From New Age to Jesus

 So many people long for love, to be deeply loved, but they don't find it in their families or even in Christian churches. They feel their must be a God. If God exists, He must be supernatural in some way, in another dimension beyond our physical senses.

They have not found real love or any meaningful experience in churches or even in their churchgoing family.

So they start searching. They look online or in bookshops and they start with Yoga or some kind of meditation. They get some relief from stress but not the personal love they long for.

They crave for a loving relationship, so they go from one sexual relationship to another. They might find some fulfilment there or they might even be hurt and abused. So they keep searching.

They read more books on spirituality. They go to fortune tellers, faith healers, Hindu gurus New Age meetings. Some even go on a pilgrimage to India. They have many spiritual experiences, which may be real and they think this is a way of connecting to God, but they still don't find the deep unconditional personal love they long for.

They are open to any form of spirituality, but they shy away from biblical Christianity. They have seen lifeless Christian religion and they don't want it. Or they may have been badly hurt by Christians, even perhaps sexually abused by a preacher or priest.

Walter Heidenreich was a young German man who was brought up in a Christian churchgoing family, but he did not find the inspiration he longed for in church. He became a hippy, searching for profound emotional and spiritual experiences with drugs and New Age culture.

One day he and his girlfriend experimented with an extremely strong dose of LSD. They had a terrifying out of body experience. They were in outer darkness, and they felt they were in the presence of the Devil Himself.

Then they saw a glorious light, and they knew that it was a manifestation of the God of the Bible. God rescued them and restored them to normal consciousness. They compared notes, and they had both had identical experiences.

They then began searching for the God of the Bible. They learned to pray and God answered. They began journey of discovery which led to a strong personal connection to Jesus, a deep understanding of the Bible and a new life with God.

If you search the internet, you will find many stories like this, interviews with Christians who searched for God in New Age and spirituality of many kinds, but then they encountered Jesus and found a whole new life with God.

In the Bible, you see Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the Good Shepherd who pursues wandering souls like a shepherd searching for lost sheep.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Jn 10:11 NRSVue

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Jn 3:16 NRSVue

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jn 14:6 NRSVue

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jn 11:25–26 NRSVue