Photo Cred: (1) | Updated: 10-5-2019
[This was a short sermon that I gave to the middle school students at my local church for Sunday School. It was about 10 minutes long and was focused on 1 John 5:12.]
People are a lot like donuts. No really, just think about a donut for a minute. It looks good on the outside and they are delicious, but they have this large hole in the center.
The God Shaped Hole
Like a donut, we look good on the outside and on the inside have this hole in our hearts that needs to be filled. What is this hole though? This hole in our hearts is the fact that we do everything we can to look good on social media, fit in at school, find friendships, and whatever else it takes to feel like we belong somewhere. These are all nice things, but they are not why we are here.
We’re tired of being alone, feeling empty, and not knowing where we belong. King Solomon once said that “[God] has also set eternity in their heart” and this basically means that we were made for something greater than what the world has to offer. This is what a lot of people call the God shaped hole: feeling empty without some ultimate purpose in life from God.
Do Less, God Did The Rest
When God made everything, he made Adam and Eve. They were the first humans, for the purpose of having a relationship with them. God gave them the options to either accept or reject him and they rejected him which brought sin into the world. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, we have had this emptiness and no real idea of where we belong. Since then, we have been trying everything besides turning to God to fill the God shaped hole.
This problem is a lot like a kite in the sky. A kite only flies when there is tension in the string. If the kite’s string is cut, it falls to the ground. But if the kite has tension, then the kite can soar as high as the kite flyer wants it to go. By trying to fill this void with everything else except God, we end up empty-handed and not feeling whole like a kite that cuts its own string.
His Sacrifice Secures Our Eternal Life
1 John 5:12 says that “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” A normal donut might be empty, but a cream-filled donut is full! In God, we can be full of life too by being in a healthy relationship with him.
Remember that God made everything good. We made everything bad by rejecting Him. We accepted everything the world had to offer, yet denied what Jesus offers us. But Jesus has made and will make everything better. Now we need to turn away from all that stuff we thought would give us life and trust in God with our life.
We have gotten so busy trying to live without God that we have forgotten that we need God, in order to truly live. We just need to accept where we have failed and embrace what God has given us. That being a family to belong to and a purpose to our life.
It’s not my favorite sermon I’ve preached, but the students seemed to enjoy it. With that, Godspeed and Jesus bless.
Footnotes
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