The Advent of Life – December 23, 2013

Suggested Reading: John 17:1-5

Life is more than our heartbeat and our brainwaves. Life is more than just continuing to breathe and think and move. Real life is more than just existing. All people exist but not all people truly live.

Many of us settle for mere existence. Our culture teaches us that life is what we own. It tells us that he who dies with the most toys wins. The reality is that he who dies with the most toys still dies, and his toys are useless to him. But there is another way, a way to live and never die.

Jesus defined real life, the eternal kind of life, as knowing God. The moment we come to know God, we become spiritually alive; we receive the Holy Spirit, and become partakers of the divine nature. When this happens, we have embarked on the journey of becoming who we really are. We begin to live out our mandate to be the image of God, little representatives of Christ, each expressing our individual gifts and unique facets of the glory of God. Our core comes alive, and we become ever more ourselves as we learn to live and never die, to live the eternal kind of life.

When the baby Jesus breathed His first earthly breath, life came to live among us. Jesus Himself was and is the way, the truth, and the life. He is life made visible to us. He is the source and essence of life. He lived life to the full, showing us what the abundant and full life can look like. It wasn’t a life of material riches, but it was a rich life. He walked our dusty roads, breathed our air, and ate our food. He worked and paid taxes and lived a fully human life, a life fully alive.

He is our model, our older brother, the firstborn in our family. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He made a way for us to follow in His footsteps. We can know God and have real life. Through His life we find life.

Life was born at Christmas.

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Questions:

Have you entered into the eternal kind of life with Jesus?

How can you nurture this life?

How can you get to know Jesus better today?

An Eternal Kind of Life

One of the amazing and little experienced truths Jesus taught is this: He came to give us the abundant life.

It sounds pretty straight forward, but we rarely touch this true life, this eternal kind of life. We often settle for something less than true fellowship with the Spirit, true intimacy with the Father, true identification with the Son. We settle for the humdrum life of this world when infinitely more is offered to us.

Even in Christian circles we redefine the abundant life as something less than it really is. We make it roughly synonymous with the American Dream. We make it about relational harmony or financial security, or access to modern conveniences and creature comforts. The eternal kind of life is much deeper than just these superficial aspects of our lives.

Jesus gives us a glimpse of it when he invited all who are thirsty to come to Him and drink, and then issued the audacious promise that, if we do, the Holy Spirit will bubble up within us and flow out of us. We will be filled to overflowing with the power and presence of God. He said that we would do even greater things than He did.

Is that your experience?

It is rarely mine, but I have tasted it. I tasted it again on my last trip to Asia. I felt God's presence and was privileged to partner with Him. I watched in awe as He revealed Himself too me and then through me to others. I literally saw supernatural miracles happen. I lived for 10 days in the awareness of His presence and power.

Then I got on a plane and flew home. I feared that this trip would be an anomaly and that I had no choice but to return to my normal life. But the real beauty of this trip is that He has come home with me. He has continued to meet with me and to speak to me. He has continued to partner with me and has encouraged me to keep living like this.

So, I am choosing to cultivate the lifestyle that I had on the trip. Less extraneous noise. More time spent intentionally seeking Him. Recognizing my fears and insecurities that keep me from willingly submitting all to Him, and humbly laying these too at His feet.

I am finding that the "mountain top" isn't a place you go, but a presence you cultivate.

I have caught myself returning to old patterns of thinking and asking. I have been distracted by the inane and mundane that calls itself news. I have allowed myself to lose focus and live again as if this world is all there is. I have been drawn to escape or to binge, but my brief forays into the mundane leave me wondering. Why in the world would I choose that when so much more is available to me?

Why do we?