Imagine you’ve set out in the wilderness for an afternoon adventure. While you’ve enjoyed the sights and sounds from the safe confines of the cleared trail, your wanderlust gets the better of you as you venture off trail in search of a tranquil place to rest before the long trek back to the car. After a seemingly quick respite at a spot only minutes from the trail, you’re alarmed as you look down at your watch and see how much time has passed. Rushed but confident, you start for the trail in what you think is the way you ventured off originally. After half an hour of walking in the same direction, you fail to find the trail.

The reddish orange tinge against the trees begins to dim. Leaves crunch underfoot. Swirling around seeking any piece of information that may lead you back to the cozy cabin of your sedan, reality begins to sink in. You’re lost.

It’s not an exciting and playful lost. It’s not a romanticized type of lost. You’re straight up lost. You’ve got no idea where you are, no idea where to go. Danger lurks.

What would you do?

I’ve watched enough Survivorman to know I wouldn’t last very long in a survival situation. Les Stroud, the survival expert who makes the show, amazes me with his ingenuity and resourcefulness in the most hopeless of circumstances. Yet, as he points out, the person in a real-life survival situation with a bad case of machismo and pride will almost certainly die. It is the ones who recognize the magnitude of the situation and know the only way out is through the assistance of a search and rescue team or some other authority that often live to see another day.

It’s very interesting to see someone dubbed “Survivorman” confess that all he can really do is put himself in a position to be rescued. No individual stands much of a chance lost and alone in the wilderness with minimal resources for very long. They need rescuing.

Being lost in the wilderness isn’t the only way in which one can be lost. Being “lost” in life can mean a multitude of things to different people. Yet there is no greater disorientation, than not knowing the One by whom and for whom we were created.

Without a relationship with God available through the gift of Jesus Christ, we are lost in a much more catastrophic wilderness than any survival situation. Our entire lives are constructed on quicksand, appearing sturdy for a time, only to collapse around us as time goes and reality plays out. We were made to know God and dwell with Him. Yet because we fell in love with ourselves and cheated on God with sin, the relationship between God and man was broken. For our lives to make sense again, that relationship must be restored. And just like any survival situation, it only can occur through through a search and rescue mission led by Jesus Christ.

We scoff at the idea that our lives are out of order and we need to be changed. We laugh at the notion that we need not only a helping hand, but an all-out rescue. Especially from some “religious figure” like Jesus. But like survival, all we can really do is put ourselves in a position to be rescued. This occurs when we recognize the magnitude of how lost we really are and become willing to receive help.

It’s better to have a crushed spirit and be in a desperate situation than to be indulging in temporary successes and fleeting pleasures. In one scenario, we are humbled and see the reality of our need. In the other, we are often too distracted with ourselves to even notice anything or anyone else. Another pat on your back gets you thinking that you don’t need God.

It’s not a popular thing to be needy in our culture. These are the ones viewed as weak and needy. Yet it is the people who acknowledge their need in an all-encompassing big picture sense that actually end up receiving the offer of salvation in Jesus. People who know they’ve screwed up. People who don’t know where to turn. People who don’t know how they got here, why their here, where they’re going. People who know they can’t save themselves.

There’s no bigger lie than the one that says we don’t need God. There’s no bigger freedom than when we ask for God to rescue us.