Living the Abundant Life
John 10:10 is one of the great marketing slogans for Christianity. The promise of receiving abundant life sure sells a lot better than images of bearing crosses and dying to ourselves. But like a lot of things in the Bible, I think we might let a little too much human play into our interpretation sometimes, rather than reading what it actually says.
Jesus came to give life more abundantly. But as the recipients of this amazing gift, we think we ought the be the ones who get to define it. Love, joy, peace, that sounds great and all, but what’s the trade in policy on this thing? “I’m pretty well set in the patience department” we might negotiate, “How about some more money instead?” or “I’ve got plenty of self-control but don’t skimp on the kindness. I do wish people would be nicer to me!”
I bet if God were the proverbial genie granting 3 wishes, our requests would reveal at least 4 desires of the flesh. But that’s not what it says.
It’s kind of ironic when you think about it. The word abundant means “existing in large quantities” (in English, I’ll leave the Greek to Ben). How exactly did we turn that into a promise to increase the quality of our own lives, at the individual, singular, level? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of abundant?
Maybe He just meant that He came to give life to more sheep? Considering that without Him, all the sheep would die, that interpretation seems reasonable. But it’s not much of a marketing slogan. Unless you’re a sheep.
So what? We follow Jesus just so we get to live? Not to go all Ecclesiastes on you but, yeah, from John 10:10, that’s about all I read.
But don’t just read John 10:10. Back up a few verses and read about knowing His voice and Him calling us by name. Rewind to John 3 and remember much the Provider paid for this gift, and fast forward to John 14 - 16 and read about how simple the Shepard made His commands and His promises to help us fulfill them.
Read other books too. He doesn’t promise us riches, but Matthew 6 does promise that He’ll provide for us. And when it doesn’t seem like He will, Hebrews teaches us how to have faith. When we get tired of turning the other cheek, Ephesians 4 helps us handle conflict, and when we’re the ones we keep having to forgive, Romans 7 reminds us that we aren’t the first and Romans 8 reassures us that God accounted for our imperfection.
To truly discover the abundant life, we have to get to know the Provider. Yes, He’s more concerned with giving life to more sheep than improving the quality of life for one, but He’d love to let all of the sheep participate in the mission.
I can’t define the abundant life because it is beyond measure, existing in infinite quantities of infinite varieties. But I do know where to find it. Go back to John 10:10.
The Enemy Never Sleeps
When do you like to let the enemy control your life? Saturdays? Right after breakfast, or do you like to make him wait until after dinner?
Following Jesus is a decision that repeats itself more than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. It has to be. He told us that Himself, and if you didn’t read the warning label in the welcome packet, well, join the club, I guess. But He didn’t say ‘pick up your cross and follow Me once’, or even ‘once a week’. He told us it was daily. But we aren’t always the best listeners. Honestly, it isn’t even daily. It’s constant.
So, what exactly do we have to do? Read the Bible all day? Pray without ceasing as Paul suggests? Oh, if it were only so simple! Prayers can become vain repetitions, and even the enemy can quote Scripture. To truly follow Jesus, we have to do something way harder than that.
We have to trust God. Constantly.
It gets worse. It’s not just the easy stuff. We have to trust Him with everything. Yes, even that thing. Most importantly, that thing!
Did I mention this was constant? It’s not just giving Him that most important thing once, or even daily. I’ve regifted my biggest problems back to God more times than an ugly Christmas sweater, only to steal them back like a tormented game of Dirty Santa.
The only thing I’ve found to manage this impossible requirement is to tell myself that God knows more than me. And if you think that’s easy, well, you don’t know me. But I’m trying. Constantly.
It’s Not Complicated. It’s of God.
Remember the movie A Few Good Men? It’s the one where Jack Nicholson yells “You can’t handle the truth!” If you know the scene, what seems to have set Jack off was Tom Cruise’s character demanding answers “he thought he was entitled to”.
We’re bad to play this scene out with God, getting frustrated that we don’t have all the answers, and feeling entitled to the truth we think He’s unfairly withholding from us. The funny thing is, Jack’s line actually works from God’s perspective. We can’t handle the truth. But God isn’t hiding it from us. We know the truth. We just can’t handle it.
