Who Needs God?

by Mark McCrary

Augustine once said that God had made us for Himself and we would always be restless until we found rest in Him. But it is easy for our emotions to screen our reality. At different stages in our lives we may simply feel no need for God.

Teenagers sometimes sense no need of God because they feel immortal and invincible. Death is like a myth to them and a concern about God only something to take the fun out of life. But, of course, feelings can lie and even young people are neither immortal nor invincible.

Young adults often let the demands of work and family push God to the fringes of their lives. God might indeed be helpful but they just don't have the time. They are too tired from other important duties to join Christians in worshipping God.

Some older people, though their time here has grown much shorter, feel no urgency to serve God. They may have become cynical by too many preachers gone bad, and too much hypocrisy in the churches. Add to that, they have places to see and things to do before advancing age puts them in a rocking chair.

But, the truth is that all these people — all of us — need God. Desperately.

Teenagers die, too. But, they also live, and in their youth and inexperience have so many of life's vital choices to make — who they will marry, what they will value most in life, what will guide them in their relationships with people and things. They need the wise and loving God to help them make decisions that will cause their lives to be genuinely happy.

And, God doesn't take the fun out of life or rob youth of its exhilaration either. Solomon said that young people ought to delight in their youth and enjoy it. He simply cautioned them to do it wisely so that their young days won't live to haunt them. Remember God, he said (Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:1). That will help young people build lives that are truly joyful, yet rich with goodness and lasting meaning.

A young couple needs God. His wise counsel will help them through the sometimes challenging adjustments of marriage and give them patient wisdom to raise their children in a world of drug abuse, pornography and mindless violence. The extended family of other Christians in the church will provide not only counsel but also support by the strengthening joys of a happy association and companionship.

Mature people need God, too. Whatever may have been the shameful failure of organized religion, that is the failure of men, not God, and we must not allow the failure of others to prevent us from drawing near to the heavenly Father.

Who needs God? We all do. We need Him because we cannot even breathe without Him. We need Him because we cannot find the way from here to eternity without His help. And we need Him most of all because our hearts are heavy with guilt for our selfishness and sin and He alone in His Son can take that guilt away and make us the kind of men and women He created us to be.

That relationship with God in Jesus Christ that fills up all your empty places can begin today. We invite you to join us at the Douglass Hills church to begin building the relationship with God that all of us need.