“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus” Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, French Mathematician, Philosopher & Physicist.
I’m sure that a lot of people when they try to picture God see in their minds the picture Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Italy. God looks like what we think Abraham or Moses might have looked like. Older, long gray hair and beard, with a firm, determined or an angry look on his face.
Pascal, who I know very little about and I’m not even sure what the context of the above quote is from, noted our need for God. He described us as having a God-shaped vacuum or a hole in us that only God can fill. There is this spiritual longing and an emotional search to fill this void.
The search has involved for a lot of different people, forays into a variety of religions, beliefs, philosophies, drug experimentation and alcohol. Many have attempted to fulfill this “need” with sexual addictions; food issues, work, and anything that is possible.
Honestly, there is a severe need to find out who God is. Many miss him because they are looking in the wrong places and those systems and addictions capture them and keep them in a bondage that makes it almost impossible to discover God, but he can be found.
“…. what may be known about God is plain to humanity, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from has been made….” Romans 1:19-20
If we were simply left to our own search and discovery, than all we might learn about God is that there is some force, spirit, power, or something like that out there. We wouldn’t know anything about this being. God has chosen for us to be able to discover that he is there, and he is now often called by those who are trying to determine the earth’s origins an intelligent designer.
Science as it delves deeper into the molecules and atoms and the make-up of our world, continues to discover more and more, without end, and are struggling to believe it is chance. So much for evolution. Telescopes and space probes keep learning more and searching farther as if there is no end. What we learn is that none of this is chance or accident but there was purpose and intelligent thought behind it all. What or who is that intelligent designer?
It is God! How do we know it is God? Because he didn’t just leave it up to our interpreting creation to figure it out. He chose to reveal 
himself beyond the world of natural science. He chose to tell himself about us. He chose to show himself to us.
Finding God is more than realizing and believing that he is. That is a key element. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” Hebrews 11:6
If you search for God he will find you. It won’t matter if you are in the heart of NYC or a desert island in the South Pacific all alone. He will find you because it is obvious that you want to believe.
One Sunday in late summer of 2008, I shared with around 30 teens about the problem of evil. The previous two times I was there I shared with them that God loves them and no matter what the trouble may be that they go through and that ultimately, all bad stuff comes from sin, even sickness and disease.
This particular Sunday, I took them to the book of Job. After explaining the benefits of pain and suffering, we wouldn’t know there was a problem without pain, physical and emotional, and stuff like that, I shared with them about how Job had questioned God about it all. And showed them how God answered Job. Job didn’t know the ins and outs of creation, of exactly how great and powerful it is. He didn’t understand just how God controlled and maintained this world, even caring for Job in the trouble he was going through.
God showed Job that simple faith and trust in him was all that Job had to worry about. God had control.
One young lady, originally from Russia, had been seeking God. She asked me a few questions and said, “I don’t know if I believe in God, but I want to.” Over the next 3 or 4 months until she left the program, we worked on developing her faith in God.
She was asking and searching and God sent a messenger to show her the way to him. In this case the one sent was me.
So, what is God like? We’re going to find out.
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