THE BIG EMPTY

 Last night I really enjoyed our Christian Worldview class at Calvary Community. It feels strange not to be on the teaching end of things as I have just been sitting in on the class. The instructors of the course have done a great job week in and week out discussing and defending the faith. It has been a pleasure.

     As I go through the course I am reminded time and time again of how we live in a world gone mad. Please be careful with that statement. Some believers are so far removed from the world that God has given them that they fail to enjoy what God has called good. No when I say these words I am dealing more with how the world thinks. The Bible says that it is hostile towards the things of our God. That if we love this world and all of its teachings we are not from the Father.

     What Paul addresses in this passage is how that even as believers if we are not careful we can be taken captive. We literally can become held hostage to the way it thinks. I don’t think something like that happens overnight but rather it becomes like a slow ride into what I call the Big Empty.  For many who are being taken captive they do not even know that they have entered into a Black Hole.

     People fall into the Big Empty when they are convinced that the world’s wisdom is truly the Grand stage. Who are we to say that what someone says is wrong? We want to be accepted by men so much that we forget the lover of our souls.

      One of the world’s many traps is the legendary self-esteem issue. We live in a day when even fellow believers teach this as the Gospel truth. We do not even question its history, its followers and where it will eventually lead us. My heart aches as I see how that we have become an even more ego driven world. We must see ourselves for who we are, rather than who He is has become the chant of this age.

    We forget how that Paul stated that one of the first marks of the end times would be that men would be lovers of themselves. When we must feed self-first, we become those who are marked as lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

     Tolerance has become the accepted word of our world. No longer do we see John 3:16 as the most important verse in the world but rather we take out of context Matthew 7:1 and shout out, Judge not, unless you be judged. As many have observed before me, we are tolerant of all and everything except for the Evangelical Christian who is now pictured as the narrow minded bigot. (Some of us might be, but the majority of true believers are far from this stereotype.)

     What seems so fulfilling in the end according to the Scriptures becomes that of nothing but an empty lie. The same things that drove Adam and Even to fall into temptation drive us often as well. “Has God said, It will open up your eyes and you shall not surely die, “ are still the lies being told and believed today.

     How can we avoid the fall and the big lie? Look at what Paul states earlier in verse 6-7 we are to walk in Him. He becomes the focus rather than self. We need to be those who are marked as being rooted, built up and established in Him. As servants of the most High God our true completion can only be found in Him. He is truly what is more to this life and is the beginning and completion of all wisdom.