Bill delivered a great message last week.

I keep thinking he’s going to let me off

easy, but he just keeps bringin’ it. I’m growing, that’s for sure.

As I listened to Bill’s message I think for some of us it seemed almost

unbelievable. I mean, is this God for real? He can use wretched people?

And I know, since I’m speaking in a church, that a lot of you are really searching.
You hear these messages and the testimonies of people here and you think, Can
this really happen to me?

Is this God for real? Ephesians 1:18-19

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the
hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and
his incomparably great power for us who believe.

When the first human being entered into space and orbited around the gigantic
frame of the earth, it is reported that he returned claiming that he did not find God
out there. The great Oxford scholar, C.S. Lewis responded by saying that is
exactly like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking to find Shakespeare.

Are you searching for God?

Well, might I suggest first, to stop looking for God like Hamlet would look for
Shakespeare. Because God doesn’t exist as something in our world that we can
put in a lab and analyze. Why? Because God is the author of our story.

Luckily though, God, as the author, has given all of us thousands of clues to his
existence. He has given to us characters he speaks through, and situations he
and only he can make happen. He is the hand behind the pen of this human
story.

Paul goes on in Ephesians to tell the story of humanity, which can also sum up
my personal story and your personal story, I would argue.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live
when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the
spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them
at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and
thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath1

1The Holy Bible : New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1996, c1984). Eph 2:1.
So now, God seems pretty far away huh? Now the gap is huge. Not only is God
outside the story, out of the picture, but we are his objects of wrath?

Can we hang there just for a second, and realize the type of spiritual
disadvantage we have here?

But I can’t hang there too long, because our God doesn’t, and neither does Paul.

His very next words are our words today of HOPE:

Last week was heavy, but I’m so thankful and so pleased to tell you that I was
assigned to tell you the good news, the greatest news in fact.

The Good News, or the Gospel, is found in the sentence that follows what we just
read in Ephesians: “But, because of his great love for us, God made us
alive…”

Dr. D Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “These two words, in and of themselves, in a

sense contain the whole of the gospel. The gospel tells of what God has done,
God’s intervention…”

God values you so much, and values humankind so much, and values his
world so much, that he did not just drop information or hints for us to find
him, but he actually wrote himself into our story as the main character.

4
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with
Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ
Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his
grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Do you see this God? Do you understand the weight of this reality? You’re not
the main character of your life!

Why?

Because the story is about salvation. The story is a story of redemption. And at
the center of the story is the Redeemer.

Have we not learned that this life is not about us?

Paul reiterates this:

8
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is
the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.2

You see, the hope is not in us or through us or dependant on us!

If you had the power to save your own life, don’t you think you would have
already? You wouldn’t be like what we heard last week: always battling against
yourself.

The gospel is God placing the work of salvation, healing, and restoration of life in
his own hands, on his own shoulders.

“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who
hopes for what he already has?” – Romans 8:24

You have a longing for more than this world. Life is more than go to work, get
home, watch TV, and sleep, and maybe go to a party on the weekend. You’ve
been telling yourself, THERE MUST BE MORE.

Why would you have that longing? Maybe the Author put it there as a clue.

Listen to C.S. Lewis:

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires
exists…(baby wants food, duck wants water, man wants sex)…If I
find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the
most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I can relate to this. In fact, this quote changed a lot in me.

“I was in 8th grade…”

-Don’t know why I went
-I remember being in pain over the thought of living for popularity for the rest of
my life.
-I was exposed to another option, a new way to be human. God intervened and I
went from dead in sin to alive, seated with Christ. I went from feeling and
knowing God had wrath for me, to knowing that God himself.
-I came home a totally different person.
-And you know who I became great friends with there? Ali Dugger, who will be
my wife next summer.

God literally saved me from myself. I was headed down.

2The Holy Bible : New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1996, c1984). Eph 2:4.
God desires to save you, he desires to work through you and heal your life.

10
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.3

You really matter to God because he made you.

Did you know the same Greek word used here for “workmanship” is the same
word used for poetry, or composition?

You are God’s. The wrath that comes to the people Paul speaks of first is not
where God desires you to be.

1 Thess. 5:8-9

9
For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live
together with him.4

Don’t you know? This is what God has appointed for you to do! This is what he
appointed for me to do when I was a little punk 8th grader just looking for people
to think I was cool. There’s nothing more pathetic than a punk 8th grader! And yet
he is saving me! I’m living proof!

And that is what he perhaps has appointed for you today: That you realize you
cannot save yourself, but only God can save.

He stands calling to you now.

3The Holy Bible : New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1996, c1984). Eph 2:10.
4The Holy Bible : New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1996, c1984). 1 Th 5:9.