An Unknown God

People have inside of them each a longing for completion. Emptiness is a vessel without hope! "Hope" is simply the desire that something is true or real. People have different thoughts on hope, but everyone's hope ends up the same: that there is no hell! The hope of some is that there is nothing after death because they fear punishment, but almost everybody has a hope in something better!

Jeremiah 29:11 correlates "hope" and "the future" because hope are things which have yet to happen. Hoping you hit the jack pot in yesterday's lottery is futile because yesterday is over! You could pay now and wait for tomorrow because it's tomorrow where hope resides.

It's not necessarily tomorrow wherein we hope, but tomorrow being the eve of many tomorrows! Even as a child I wondered about eternity. I wondered wherein I fit. Those who never get the answer will always have that emptiness. Most fill that spiritual container with gratification, but the only thing which truly gratifies is hope!

Matthew 11:28 "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

What is the heavy burden that all carry? It's despair. It's the fear that either there is nothing else or that the "else" is worse than what we "have"! Even those who are tricked into believing that heaven and hell are on this earth, have no eternal hope and when things are quiet, it's despair which they feel! This Prozac nation is a nation of despair. Somatic existence isn't living; it's a living death! For some it's alcohol and for others, pills and dope. That emptiness must be filled with something!

Of course the answer to despair is hope! Hope not dope!

1 Thessalonians 5:8 "But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation."

This verse entails ridding one's existence from what's temporal and replacing it with hope. All the things which people do to fill that emptiness is a lack of sobriety. People get "drunk" on drugs, alcohol and other things; but others get "drunk" on job, education, recreation, friends, family and things. Sober people accept the inevitable: I'm going to die! Oh, what am I to do?" There is one answer: "Jesus saves!" He provides the hope of salvation. It's only through him! But others would have it otherwise!

Some call on a "higher power". Watch out! That's the unknown God. You proclaim him, but you know not who he is:

Acts 17:18 "Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. 19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? 20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. 21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing. 22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands..."

Most people appoint the Creator as a "higher power". That proclamation is out of ignorance by those "out of the know"! Paul said "God made all things!", but you say that a higher power did.  If you say that, then your god is "an unknown god"! You worship and unknown god as did the Stoics and Epicureans. Paul worshiped the known God and he proclaimed him! It's Jesus whom he preached!

That seems abstract, but John Chapter 1 presents Jesus as "Always"! He just "Is" because he is God. who created it all?

John 1:3 "All things were made by him (The Word; Jesus); and without him was not any thing made that was made."

It was Almighty God who created the heavens and the earth! He certainly was The Higher Power, but not "A higher power".  For your belief in a higher power to be valid, it must be Jesus Christ in whom you believe. Unless he is, then your god is an unknown god. Your higher power is an unknown god! Because you need hope, most people believe in something. As such, it's an unknown god, but Paul declares Jesus unto you! Jesus who is the Almighty God! He's the one. There is no other God!

God has a personality. He's not a force! He has power, but his power is love. We can't measure love, but God can. It's unconditional boundless love, but he says it must be through Jesus! Gravitational waves are ultimately more powerful than atomic energy because it even entraps the light from that energy and hides it from our eyes. They are "black holes". Well, gravity is servile to God. In fact, it's his creation just as we are. It was made out of love for us that he made it all. Love is more than even a nuclear spark and it even tugs stronger than gravity, but that higher power which you confine as "the unknown god" is declared by Paul because of his love.

"Higher Power" puts a limit on God's glory. His love tells all about him. That unknown god is not who gave his son, it was the One True God who spilled his own blood to cover our sins!

If you are in despair, or feel empty or must fill that emptiness with things, it's not a higher power who can rev you up; it's Jesus Christ, the known God who Paul proclaims to you!