BEING LOST
To be lost is a fearful awareness. Gone is any sense of certainty with its comforting assurance. Instead sensations of emptiness, a debilitating foreboding, and an abject feeling of aloneness progressively take over the thinking, and there is the danger of these sentiments coming to dominate the thinking. Often hopelessness sets in so much so that the person is simply incapacitated, with no will for action. Such are some of the more damaging elements that may invade the thinking of one who is lost in a natural environment.
To be lost in the spiritual environment is much more devastating. The individual is living in a world that reflects God, but at the same time, for the individual there is no God. To be lost in the spiritual dimension is to be lost before God, to be separated from God. Such a person is without life, without direction, without purpose, without hope. From the human perspective the fact that there is no hope is an increasing anxiety. To be lost before God is to live a tragic life. It is the worst of all states.
To be lost is to deny that the self in all of its dimensions is the image of God in the world. It is to reject who and what one is, and, therefore, to become double-minded or without the capacity to think properly. So one never has the correct answer; in fact, even the proper questions are unknown. Consideration of one’s state is always futile.
In the Scriptures Jesus tell three parables related to this cursed condition of being lost; Jesus spoke to the tax collectors and sinners of three things: the lost son, the lost coin, the lost sheep (Lu. 15).
The Lost Sheep – a man with a hundred sheep loses one of
them; the one sheep cannot come home, has no ability to do such; so the man
goes in search of the sheep and finds it and brings it home; he says: “I
have found my sheep which was lost!”
The Lost Coin – a woman had ten silver coins and loses one coin; the coin cannot return to its owner, so the woman searches carefully for the coin and finds it; she then says: “I have found the piece which I lost!”
The Lost Son – a son leaves his father and wasted his life while away from the father; through a series of circumstances the son is back at home; the father says: “This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
The Lost Coin – a woman had ten silver coins and loses one coin; the coin cannot return to its owner, so the woman searches carefully for the coin and finds it; she then says: “I have found the piece which I lost!”
The Lost Son – a son leaves his father and wasted his life while away from the father; through a series of circumstances the son is back at home; the father says: “This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
In two of the parables the point is made that the object that is lost must be found, and there is joy when it is found. The last parable equates being found with being raised from the dead, so profound is the fact of being found that it is compared with resurrection itself.
Every individual is lost, lost spiritually; none of us lives in Eden—we have been thrust out. For us to return we must be found; in other words, a supernatural transformation must take place. We cannot find home; we must be shown the way.
To be found, to be saved, to have life, to have the mind renewed, to be given purpose in life and hope for the future: these things must be conferred, must be given, must be revealed. In other words, the answer for man is not within man, cannot be found by man, cannot be sought by man. The answer is the gift of Grace. The answer for man is outside of man; it is above man. The hope of man is God. To be found is to be found by God. There is no other way.
In various ways and through various circumstances God find us and informs us that we have been found, found by Him.
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