We all want to feel something.  One of the worst feelings, perhaps even worse than pain, is being numb.  Now, if we are having some medical procedure done, yeah, then we don’t want to feel anything.  But day-to-day, we want to feel something.  We don’t want to walk around life number to joy, or honestly, even numb to pain.

We want to feel our heart leap at a sign of beauty.  We want to feel our heart swell with pride at our church.  We want to laugh, we want to cry, we want to be human.

Within this, then, what are the things that we are doing to feel truly human?  I was thinking through this when I read through Ephesians 4: 17-19 this morning?

17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

Paul gives us this contrasting image.  Feel fully alive in Christ.  Feel the love, the joy, the peace, the life that you can really only find in Christ, live in that.  Experience that joy in that.

Because if you don’t, you will seek it somewhere else.

If you aren’t fully alive in Jesus, you will seek life somewhere else.  And everywhere else that you seek it, it will leave you empty.

Today, where will you seek life?  Will you seek it in work, play, pleasure, fame, money?  Any of these things?  Even good things like family, relationships, even religion.  These things will never fully fulfill us.  So we will want more and more and more, always craving more, never fully feeling the life that we want.  That’s what Paul is talking about here.  When your mind, your life is on Jesus, you feel life.

But when your life is somewhere else, you never fully feel enough.  It’s never quite enough.  You always need more and more and more.

Which leads us down the path of sin and destruction.

Paul’s question today is, are you alive?  Are you alive in Christ?  For that life is always enough.  And if you are not, no other life will ever be enough.

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