[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], March 2021]
COVID has given us a unique opportunity to pause, take stock, and analyse our lives – do we have the life we’ve always wanted, or is there something missing? Perhaps you are left with the question, what am I looking for, and have I found it?
What are you looking for? What do I mean by that? Well, what are those things in life that you are striving towards; what are those goals that you are seeking to to meet so that when you come to the end of your life you can look back and go “Yes I did it, yes my life was worthwhile, yes I meant something, I did something!”
Perhaps for you it’s family or fame. For me I think it’s success, I want to succeed in all I do. I’m striving towards being successful but the thing is, no matter how hard I strive, no matter how successful I may become it’s never enough. There’s always something else to strive for, there’s always someone who’s more successful than me. So, what are you looking for? Perhaps like the lyrics of the U2 song you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.
See we’ve now come up to our year anniversary of Covid and it’s been a really strange year. For many of us its given us an opportunity to to rethink our life, to look at it in microscopic detail, to take time, and we can see the cracks, we can see the flaws. We can see the good things as well. We can also see the bad things that we want to change. For some of us we’ve realized the importance of family, for others of us we’ve realized that maybe the job that we have isn’t the one for us. It seems for a lot of people it’s the desire to buy a puppy. Perhaps you discover that the life that you have built for yourself, the life that you have pursued and created hasn’t become all that it cracked up to be, maybe the life that promised so much has actually delivered so little.
I love watching Ben Fogle’s ‘New Lives in the Wild’. I remember watching one just a few weeks ago where a couple fought for their dream to have a home on a piece of land and they they fought for years and it seemed time and time again as if that dream wouldn’t be fulfilled, and yet they came to the point where they had won their battles. They had realized their dreams, they had built their home but the wife of the couple said to Ben who was interviewing “You know, we’ve got our dream but we realize that it’s it’s not enough. We feel unfulfilled and all that’s left is all the fighting and now we haven’t got anyone to fight against we’re fighting against each other.” Perhaps you’ve fought for something and actually now you’ve got it you realize it’s just not enough.
This coming Sunday we’re going to be continuing our teaching series ‘Encounters, meeting with Jesus’ and Helen is going to be preaching this Sunday. She’s going to be sharing with us a story of a guy called Zacchaeus. He was successful, he was wealthy, he was a man who had strived and succeeded regardless of any obstacles that came along his way regardless of what anyone else thought of him. He had got everything that he wanted but then he heard that a guy called Jesus was passing through his town and I don’t know exactly what was in Zacchaeus’s mind but there was obviously something not quite right in his life, something that despite his success, despite his wealth, something was missing.
He decided to go out and catch a glimpse of Jesus and he fights the crowd, he climbs a tree and he sees from his position Jesus coming towards him, but the thing is, Jesus saw him too and he didn’t just see him up a tree, he didn’t just see his external appearance. He saw inside him, he saw his truth, he saw the emptiness that was in Zacchaeus that needed filling, that no amount of wealth or success could fill.
You see, Zacchaeus was looking for something but Jesus was looking for him. Perhaps you’re looking for something too and maybe you’re watching these videos because you’re searching. Maybe you wouldn’t admit it to anyone else but perhaps those things that you have attained in life haven’t managed to fill that hole as much as you would have liked and maybe you’re watching this video because you’re searching for something else.
I just want to tell you that this is a two-way thing, this isn’t just you searching but actually Jesus is searching for you too and if you listen to the sermon on Sunday you’ll find that Zacchaeus’s life was transformed completely, and that could be the case for you.
Thank you so much for watching this midweek message. Please like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and do remember that this is just a bit of an introduction really to our sermon on Sunday. You can watch that on our Sunday service. Helen will be preaching on the story of Zacchaeus but if you don’t want to watch the whole service you can just watch the sermon as well and that’ll be available on Sunday morning.
Thank you for joining us and do remember if you are searching and you do have some questions next month, in a few weeks time, we’ll be starting an Alpha course and I’ll share just to the left or right of me – I’m not sure which – a link to the video about Alpha and if you’re interested do contact us at alpha@horleybaptist.org.uk and we’ll give you the information you need to know to join us in that.
Cheers and look after yourself. ’bye
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[1] YouTube link: What are you looking for?
Bible references: Luke 19 v1-10
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