I mean, really, how much simpler could God have made it? He put it in writing. He sent us the perfect demonstration. Not a metaphorical one either. A literal fellow human, like us, to show us how it was done. And while He was here, He told us exactly what to do. It’s not like He gave us the instruction manual for cracking the Da Vinci Code. He told us to love God, love each other, and He’d do the rest. That’s it.
It’s not complicated at all. But we can’t handle it because it’s too simple. It doesn’t give us anything to be proud of. No mountain to climb, no race to win, nothing at all to feed our ego. It robs us of any sense of accomplishment and requires us to accept the simple fact that we can’t do anything without God. Put simply, it requires us to admit the truth that deep down, we already know, but can’t handle. At least not without Him.
He Cares for You
Sometimes I slip into treating prayer like it’s some kind of game show. Ask for the right things, get 10 points. Ask for the wrong thing, but with the right motive, lose 10 points. Ask for something selfish, and that little whammy guy comes out and steals all your points and you lose a turn.
I have absolutely no Biblical reason for this. God isn’t giving out bonus points for asking for the right things. He’s well aware that He knows more than we do about what is best for us. He’s even aware of all those selfish things I want to ask for, and probably finds it funny that I pat myself on the back for thinking I kept them a secret.
1 Peter 5:7 is an interesting verse. In the NASB it reads “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” But the KJV uses “care” in place of anxiety. “Care” has a lot of definitions, and I’ll yield to the Biblical scholars that they mean the same thing. But in modern English, you could paraphrase that to mean entrusting your care to Him, like you cast the care of your child onto a teacher or the care of your health to a doctor. If you read it this way, the next line just affirms the first.
These two ways of reading the verse don’t contradict each other. They are actually reinforcing. We can trust God with all of our worries, because He cares for us. And because we can trust Him to care for us, we should entrust Him with our care.
I don’t treat prayer like it’s a game show because I’m afraid God will be mad at me for asking for something He doesn’t want me to have. I do it because I’m afraid He’ll give it to me, and it’ll be my fault for asking it! But this is so flawed. Part of casting our care and worries onto God means trusting Him to tell us “No” when that’s the best answer. Paul says in everything by prayer…make your requests known to God. He didn’t say God would grant them. He says the peace of God will guard our minds in Christ Jesus. That’s the answer He wants to give us.
Our Best vs. God’s Best
Several years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to be on his mud run team. “Hmm, sounds fun”, I said, “but what’s a mud run?” A couple of amusing minutes later, not only was I positive I didn’t want to be on his mud run team, but I was also reevaluating the judgement of my friend selection. That sounded insane!
No offense to anyone who has participated in these self-inflicted torture tests, but I’m out. After paying about a $100 entry fee, you get to run like 2 miles through freezing water and mud, through dozens of obstacles including my personal favorite, live electrical wires! But not for nothing, if you complete the course, you get a free tee shirt.
At first glance, this might be the way we see the Christian Walk. Being crucified with Christ and baptized into His death doesn’t sound fun (Romans 6). Dying to self and picking up our cross daily doesn’t sound appealing at face value either (1 Cor. 15 & Luke 9). But that’s because of our flawed human perspective. Our selfish nature causes us to see our ways as best and, as a result, we view trading them for God’s righteousness as a sacrifice.
But God doesn’t see it is a sacrifice. From His perspective, we are ALREADY running the self-inflicted torture test, and He’s offering us a way out. Everything Jesus suffered at the Cross was to give us access to a better way. It even refunds our entry fee and ends up with something way better than a tee-shirt.
If you want to see how much God wants us to stop torturing ourselves, just look at the Cross. Did the same God who loved us enough to brutally sacrifice His only Son for us do it just so we could sacrifice our own joy back to Him? If that’s what He was willing to do to give us another way, how much torture are we putting ourselves through?
I won’t try to answer that. Even God couldn’t find words to answer that. He showed us with Jesus.