What The World Needs Now

Gen. 1:26-27

GE 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

GE 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

This morning I want to talk to you about something that I have been hinting about for some time, it’s been something that I’ve talked about especially as I have tried to envision and describe our Life groups. I want to talk to you about Community. This community of Faith, where we have this fundamental understanding as a Christian that we have a place where we Belong.

It has been put inside all of us, this need to know that we belong, we have a place where we fit into the big picture that God is drawing.

Can I ask you a question? I’ll take that as a Yes.

“Do you have a place where you know you belong?” As you think about it, I want you to hear this..... You can know this morning that you do belong..... you can belong to a community of Faith.

The thing about that question of, Do you have a place where you know you belong?, I seem to think we instinctively know the answer right away, whether it’s yes or no, we know. Because there’s nothing better than having a place where you know you are welcome and apart of, connected too, a place where you don’t have to wonder if these people love me, there’s nothing better than that.

On the other side, there’s no lonlier place than knowing you haven’t found that place where you belong.... and you have to wonder who are truely your friends.

This morning I want you to know that God has a place for you, and in fact God the Father has went to great lengths to make sure that the Community that He intended for us from the beginning, can be a reality for us, even in this sin sick world......... So hold on, there’s hope, and that Hope is found in Jesus.

Lee Strobel wrote: “People today will admit any problem - drugs, divorce, alcoholism - but there’s one admission that people are loathe to make, whether they’re a star on television or someone who fixes televisions in a repair shop. It’s just too embarrassing. It penetrates too deeply to the core of who they are.” People don’t want to admit that they are lonely. “Loneliness is such a humiliating malady that it ought to have it’s own politically correct euphemism: “relationally challenged.” Or it’s own telethon. Anything to make it safer to confess. Because right now it’s a taboo, an affliction of losers and misfits. And - to be honest - of respectable people like you and me.”

George Gallup Jr. concluded from his studies and polls that Americans are among the loneliest people in the world.

That seems unbelievable when you think of all the ways we can get in touch with people, cell phones, internet, and so on, and with all our money that we spend on entertaining ourselves...... you would think that lonliness wouldn’t be our problem. More than 3/4 of the American people live in metropolitan areas, and more than 2/3 of those live in suburbs. We are surrounded by more people than ever before in the history of our country, we are busier than ever, aren’t we? How could we be among the loneliest people in the world?

The answer is because we have lost something essential to our well-being.

We are a fast paced society, leaving many people dislocated and far from home. As one weary wife, tired of career moves for her husband explained her lonliness and said, “I got so tired of saying good-bye, that I stopped saying hello.”

Friends, when we listen to God we learn that what the world needs now is a fresh vision of what it means to live in community. A fresh vision of what it means to be the people of God.

In the book of Genesis, way back when God first put people on the earth the design was revealed for us. A fundamental reality about humanity was uncovered. The Truth is........

1. We are Created in the Image of God.

GE 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

God put His design in us. He made us in His own Image. What does that mean for us today?