Cyril A Cure for Emptiness, Part 1

When Cyril was 10 years old, his mother became a Christian. “My mom ensured we went to church every Sunday and I grew up thinking I knew the truth and felt quite assured,” he says. “I attended one of the modern Pentecostal churches in Nigeria.” His church was patterned after one of the popular mega-churches in the United States.

Although he was an active part of this church family, Cyril eventually began to feel a deep emptiness. Hungering for answers, Cyril regularly attended prayer meetings and other church programs. But he somehow still felt there was something significant, even essential, missing from his experience. “I wasn’t [just] a Sunday to Sunday Christian,” he says.

“I attended midweek meetings, and all the conferences, etc. Sadly, it all felt so shallow and peripheral after a while. It was clear to me that the truth entailed much more than what I got.” The problem was that Cyril had no clue how to nail down that truth. While Cyril was struggling with this spiritual emptiness and dissatisfaction, a manager in his office gave him an invitation to a particular meeting. “She sold it in a very interesting way—that the meeting would appeal to me as it would be an intellectually stimulating experience. She concealed the fact it was a church meeting.”

Up until then, Cyril had made a point not to regularly attend other churches because there were so many choices and he felt they were all basically the same and could offer him nothing more. The one exception was the Roman Catholic Church because it appealed to his sense of sanctity and reverence. So it was only out of very high regard for the manager that he decided to attend the meeting.

“My secret resolve,” he says, “was to attend once and be freed from the commitment.” But the Lord had other plans!

The meeting Cyril attended was a Daniel and Revelation seminar on videotape, and the speaker was Pastor Doug Batchelor. Here, for the first time, Cyril was exposed to the undiluted gospel of Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the series, the message Cyril heard was very unsettling, as he had never studied the book of Daniel and initially found this new light extremely challenging.

“After the first day, I was genuinely upset,” he recalls.

Reflect: Can you think of a time in your life when you were genuinely upset when confronted with the truth? It’s often a giant opportunity to grow in Christ!

Key Bible Texts

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 KJV)