If you’re reading this, then you are searching for something. You may wonder if that something is really God or if it’s something else entirely. Maybe you’re not searching for God, you are just feeling a bit low right now and need something to pick you up. How can you know the difference? Well, it’s actually very easy to tell the difference. If you do find what you are looking for, than you weren’t looking for God! Let’s examine two cases. Here’s the first: Zack moves to a foreign country for work related reasons. At first he experiences culture shock at the new sights, sounds and smells. He feels a bit ‘out of it’ and at a loose-end socially, especially in the evenings. So Zack decides to join a local sports club, where he quickly makes friends. After a few months he finds that he has settled into his new job, has a great circle of friends and is feeling great about the new move. Zack needed a little time to adjust and some friends to hang out with. He got them, so he’s happy. Another case: Sarah is living away from home feeling bored and lonely. On top of that she’s terribly homesick. She makes some friends and that feeling of loneliness goes away…for a while. A few months later it returns. She finds she can push the feeling off by going to the movies or hanging out with friends. She realizes she is simply distracting herself from the problem. Her question though – what exactly is the problem! Let’s examine Sarah, an archetypal searcher – someone who is looking for God – and usually in the wrong places. With Sarah her problem obviously wasn’t about having people to talk to or things to do. What this missing ingredient is, Sarah can’t even put her finger on. So she finds herself going to book shops a lot, flicking through both fiction and non-fiction. She often ends up in the sci-fi or fantasy sections where she enjoys getting lost in another world. But as the final page is turned she ends up back in this one and that feeling comes back. In non-fiction she often peruses the mind, body and soul sections, looking for the latest new age, self help guide. She comes back again and again. From the fact that she is searching and searching we know that she hasn’t found her goal yet. We can be pretty confident that Sarah will never find what she is looking for, especially since she doesn’t know what it is. This person is looking for God, and she’ll just keep searching forever. If you think you’re searching for God check out Related Articles -
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