You Were Made for More. Here's How You Experience It.

It amazes me how many of these they have, and I gotta say that I love them all.  I love the one where they approach you at Home Depot, and then in three days they totally transform your living room or your bathroom or even your backyard.  Or how about that the one they call FixerUpper, where this Texan couple, Chip and Joanna, take some home that looks beyond hope, and create something amazing.  Then there’s all the Property Brother shows or the Flip or Flop ones, and then Love it or List it.   Does anyone know what these shows are?  They all appear on this network HGTV.   This network has literally over a hundredshows like these, and do you know what they all promise?

They all promise change.  And they do deliver.   They create these amazing transformations, breathtaking bathrooms, awesome backyards, incredible living spaces.  But why do millions watch these shows.  Sure, they do show you beautiful design and all.  But so what?  It’s not like they’re doing these amazing designs in your house.   

It’s because everyone craves change.   Somehow, you imagine.  Wow, if I had a home transformed like that one, my life would be so much more amazing, so much better.  Somehow, you can think a transformed home means a transformed life, a happier, more fulfilled one.  But, as nice as an incredibly beautiful home is, can it transform your life?  No.  If you were miserable before your awesome new home, you’ll still be miserable after.   You’ll just have a nicer setting to be miserable in. 

But those shows do point to a deeper truth.  People do yearn for more, more beauty, more joy, more fulfillment and that’s good.  God created you for that more, to yearn for it and to receive it.    But how does it come?  How do you begin experiencing the more you yearn to have?  In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

I Corinthians 15:20-26, 45-49

God did create you for more, a more so wondrous, so amazing, it’s beyond what you could ever even imagine.  It’s that big.   And that more happens now, not simply when you die.  But how does it happen?  It happens when you turn yourself in the right direction. 

What does that mean?  To figure that out you need see where that right direction begins, where it went wrong, and where God made it right again.  And God points you to all of that in these words about Adam.   In the beginning, the more existed.   Human beings lived in perfect communion with each other, God, the creation around them.   Then it all went wrong. 

Now in this what went wrong story, everyone talks about the tree.  They ate from that darned tree.  But the story has nothing to do with the tree.  It could have been a marigold they picked.   It has everything to do with the trust.   God said.  “Trust me about the tree.”  Then the serpent comes along and says.  “You can’t trust this God.”  And when Adam and Eve eat from that tree, they show that they believe the lie. They show. They don’t trust God.  They believe the lie that God is hiding something from them, something good, that this God didn’t really love them at all.   They turn to the lie and in that turning everything goes wrong. 

But in Jesus something amazing happens.  God makes what went wrong in the garden, right.   That’s why Paul calls Jesus the second Adam.    In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see the beginnings, the first fruits of a transformation that will change everything. 

When I was growing up, my dad had this huge garden. To be honest, I didn’t care about most of it.  But one part, I cared about a lot.   Have you ever eaten a home-grown tomato?  If you have, you know why I cared.   Those things are good!  So, each day after school, during the beginning of tomato season, I’d check the plants.  I’d look for the flowers, then the first green fruits, then as they began to turn red.   Then one day, I’d find what I had been looking for, one or two beautifully red, beautifully ripe tomatoes, the first fruits.  And from that moment, I knew.  Every day would bring more of that bounty.

Jesus’ resurrection was only the beginning, the first fruits of a bounty that would change everything, including you.  But how does it change you?  

God points you to that change in that last sentence we read, about bearing the image.  In the beginning, God talks about human beings bearing the image of God.   But what does that even mean?   A preacher named Tim Keller helped me see what it means, by thinking about what exists around us every day that bears images, mirrors.  

A mirror has one essential quality.  Whatever you turn it towards, it fills with.   So, you turn the mirror to a monster, the mirror gets filled with the monster.  You turn the mirror to something breathtaking and beautiful, that beauty fills the mirror.  That’s how mirrors work. What it turns toward, it fills with. 

And human beings have a nature like that.  We are image bearers.  If we turn towards God, we fill with God. Whatever we turn toward, we are filled with.   If you turn to your career, you are filled with your career.   If you’re turned toward money, you’re filled with money.   If you’re turned toward other people, then those other people, their opinions, expectations fill you up.   You get the idea. Whatever you are turned towards, you are filled with.     

And when Adam and Eve ate from that tree, what did they turn to?  They turned to a lie that God did not really love them.  And that lie filled them up with suspicion and fear and broke their relationship with everything.   And that same lies infects every human being even to this day.

So, what are you turned towards?   What do you worry about?  What makes you anxious?  That will give you some ideas of what is really filling up your mirror.   But whatever it is, you turn towards it because you think it will bring you fulfillment, value, worth, that more you are seeking.  Whatever it is, it’s just another version of that first lie. 

But in Jesus, the lie dies.  Why?  You see a God, whose love is always turned towards you, even when you are killing him on the cross.   You see a God, whose love for you is so powerful that not even death can defeat it.  Instead that love destroys even death.  And that love, if you turn toward it, will destroy the lie in you.  It will fill you with God.  And in God, there is no fear.  In God, there is only love.  And as that love fills you, it it creates in you that more that you’ve been yearning for your whole life.  You experience who God created you to be in all its fullness and beauty, someone bearing the very image of God.  So where are you turning today?