unReal
Living with Confidence in What is True and Authentic
Walking in the Light
June 2, 2019 • John Harris
Though the sun rises, a blanket of darkness still covers the earth. The sound of war sends refugees to far away lands. Human trafficking enslaves women as used and recycled property. A cloud of depression paralyzes countless souls. Art is either too abstract or exceedingly decadent, neither reflective of reality nor redemptive for humanity. Natural disasters leave homes demolished and families homeless. A fog of loneliness follows the masses to endless episodes of repetitive, uncreative plots on the screen. An epidemic of opiates guts life from fly over country and leaves a generation daily leaning towards overdose and destitution. Welcome to our world! Ours is a culture affluent yet apathetic. Free yet enslaved. Boundless opportunities yet bored to tears. Everything at our doorstep, yet our ungrateful hearts are empty from glut, and our chaotic minds are inattentive to reality. The very good world God created is now very bad. The vivid hues of the garden are now sepia and stained. Yet there is hope! There is good news! God enters the darkness. In the gloom of this lifelessness, a message of hope arrives unannounced. Hope appears in the likeness of man, but from another place and with a different condition. The qualitative variation is not slight, but infinite, as His presence illuminates the night. Just as shadows dissipate under the all-consuming rays of the sun, so does darkness under the glory of the radiance of God’s Son. With every shade of grey, there is a glimmer of brighter hope for tomorrow. “For God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). No darkness at all. No darkness. None. Just infinite and constant lumens of light. Never-fading. Never-ending. And though the light is blinding, our eyes are wide open to the purifying effect of His love, as His voice is heard saying to us, “Welcome Home. Come out from the darkness, and step into the light.”
Real Relationship with God
May 26, 2019 • John Harris
In our media-saturated world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what is real and what is fake. This challenge is not a big deal when the consequence is the loss of a few dollars from false advertising, or the embarrassment of being fooled by a scam artist. But when the facts are blurred with fiction in a court hearing, or the truth is overcome with lies in a political campaign, or a marital dispute descends into he said/she said, the fallout can easily lead to deeper heartbreak, anger and distrust. Even worse, when the virtual world seen through our devices blends seamlessly into the real world of life, the resulting effect can cause even greater loss of identity and dignity, triggering an outbreak of gender and sexual bewilderment—a world where we are more comfortable in our avatar than in our own skin and bones. Ultimately and most significantly, the gradual decline into the unreal shapes our view of God and sends us spiraling downward into the abyss of twisted beliefs, false pretenses, ridiculous conclusions and imaginary worlds. After awhile, the drift toward the artificial leads us to the upside-down thinking that what is fake is real, and that what is real is, at best, unimportant, or even worst, unknowable. The real world becomes indiscernible even as the fake world becomes home. Though the intensity of this problem might be worsened by our digital age, none of this is new because the devil has worked his deception since the beginning of time. Out of the confusion of our pixelated world, the word of God invites us into the real reality of what is objectively true and genuinely authentic. This life with God is filled with satisfying rest and unimaginable joy. Over the next several months at Grace Community Church, we will be diving into the epistle of 1 John where we will discover that God’s plan for His people is to live with confidence in His character, certainty in our identity, and assurance of His love. From this deep conviction, we can step back from the precipice of delusion that we experience through our screens, and humbly walk in the light of what is real and true, both in this life and the life to come, both for now and for all eternity, both with God and with one another.