CHAPTER 1

What we have lost...

"The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain-a curious wild pain-a searching for something
beyond what the world contains." -Bertrand Russell (atheist)

Deep down beneath the surface of our lives, we all have to admit that something is not right. We are not
what we are meant to be. There must be more to life than just being born, growing up, getting an
education, earning a living, working, wrong? raising a family, accumulating things, and then dying. There
are moments in life when there is a deep uneasiness that perhaps the most important reason for living
has been overlooked. We have lost something that material possessions, education, and even religion
have not been able to replace.

Louis Armstrong sings the beautiful song-What a wonderful world'. This may reflect how we feel about
the world of nature, but few would agree that this is true of the world of people. Why is the world filled
with so much trouble? Why do people treat each other the way they do? Why is there so much crime,
fighting, war, and terrorism? Why is there so much injustice and suffering? Why can't we live together in
peace and harmony? Why is life full of so many problems? Why are there so many conflicts, unhappy
marriages, broken relationships and troubled lives? Surely this is not the way life was meant to be! What
has gone

The Bible comes up with an answer we need to consider. It takes us to the root problem from which
come all the troubles and unhappiness within us and around us.

A God-shaped emptiness

Yes, we have lost something. The Bible tells us we have lost God! Pascal, the French scientist said, "There
is a God-shaped vacuum within the heart of every person which cannot be filled by any other created
thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ,"

Our surface needs are material and physical. But our deepest need is spiritual. The Bible claims that the
start of all our problems is our broken relationship with God. It tells us there is a God who made us and
loves us, and this God wants us to know him and live in relationship with him. But we have denied him
the central place in our lives that he was meant to have and this has left an emptiness at the core of our
being that nothing else can fill. We have tried to fill this vacuum with other things work, money,
pleasure, material things, human relationships, or 'gods' of our own making - but these cannot meet our
deepest need nor satisfy this deepest longing.

The importance of relationships

Psychologists tell us that over 70% of satisfaction and fulfilment in life comes from happy, healthy and
harmonious relationships. When we have problems in our relationships this affects everything else. It
may be a beautiful day outside, but if you are struggling with low self-esteem, an unhappy family life,
marriage conflicts, worries or problems with others, this puts a cloud over all of your life. And if this is
true of problems in human relationships. then how much more when something is wrong with the most
central and important relationship of all your relationship with God! If you go wrong in this relationship,
you will go wrong in everything else. For this is the core relationship in life that brings ultimate meaning
and significance to everything you do.

The big deception

Why then have we missed this truth? The Bibles can. These are the lies that have kept us in spiritual
answer is clear: We have been deceived! We have been fed the he that there is no God, or if there is he
is only 'watching from a distance' and not really interested in us anyway, and we can manage our lives
without him. You may have grown up with this belief, or that life has come about by random processes
and we are here by chance, not design. You may have been taught that fulfilment in life comes from
accumulating material possessions, having the things you want, and just doing the best you can. These
are the lies that have kept us in spiritual darkness and prevented us from searching to know, the truth
about God, and discovering why we are here. The Bible tells us about this deception and shows us the
truth about how it was meant to be, and what we must do to regain what we have lost.

The 'Bangkok Hilton' story

In the film 'Bangkok Hilton, Nicole Kidman acts out the story of a young Australian woman called Katrina
who had been deceived since childhood into thinking that her father had died. But one day she
discovered some documents in a secret drawer that uncovered the truth that her father was not really
dead at all but still alive. For all these years she had been believed a lie! Making this shocking discovery
set her on a journey of determination to find out the truth and to search for the father she had never
known. This was important for her to fill the emptiness she felt within, but also to discover her own
identity. So, she set out on her search, travelling from Australia to London where she believed her father
to be, but every effort to find him failed. He was not there! Feeling totally lost she meets a young man in
London who pretends to love her but is secretly wanting to use her to carry drugs for him. She leaves
London with this boyfriend but still feels the same deep ache and emptiness in her heart because she
has not found her father.

