The Abundant Life Requires I Do…
I hope you have been seeing how these four phases of this most intimate relationship is symbolic for our relationship with Jesus. First, we meet Him and must decide whether to pursue a relationship with Him. But thank GOD, He never stops pursuing us!
Hopefully, we get to the point where we know He is more than worthy to know and we begin dating Him…this means we dabble in getting to know Him through periodically reading the Bible or going to church, but it’s nothing serious. We still live our own lives apart from Christ way too often.
Again, He never stops calling out to us! Hopefully again, we decide to get more serious about this relationship and be become engaged with Jesus…engaged by His teachings, engaged by His Wisdom, engaged by His Gentleness, and His power, and His Grace, and His Love and…well, with all of Him.
Finally, we surrender our lives to Him as Savior and Lord and we become married to Him…that is, life for us is no longer just about “me.” We now start to live our lives as WE, one with Christ. We seek His teachings as we think. We look for His wisdom as we experience life. We filter all our choices through His Grace and Love before we make any decisions. We live life, more and more, ONE with Christ, instead of trying to live apart from Him anymore.
This is the Abundant Life…but if you are still dating Jesus, you won’t sense this amazing Life, not consistently no matter what is going on in your day. The major reason why we only sense all the Goodness of God with more regularity is simply because of what we talked about yesterday: it is only when we are married that what was His is now ours! So if Heaven is His, when we make that final commitment to Him, Heaven is now ours! When we become “Born Again,” everything that belongs to Jesus, like the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) for instance, is now automatically ours! This peace and joy and righteousness is only ours IN the Holy Spirit. (Ro 14:17) ONLY when we receive Everlasting Life by God’s Grace, through our Faith in Christ (Eph 2:8) can we become ONE with the Spirit and have all that belongs to God.
So if you truly want a life overflowing with all that is good, even in the midst of challenging times, then won’t you stop dating Him, and choose to be married to Jesus?
<>< Peace, Diane
