The Missing Link

Wednesday, December 20th, 2023

by Ken Pullen

ACP

Ever had a problem that needed solving? Ever built something? Made something? Cooked or eaten something? Ever traveled anywhere? Ever taken a test of any kind, say a math test?

In any of those events ever encounter any difficulty in reaching the correct, easy, or right solution? Needing to perhaps start again. Erase. Recalculate, remeasure, go back, and make the right turn?

Biologists, anthropologists, academia, researchers, explorers, philosophers, pagans, and common folk have been searching for the missing link for centuries. Rich people, young people, old people, famous people, powerful people, and common folk have been searching, constantly searching for THEE ANSWER.

What will finally satisfy me? What is it all about? What will bring me true meaning and peace?

Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, material wealth, this thing, that thing, her, him, it…

…to always end up like a child that has unwrapped the Christmas gift they just had to have and let their parents know for months that if they only had that thing their Christmas, their life would be perfect. Only to come to understand that gift did not bring the satisfaction they imagined. And they soon grew weary of it and stopped playing with it. Forgot about it. In the search for the next thing to satisfy.

Want to be famous? Think that’s the answer. Famous people are a miserable lot. I’ve known some. Think being rich is the answer? I’ve known many monetarily wealthy people. They are for the greater part a miserable, fearful, selfish lot.  There’s a good example of the overwhelming majority of them in the Bible [see Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; or Luke 18:18-30]. When given the opportunity by God Himself to have eternal life, eternal peace, and riches beyond comprehension the rich young ruler walked away from God. Only seeing the here and now. What he had that day. Shortsighted. Blind actually. Lost truly. Even though he professed to uphold every commandment of God, which in truth no one can really do. He was consumed by the world and his wealth that would turn to dust, rot, and be forgotten — anyone out there know where all his earthly wealth is today? — and he walked away from God. Literally. Loving the world, loving things more than loving God, acknowledging the Lord, and coming to the wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and faith of eternal life that only is possible through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Greedy for the world. And what is imagined the world can provide. Ignorant that all things in this life are given by the Lord.

Almost everyone is greedy for inward peace. Greedy to know the answers to the big questions in this life. Are we not?

We all — every one of us at some point in our lives whether admitted or not — want to know the answer to the big question. We all — every one of us — have been or continue to seek, to search for answers. For inward peace. For finally coming to an understanding of the big questions, the most important questions in this temporary life, for we all will die. And while alive we all seek, search, and desire to know.

Yet the overwhelming majority go about this no differently than trying to find the solution, the answer to what does three plus three equal as they do not care about having the right addends in order to arrive at the correct sum. How to bake a cake without the correct ingredients in the correct ratio. Most thinking they will bake the best cake ever without ever using the right method. Vanity upon vanity. Foolishness upon foolishness. Arrogance and ignorance exemplified.

I don’t need God.

I don’t need a Saviour.

I have myself! I am my own person! I will find the answers I need to satisfy me! And I will keep looking, keep searching everywhere on this earth until I find what satisfies me…if it kills me!

Rewind to any Christmas of childhood and that perfect, if only I had this one gift I would never want anything else and my life would be blissfully wonderful, fulfilled, a lasting satisfaction. Only by January 3rd to be seeking, searching, coveting something else. Never fulfilled. Never satisfied. No peace, no peace, no peace at all.

The missing link in every person’s life is God, is the Lord Jesus Christ, is the Holy Spirit.

No one is beyond redemption. The forgiveness of their sin. No one.

If acknowledging…

Jesus Christ has and can conquer all sin. It is why God came to earth and subjected Himself to the cross. The tree of shame. A most painful death. For our sake. For our hope. To provide the answer, the solution to our greatest need, our greatest searching and seeking, the greatest problem before us. No one has an excuse for not coming to the Lord in faith, in confession of sin, in humbleness of heart.

That is the link that not only binds and opens eyes and ears, but hearts and minds to what the answer to all the important questions are. The only true lasting — eternal — source of peace and understanding, of true wisdom and knowledge.

Faith in God. Faith in Jesus as Lord, Intercessor, Redeemer, Saviour, Friend. Faith in the Holy Spirit as Comforter. Faith in the whole Holy Bible.

Without the Triune God, without the Word of God, every person is like two sections of a chain unbound and truly useless. Broken. Every person is like a problem attempting to be solved, an equation attempted to reach the correct answer always, always, always beginning without having the right facts, the right foundation in order to arrive at solving the problem, arriving at the correct solution.

The saying goes a chain is only as good as its weakest link.

Without the Lord every link in the chain of life is weak.

Only God, only Jesus, only the Holy Spirit, only the Word of God, only acknowledging being a sinner, in need of a Saviour, only confessing our sin and coming to finally seek and search that which is most important in this life will the chain of life be made whole, well, at peace.

Eternally.

This Christmas time why not finally unwrap the only lasting, satisfying, gift that will bring true peace and everlasting satisfaction, joy, and happiness? Why not open the free gift of God’s grace and forgiveness through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?

And if a lax, backsliding, complacent true believer why not shake off the lethargy, the influence of the world that has been making so much noise and go to the Lord? More often than to the world. Why not humble oneself and confess our sin and seek that which is the only source, the only place, the only Person that can truly help and provide? That provides every breath and heartbeat and every morsel of food, every bit of monetary and material goods that we have — God our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit.

Faithfully. Fully. Fruitfully.

Happy Christmas.

Happy days that the Lord blesses us with life and opportunity to be a light unto the world, to share the gospel, to point the only way to true peace and eternal life — the Lord Jesus Christ. God our Father. The Holy Spirit. The whole inerrant infallible living Word of God.

Praying thankfully, that God’s will be done on earth, as in heaven, His kingdom come, each day each of us is blessed with. Putting Jesus uppermost in our lives. For others to see and know to the point that they may ask us, “What is it about you that makes you so different?”

That we may then give credit to the Lord for saving a sinner, a condemned person deserving nothing but wrath and condemnation such as us, and the only thing that makes us different is not of our doing, but of God, of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit working in us.

As truly transformed, renewed of mind and spirit, of truly changed from within heart by the Lord and our faith in Him, our faith in His word. To be born anew.

Knowing that just as God came to earth once, providing the reason for the season we acknowledge and celebrate that He will come again, He is coming again. This time much differently than when He first did [see Revelation 19].

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

The videos on Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen, Fame, and Lost Boy: The Next Chapter are all worth the time invested…

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