Video Timeline

Use the time stamps below to scrub through the video to find the place that you want.

• 09:54 - Welcome from Matt & Sal

• 18:27 - Is There More to Life Than This? - Anna

• 38:37 - Worship

• 42:45 - Conversation Street

• 59:46 - Catch Up with Josh

• 1:02:18 - Wrapping Up with Matt & Sal

• 1:06:43 - Closing Worship

Talk: Is there more to life than this?

Let me ask you to reflect on your experience with Christianity. What words spring to mind? Maybe it's things like outdated, boring, perhaps irrelevant, or just simply untrue? Or perhaps something else?

What I discovered

I've been a Christian for most of my life, and I've been around Christianity, and my parents were both Christians. And I was always dragged to church with my sisters as a child. We went to Sunday school every week without fail. And to be honest, when I was young, I never really questioned that. I just thought that's what you do on Sundays.

But as I grew a bit older and started to move into my teen years, I couldn't see what the point of church was anymore. It began to feel a bit boring and irrelevant to me. I couldn't see what this guy who lived on the earth from 2,000 years ago somewhere in the Middle East had to do with my life here and now.

And then there was all the niggling questions in the back of my mind. Questions like, what if this is just all made up? Are we all just being brainwashed in church? And how can we be sure that any of this Jesus stuff is true? So I filed it away, mentally, as something that I would deal with later. Perhaps once I left home.

I was searching for meaning & purpose

Now, I've always been a very driven person. I'm the classic type A personality, a real doer and an achiever. But looking back, I think that this also meant that I was often searching for a sense of meaning or purpose in my life through achievements and accomplishments. I was never satisfied with my life. I was always looking for that next goal or next milestone to hit. So in school, I always thought, "well, when I get straight A's, then I'll finally be happy with myself." And then it was, "well, when I date that cute guy, then I'll be really happy". And then once I left school, it was like, "well, when I get to uni, and then when I graduate and get that first job, or when I earn a certain salary, or when I get married, that's when I'll finally be content".

And really, I was always trying to fill the gap, looking for things I thought would fulfil me or make me complete. But nothing ever really did. And I think it's common for many of us to go through life thinking similarly. You hope, and you wait, and you work hard for certain things, maybe to fall in love or for that career break or promotion. But then you finally get it, and you still don't feel complete, even if it's a good thing. 

What was I missing?

I would ask, Is this it? Am I missing something here? There's got to be more to life than this. And that's that feeling that I want to unpack a little bit more about today.

Bernard Levin was one of the great columnists of the last century, writing a long time ago, but he wrote this. He wasn't a Christian – one time he wrote: 'For the fourteenth thousandth time, I'm not a Christian!' – but this is what he wrote. He said:

The comedian, Russell Brand also said this:

Both of these quotes resonate with me because they describe what I felt as I grew up.

It was like there was always this sort of hunger inside of me that was never satisfied. Maybe you could even say it was a spiritual hunger or hole.

What didn’t work for me

I may not have looked for answers in such extreme ways as a personality like Russell Brand has. But looking back, that same hole was there in my life, too. And perhaps you felt that way at times as well. Maybe you wouldn't articulate precisely that way. But you know it's there. It wasn't until I moved here to Liverpool as a student that I started to unpack any of these questions. Suddenly, I had all this extra freedom and time to do whatever I wanted to do. I could party hard. I could date whoever I wanted, be whoever I wanted to be, and choose to believe or not believe in God. And for a time explored all of these things.

And yet that nagging feeling that there had to be more to life just got bigger and bigger; it never went away.

If I'm honest, though, by this point, I was pretty confident that Christianity wouldn't offer me the answers I was looking for. But I did decide that I would give it one last proper look before I discarded it forever. Perhaps it was just out of a sense of loyalty to my parents, who seemed so convinced it was true. But because of this, I started reading up and studying the life of Jesus to see for myself what the evidence was and if any of what he said could be true.

Jesus' big claim

Now, you don't have to look very far into the Bible to realise that Jesus made some pretty big and outrageous claims. I picked out just one of them for us to look at a bit more in-depth and explore further today.

That's a pretty big claim. And it's a rather strange thing to say as well. I mean, what does that even really mean? Well, let's break it down a bit. Let's start with the first part. So Jesus said, I am the way. Now, what does that statement mean?

Jesus said, “I am the way”

Well, I've got a little illustration here. So my husband, Andy, has terrible eyesight. He's unable to see anything that's not right under his nose without his contact lenses in. It's so bad that when we first started dating, and I first saw him take out his contacts and try to read a text message, I thought he was messing around. He was holding the mobile phone right up to his nose like this to read a text. I thought, surely no one our age has eyesight that bad. But no, without his contacts, he is semi-blind; he can't see much anything at all. Once he's got them in, it's a different story. He has 20/20 vision. And it's like, he's suddenly seeing everything instead of a blur, in total, like HD four day kind of supersonic, full colour.

And to me, I think that's a great picture of Jesus. He's saying, "I'm the lens through which you can see God more clearly."

Finding fulfilment & meaning

At some level, I think we probably all have some questions about the purpose of life, don't we? Questions like:

• Where have I come from?

• Where am I going?

• Is there any real meaning to all of this anyway?

