Him (Proverbs 3:5-6) rather than yourself, because your way may seem right, “but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). It is time to put down your pride. Stop wandering around. Ask God for help. He will gladly say, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go” (Psalm 32:8).
The reason some people have a hard time “finding” God is because those who say they know Him do not live for Him. They are “looking for...a Christian.” You know, a person who looks like this, does these things, talks like this, dresses like this, never does this, doesn’t go here. But they are having a hard time finding one. Where are those who are living “holy and blameless” (Ephesians 1:4), “living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world” (Titus 2:12), and are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14)? If the world was “looking for” a Christian, could they find one in you?
What frustrates shoppers more is going into a store and finding the right color, style, and brand, but finding out there is not one in the size they are “looking for.” In life, you will not have any trouble finding the right church. There is a “one size fits all” church. It is the one Christ built (Matthew 16:18). Jesus put it together, not man (Matthew 15:13-14). It has only one head (Colossians 1:18) and one standard of authority (2 Timothy 3:16-17). It is a church whose members are Christians only (Acts 11:26), and a church which worships “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Admission into this church is “by the water and the spirit” (John 3:3,5). Its work is preaching the gospel, edifying members, and benevolence to needy saints (Philippians 4:14-18; Ephesians 4:1-16; Acts 2:44-46; 4:32-34). Its destiny is heaven, not a renovated earth (2 Timothy 4:6-8; 1 Peter 1:3-7).
Are you sure you know what you are looking for in a church? In life? In marriage? Are you even “looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13)? You will not find heaven “looking back” into the world, but you will find it “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2).
