Am I Too Easily Impressed?

What impresses you? Some people are really easy to impress and some people are hard to impress. The interesting thing about our world is how they think about spiritual things and how they think about what satisfies in life and how to fulfill that satisfaction. People are far too easily impressed with the things of the world. What our world does is look at things like sex, drink, and party and deem such things as awesome, amazing, and fulfilling. “This is what life is about. If I could just have more of that on the weekends. That is where life is.”

The book of Hebrews is going to come to that person and say, “You are a little too easily impressed with the things of the world. If you look at the things of the world and think that is where life is, then there is someone you have not met. You have really not met the Lord Jesus Christ in all of his fulness. If you met him, then what you have been feeding on is going to look like mac ‘n’ cheese and chicken nuggets compared to what you could have been eating.”

This is not just true for the world, but it’s also true for us. We’re always out there searching for something that’s more satisfying. We, too, are too easily impressed. Right? We think that if we have more relationships, more financial security, or if our spouse was just x, y, and z, then life would be what it needs to be; that’s where satisfaction is found.

What we see in the book of Hebrews is that we haven’t fully gotten to know Jesus yet, because if you have gotten to know Jesus, then you would be impressed with him and not thinking that these other places are the places to go to be satisfied. When I think about that theme, I can’t help but think about a quote from C.S. Lewis, which you’ve probably heard a thousand times, but I’ve got to read it because it’s so good. It really does capture what we’re going to do today.

Lewis captured this idea of how we really are too easily satisfied. We’re too easily satisfied because we don’t actually understand the greatness of Christ that’s offered to us. Remember that’s the theme of Hebrews: Jesus is better than all these other things.

Listen to this quote by Lewis and let these words sink in: “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.”

That is the theme, arguably, of the book of Hebrews. Don’t be so easily pleased by the things of the world. Be ultimately pleased in the most pleasing thing: Christ.