Now, although those questions are pretty common, people can end up searching for the answers in many different places. We can also try to avoid those questions by staying busy in lots of different ways. We can search for purpose in earning lots of money, success, relationships, fame, power, hedonism, materialism or consumerism. But what Jesus is saying in this statement is that none of these things fills that gap. That void is within us. In effect, none of these is "The Way". The only way to find lasting answers to life's big questions is through him. So he's saying that he is the way.

And, when you look at the experiences of many celebrities in this day and age, who seem to have it all, all the money, all the fame, everything that celebrity culture can buy you. It backs up this point quite well because they don't often articulate that they feel fulfilled. 

Likewise, Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, admitted in an interview shortly before his death:

Wow, aren't those powerful statements? And you know, ultimately, there is only one complete loving relationship that does go on forever. And that's the relationship that we can have with the God who made us.

Despite going to church, despite going to a Christian school and Sunday School for most of my life, this was what was missing for me.

It was like I knew a lot about Jesus; I learned many stories about his life. But knowing about someone isn't the same as actually knowing them. We can know a lot about the lives of celebrities, what we read about them online and yet, that's not quite the same as being close friends with them.

That's why Christianity did seem so dull and irrelevant to me for a long time. I didn't know Jesus; I didn't have any ongoing relationship with him at all.  

Jesus said, “I am the truth”

In our postmodern culture, everybody can have a different truth. There's an album by the Manic Street Preachers called "Tell me your truth", which sums it up pretty well. But what Jesus is saying here is that there is such a thing as absolute truth. And not only that, but that he is that truth. They're pretty bold claims! In an era where fake news is rife all over the internet, where it's getting harder and harder to determine what is true at all, we're all beginning to realise that maybe truth matters after all. Truth, by definition, cannot be relative. There can't be one truth for one person and a different truth for someone else.

Trump v’s Biden: who was lying?

Look at the fallout of the American elections recently. In a democratic process, it matters whether the President is lying and misleading voters or whether the election has been stolen from him or not (I'm not taking a political side here). But there is one thing for sure; both parties can't have won that election. So somebody was telling the truth, and somebody was lying. And this shows how absolute truth works. It's absolutely the truth, and it absolutely matters. So, of course, you could have preached the idea of faith in a similar relativist way if you wanted to. You could easily say, "well, Anna, that's great for you if your relationship with Jesus is where you find your meaning and purpose. But you know, it's just not for me". But logically speaking, that can't be the case if Jesus is the truth.

If Jesus is the truth, then it has to be true for everyone, not just me. And equally, if it's not true, then it's not true for anyone. But one thing is absolutely for sure - it can't be true for some people and not valid for others. It can't be both true and not true simultaneously. Just like Biden and Trump can't both have won the election simultaneously. There has to be an ultimate truth there somewhere.

One of my favourite authors, CS Lewis, who's famous for writing The Chronicles of Narnia, amongst many other books you may have read when you were a child, or seen it on TV, put it like this: 

But how do we know if Jesus is the truth?

There are two parts to this

1. Intellectual evidence.

2. Experienced evidence.

Intellectual Evidence

I've heard people talk about faith being blind or only for unscientific or unreasoning people. Maybe you've even thought this too. I know I did for a long time. But, once I started studying this and looking into the life of Jesus, I was shocked to find out how much historical evidence there is for the life of Jesus and for the claims that he made. And not only that but they've been confirmed by many of the most brilliant historians, scientists, lawyers, writers, academics throughout history. One former professor of history at Oxford University described the resurrection as the best-attested event in history. There is a lot of intellectual evidence that we can find.

Experienced Evidence

The Hebrew word for truth, which is the original language of the Old Testament, doesn't just describe intellectual truth; it tells of the heart knowledge too. In our modern times, we tend to think of truth as just a head thing. But in the Hebrew language, it was both head and heart together. So when Jesus said, I am the truth, he was saying is, I am a truth that can be experienced and intellectually known. That's what I found to be true. Knowing Jesus as the way and the truth is about being intellectually assured about the facts and the historical evidence. But it's also about experiencing and feeling the difference that knowing Jesus makes in your own life too. It's both these things together.

Jesus said, “I am the life”

This claim is one that Jesus doesn't just make once, but he repeats it in his teachings recorded in the Bible repeatedly. For example, in the book of John, which is another historical account of Jesus's life, he claims

Jesus says that knowing him as the way, the truth, and the life is the way to experience the fullness of life and live a full and meaningful life.

I want to clarify that this idea of a full life doesn't necessarily mean life always go our way or that everything works out exactly as you want it to be. It doesn't mean always being happy. As a Christian, I still face lots of challenges and disappointments, just like everyone else does.

But what I would say is that I've found through having this experience of a relationship with God through Jesus is something that offers me a sense of wholeness, a sense of purpose and meaning that I've been unable to find anything else. 

Questions we ask this week

Conversation Street is part of our live stream, where the hosts (in this case, Matt & Sally) chat through Anna’s talk and answer questions that were sent in through the live stream. You can watch the conversation in the video (at the top of this post), it starts at 42 min 45 seconds into the video. This week’s questions and topics of conversation are:

• What was it like growing up in a Christian family?

• Judging God and the church by the Christians that go to it.

• What was it like growing up not going to church?

• Have you struggled with the church? And how do you deal with annoying people?

• Filling the void in your life

• Do all roads lead to God?

• Are all religions equal?

• Why you have to decide about Jesus for yourself.