Jesus told us in John 10:10 that He came to give us an “abundant life,” a l ife t hat i s o verflowing. I believe that and it is my experience but I don’t see it so much with most people that claim to be a Christian. Why is that? What I see for the most part is people who are confused and frustrated.
I read the other day that the abundant Christian life is like someone offering you a free condo in Tahiti, complete with airfare, a car once you get there, constant groceries in the refrigerator, servants, everything you will ever need to live out the rest of your life in Tahiti - but until you pack up and leave your current home the Tahiti life can’t be yours. In other words, you can’t go with Jesus and live a new life with Him until you leave your old life behind.
2nd Corinthians 5:17 reminds us that if we are a Christian we are a “new creature, old things have passed away and all things have become new.” I think that’s what I see. These confused and frustrated people are still trying to be a part of the culture and a part of the kingdom, and that kind of faith is not compatible with what we see in Scripture. We can’t serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).
Proverbs 11:28 lets us know that “A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump” but “a God shaped life is a flourishing tree.” How many are living a compromised dead, stump of a life when the “Tahiti” life is available?
I’m not teaching a prosperity Gospel, I’m saying what we sang in church a million years ago, “Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.”
Ephesians 1:11 gives us the answers to the two primary questions most people want to know: Why am I here and what’s my purpose in life? God says, “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.” I want to encourage you. Don’t waste your life living for kid’s sports and grandch i ld ren. Fa m i ly a nd sports are probably the two biggest idols in our culture right now. Anything that comes between you and God is an idol and we are so easily distracted from keeping the main thing the main thing.
Big time Christian and writer C. S. Lewis wrote, “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 us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The Christians that I know who are living the abundant life Jesus has promised are the ones that can relate to what the Apostle Peter said in Matthew 19:27, “We have left everything to follow you.”
There you go. That was the sermon from Sunday.
He told me to tell you that.
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