The film then shows Katrina travelling to Bangkok with her boyfriend who has secretly hidden heroin in
the lining of her case. Going through customs she is caught, her boyfriend disappears, and she is
condemned to a Thai prison with a death sentence on her life. She tries to appeal her innocence through
a lawyer, but every attempt fails and there is no way out. Her lawyer then calls on the help of an older
retired lawyer who is an alcoholic but happens to be Katrina's lost father. And now (though she does not
know who he is) the one who is trying to help her escape death in the Bangkok prison is the father she
has so desperately sought to find.

Her father comes up with a rescue plan a secret passage under the prison that he knows from the time
he was in that same prison during the War, the same tunnel that was his means of escape years earlier.
So, he plans a dangerous and dramatic escape that she is told about, finally rescuing her through the
underground tunnel and getting her out of the prison and off to the airport to catch a plane back to
Australia and to freedom. It is not until she reaches the airport to board her plane to freedom that she
makes the discovery that this man who has saved her is in fact her real father. As they embrace, she
realizes she has at last found the father she had been searching for, and he has found his lost daughter.
The long search is over.
Father hunger'

Adopted children experience a deep-seated longing to know who their true parents are. The absence of
a father creates in a child what psychologists call 'father-hunger'. No matter ho well others may try to fill
this absence, loss of either parent leaves a deep emptiness at the core of a child's life that nothing else
can fill. This often drives such children to desperate measures to try and find their biological parents if
they think they are still alive.

We need to know who we belong to in order to understand our true identity. Someone has said, you will
never know who you are until you know whose you are." If this is true at the human level it more trues
at the spiritual level. The Bible tells who we are and whose we are we are made in 'God's image and
designed to have a special relationship with him. We are not just the highest form of animal life. We are
not just the end result of evolutionary processes. God has put a part of His own nature within us so there
is a part of us that needs to know him. If that need is not met, we experience a restlessness within that
drives us to search for meaning and purpose in other ways. But our core need remains unsatisfied. Saint
Augustine said, "O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their
rest in you."

How it was meant to be

The Bible takes us back to the beginning. It tells us the way life was meant to be from the start. Until we
understand this, we will never know our true purpose nor see our deepest need. It tells us that there is a
God who made us. We are not here by chance. The world and everything in it are made by God and
belongs to God. We also belong to God because he created us in a special way. He has made us with
deep spiritual needs that only he can satisfy. He was always meant to be the centre of our lives and we
were always meant to find our highest joy and fulfilment in him. Our first parents knew God in this close
way. They enjoyed a deep and personal relationship with their Creator. And as a result they lived in
perfect harmony with God, with each other, and with themselves. There was nothing missing.

What went wrong?

Into this perfect world came something that changed all that. The Bible tells us that Satan, a beautiful
created being at first, rebelled against God and brought his spirit of rebellion to the human race. He
deceived our first parents into doubting and disobeying God. In one terrible moment their beautiful
relationship with God was spoiled and they came under Satan's rule instead. From that moment they
died spiritually and began to die physically. The result was a deep emptiness within. This was the start of
all their problems and the start of ours too! Like pollution at the source of a river, the poison of their sin
has flowed to the whole human race, for all of us have inherited that same independent sinful nature.
We have tried to live without God and this has brought into life all the troubles, problems and suffering
that plague our lives and our world today:

Yes, we have lost something... we have lost God! We have been deceived into believing we can manage
without him. We are like orphans lost in a meaningless universe without purpose and without hope. And
in searching for meaning without God, we have searched in the wrong places, and Satan has tricked and
trapped us. We are now imprisoned under sentence of death and there is no way of escape. This is the
bad news of the Bible story!
Our only hope...

The Bible story however, does not end with bad news. It is a story of good news! It tells us that the
'Father' we have lost knows the hopeless position we are in. But he also knows a way of escape and has
put an amazing rescue plan into operation. And like the 'Bangkok Hilton' story, he calls you to willingly
follow this plan in order to find freedom and come back into the safety of his arms. Only then will you
discover who your true "Father is and who you really are.

Do you want to know your true 'Father? Does he really exist after all? And if so, what is he like? In the
next two chapters we will find out.

'Most men live lives of quiet desperation" - David Thoreau

"There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person which cannot be filled by any other created
thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ." - Blaise Pascal