Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does Life Have Any Meaning Without God? | My Favorite Verses | Isaiah 40:3-5

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Are we cosmic accidents? DNA propagation machines? Do love and hate, good and evil, or justice and injustice have any real meaning? Patrick opens our new series “My Favorite Verses” by exploring his battle with depression, and the existential breaking point that almost took his life. Do you follow us on https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter)? Now's a great time to start: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (@tmbtpodcast). Want to follow https://twitter.com/PatrickKMiller_ (Patrick) or https://twitter.com/KeithSimon_ (Keith)? Check them out here: https://twitter.com/PatrickKMiller_ (PatrickKMiller_) & https://my.captivate.fm/Do%20you%20follow%20us%20on%20Twitter?%20Now%27s%20a%20great%20time%20to%20start:%20@tmbtpodcast.%20%20%20Want%20to%20follow%20Patrick%20or%20Keith?%20%20Check%20them%20out%20here:%20PatrickKMiller_%20&%20https://twitter.com/KeithSimon_ (KeithSimon). Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Today we are beginning a new series in 10-minute Bible Talks. It's called Verses That Changed My Life. Keith and I are going to share some of our favorite verses from the Bible and the personal impact that it's made on each of us.

The thing I'm most excited about, though, is that we're going to be inviting on some special guests who will be sharing their own verses that changed their lives. I think you'll really enjoy hearing from these people. They're all great teachers with a lot to add into your life. So let's hop into our first episode in this series. And as you can tell, I am starting. So here's a question for you. Do you know what map you're using for your life? Do you know where you think you're going? Do you know where you got that map that you use for your life? Do you know where you got it from? We're all given maps from our earliest years. Whether it's the map of education, you know, first you go to high school and the next destination is college and then the workforce and then you find a spouse and then you buy a house, have a kid.

Our culture gives us all kinds of maps, and it supplies these maps ready-made. But what happens to you when your map breaks down? I wasn't a Christian in high school, and one of the things on my little map of reality was finding the right girl. That was the key, at least to my mind, that was the key to happiness. Summer after my senior year, I ended up in a relationship that I thought was it. map was working. I thought, hey, I finally arrived at my destination. We both ended up going to the same college, and again, everything's just going according to the plan until she cheats on me with my best friend.

All of a sudden, it was all over. It sent me into an existential tailspin, because for the first time, I realized that all the maps and all the destinations that culture gives us are made up. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, the highways are deserted. No traveling. are on the roads. I ended up sinking into one of the deepest depressions of my life. I was hurting. I was alone. I was in near constant emotional pain, and I began to consider suicide. I couldn't tell why, for me at least, living really mattered anymore. And that makes sense because I didn't have a map for my reality. I didn't know where I was going. And without a map, I didn't want to live. On the darkest night of my life, I climbed seven stories to the top of my dormitory.

and I considered throwing myself out of the window on the top of the stairs. I remember literally physically hanging myself halfway out, and at the time I'm sitting there thinking, if there is no God, then that means that my life actually has no point. In 150 years, there won't be a person who knows me, who knew who I was, who remembers me, in my name, anything that I did. And so if that's the case, it won't really matter if I do this, because in 150 years, no one's hurting, no one remembers.

And at the end of the day, all I want to do is make this inner pain stop. You know, it sounds weird, but Carl Sagan, his description of Earth, he calls it a pale blue dot floating through space. That description, it was echoing in my mind. I thought, you know what? He's right. Every single one of us, we're all just an atomic cosmological accident. We're just a bizarre coincidence of physics and biology. And we're just the way that the universe became self-conscious.

But we're really nothing more than that. We're all just fancy atomic, anatomic machines. We're evolved apes living on a pale blue dot. One day the sun will expand and it will engulf this entire planet. Every bit of our culture, our history, our everything, it will simply cease to exist. None of it really matters. Even if we somehow figured out how to escape the earth, the universe itself has an expiration date. It is spinning out into nothingness. who think that they have a purpose or a calling, they're just fools. They're tricking themselves into ignoring the actual reality that we are nothing more than DNA propagation machines made of atoms who have tricked ourselves into believing that there is a purpose for our life.

There's no such thing as good. There just is what there is. There is no such thing as evil or injustice. There just is what is. There is no direction. There is no map. It's all just a big accident of physics. When I was hanging out that window, my depression allowed me to look into an abyss that most atheists refused to acknowledge. Nothing really matters. It's all just an illusion. Today, it makes me think of this great clip from Jim Carrey. From the upcoming film True Crimes, please welcome two-time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carrey. Thank you. I am two-time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carrey. You know, when I go to sleep at night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep.

I'm two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shut-eye. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream. No, sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe-winning actor Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this. This terrible search.

For what I know ultimately won't fulfill me. But these are important, these awards. I don't want you to think that just because if you blew up our solar system alone, you wouldn't be able to find us or any of human history with the naked eye. But from our perspective, this is huge. Maybe you know what he's talking about. Maybe you're like me, and you had a map for your life. But it's not working out for you the way that you've,

thought it would. Maybe you're realizing that without God, there is no meaning. There is no purpose in the cosmos. So back to my story, when I was up there on that seventh floor, I really got what Jim Carrey was saying. And I was so miserable that I wanted to end my life. And then my cell phone started ringing. It was Jesus. I don't literally mean that Jesus was calling me, but it was a follower of Jesus who was calling me because, according to him, God had just given him a sense that I was in trouble. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that phone call saved my life. Not because I actually believed him. I didn't think that God gave him some sort of magical sense. I thought it was a freak accident. And yet, there was this itching part of me. What if it was true? What if there was a chance?

And even though it felt really stupid, I realized that my entire life equation was totally off if God did exist. If I had it accounted for God's reality in my picture of reality, then I had the whole picture wrong. That end up setting me on a journey to ask which gave a better account for reality. Atheism and secularism or theism and Christianity? The truth was that I'd already seen through the lie of secular progress. I saw that it was all just a long con. It was a collective piece of imagination wherein we were all pretending that history has purpose, that there's such a thing is good, such a thing is evil, and they really matter.

I'd realize all of that was just a deception. If God is dead, anything is permitted. All that's left is the will to power and personal misery. But if God existed, then that changes everything. But if God exists, then the things that make sense of our reality, they actually make sense. Love, goodness, and justice, they make sense. Also, all of the things that break reality, hatred, pain, and evil, all of these things, they have real meaning. They aren't just a part of a collective imagination. The good things, they're rooted in the personal character of a cosmic being whose transcendent love and goodness actually define right and wrong. And the bad things are what happens whenever we deny that goodness, whenever we will against that goodness. That's why they feel

so wrong. That's why we feel so outraged when we see them. And if God existed, it also meant that everything has a purpose. Everything has a calling from him. It meant that there is a map for reality, although it's a map that culture can't give you. And culture's maps will always let you down. It's a map that only God can give you. So perhaps this explains why there's one verse that has become deeply important to me. It's important to me because it summarizes how Jesus called me out of death into life. How he made a path for me. How he gave a map to me.

How he showed a way to me, a way out of this wasteland into new life. Listen to Isaiah 40 versus 3 to 5. Listen, it's the voice of someone shouting. Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord. Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God. Fill in the valleys and level the mountains in the hills, straight in the curve, smooth out the rough places, then the glory of the Lord will be revealed

and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken. When we feel like we're stuck in a wilderness, when the way is too difficult, when the paths are too circuitous and confusing, God makes a way. God gives a path. God gives a map. And as it turns out, it is always a map, a path to himself. God is a waymaker. Today, pray that God would give you his map, your path. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.