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

Finding the Love of God

What is God really like?
We can so easily get confused about this.

You look at your life, and you match what you see against the high standards of religious virtue. You start to think of God as a fearsome judge, and you hide from Him.

Or you look around, and you think, if there is a God, how could he be good, to make a world so full of cruelty and suffering?

You look away from humanity in horror and see the glory and beauty of nature, so you long to be in harmony with the mysterious spiritual essence permeating all that beauty.

Love and relationships always disappoint you, so you despair of finding a personal God. Often people let you down and sometimes the church that preaches a personal God is no better, sometimes but not always.

With the limitations of our faulty human nature, there is no way out of this confused mess.

As children, we enjoyed the love of our mother and father, or if not, we longed to have such a love. We heard stories where people lived happily ever after, and we wanted them to be true.
There is no way out and no way home to the dreams of our childhood.

But as I grew older, I found there were at least some people who had found love and peace and a heavenly hope that was not just shallow religion. Of course, I was confused and disappointed by much of what I saw in Christian churches, but I longed for something better.

I didn’t find it in the worship of natural beauty or in yoga or poetry. I didn’t find it in psychology or religion.

I found it in the lives of some people who followed Jesus.

They were full of love and they accepted me. When I was with them, I felt a warm glow like an aura, a spiritual fragrance in the atmosphere.

I felt a spiritual presence far warmer and sweeter and more comforting than the spiritual atmosphere around New Age people. There was a comfort that was real and inviting, far better than anything I had ever known.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Co 1:3–4 NASB95