God Alone

The search for truth and meaning spans the globe and the centuries. Every person walking this earth has questioned their purpose and the existence of God (whether they end up believing in him or not). Why is this?

We all search for significance, and purpose is fundamental to finding it. In Psalm 139:13–14, Israel's King David praises God for making him: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (NIV). He recognized that God made him with inherent value. Genesis 1:27 shows the universality of this concept—every person is made in God's image: "So God created man in his own image, male and female e created them." God is love, and he made us like him. Our purpose is to love and be loved, in close relationship with God and one another. Jesus teaches this in Mark 12:30–31: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength'. . . .'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." When our center is serving God and others, not ourselves, our purpose is realized and our significance is self-evident. Search over.

Second, we seek God because he gives us clues that he is here. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that he has "set eternity in the hearts of men." In other words, we have an internal sense of his existence. He doesn't stop there, though: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). In the world around us, we see evidence of God and his nature.

There is one God, and he tells us who he is and how we can know him. "Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone" (Deuteronomy 6:4). We have one route to reach him: Jesus. "For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus is more than just a good, wise teacher, as he tells us in John 14:6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Know your God, know yourself. Come to him through Christ, and find the One your heart's been longing for.