I don’t know whether you remember the American Rock band Imagine Dragons? The band gained notoriety in 2012 when it shot to fame with its debut album Night Visions. It sold over 2 million copies in the US and it went platinum in twelve countries.  They were named “The Breakthrough Band of 2013”, and Rolling Stone magazine named their single Radioactive “the biggest rock hit of the year.”

They went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance, and a World Music Award. In May 2014, the band was nominated for a total of fourteen different Billboard Music Awards, including Top Artist of the Year and a Milestone Award. They had reached the top… and experienced the goal they had worked for all their life.

However, the band’s lead singer, Daniel Reynolds, became disturbed by the things that went along with fame. He found himself a growing increasingly disconnected with his family and from life in general as the band’s success grew.  He stated:

“That’s a scary thing when you get everything that you could have wanted but yet you still feel an emptiness, because at that point you think ‘oh man, if this doesn’t fill it, then I don’t know where to look any more’.”

He had achieved the goal that he had dreamed of and pursued his whole life… but when he’d reached it, he found that it left him empty.

So tell me: How’s your sense of emptiness? What has not yet been fulfilled in your life? What are you still hungering for concerning hope, identity and meaning?

The Australian aborigines have a saying – “A man remains a child until he knows his story.”

Tell me: do you know your story? Do you know who you are; why you exist on this planet and what your intended destiny is?

If you listen to the current bevy of strident atheists – life is pretty bleak. There is only darkness. The twentieth century French biologist, Jacques Monod, said:

“The ancient covenant is in pieces: man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down.”

The danger in remaining a child and not knowing your identity, your purpose or the hope of God is that you give up … and when people give up, things get pretty ugly.

When Germany gave up its authentic Christian heritage, it embraced Hitler’s socialism.

When the Christian church leaves remote aboriginal communities in Australia, the result is socially catastrophic.

When the Hebrew people gave up waiting for Moses and got no input from his God, they built themselves a golden calf – they ended up worshipping their own ideas. It’s the oldest folly of humankind – and we still do it today.

So, let me ask. What are you waiting for? What has yet to be fulfilled? What don’t you yet know about your identity?

Psalm 27 says: “The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid … Wait for the Lord: be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:1-14)
Have you given up waiting for God? Is he off your radar now?

Here’s a story from the Bible of bloke who didn’t give up waiting. Let me read it to you:

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout … It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may 
now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations.” (Luke 2:25-32).

Please promise me this: don’t die until you too have met Jesus — and through Jesus, allowed God to show you your true identity and what true fulfilment is in the purpose of God.