Alive, Obediant And Loving! Series

Now this brings me to where I was right at the start; giant land snails, fishing and holidays and Francis Chan’s illustration?

Lets start with this illustration of Francis Chan’s, now I was going to put my own take on this and I will a little after we watch a video clip of Francis Chan’s illustration. A bit of an intro to this man he is an author and church leader and was previously a pastor of Cornerstone Church in California. Over to him. (YouTube, Francis Chan, eternity rope illustration)

Well being an electrician by trade I thought the rope illustration was good; but what about an extension cord and plugging into the source of life the power that brings us eternal life.

What is it John says about eternal life? “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Life goes on beyond the plug, past our existence here on earth!

And what is we look at the plug end of the extension cord being the physical existence we have here as Francis Chan pointed out would you become so focused on this bit, that you would blow all of this, with God in eternity? (Pulling out the rest of the extension cord.)

But, beyond this; back to the Giant Land Snails and the Fishing and the holiday?

Point A) These giant land snails are great, they are only found in New Zealand and a few Islands in the world, they are mainly nocturnal, they are carnivorous, and they are rare due to the introduction of mammals into New Zealand. They are hard to find even where they live, empty shells can be found reasonably easily but an empty shell is of little consequence – there’s no one home, it void, of no use in nature it contains no life.

People are sometimes like that and within the church there are those who believe all there is about Jesus, some even make up their own interesting theories – what can sometimes happen is that people sometimes end up in this place of not loving God.

Some people come out with all the stuff about God loving them, but still live in disobedience to his word, not loving him, for they don’t obey his commands, for what is it John says ‘if they loved God they would obey his commands’, and they don’t. They are lost, they are not alive.

John in his letter points out something about Jesus, and who he is he says this” for there are three that testify the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” (verses 7&8).

The Spirit mentioned is The Holy Spirit, the water, the water of Jesus baptism and the blood, the blood spilt at Jesus death. As we know the Holy Spirit is God, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory with the Father and the Son. He is witness to Jesus sonship and his divine nature, the witness of Jesus baptism was that Jesus was declared the son of God by the Father and in his death and the shedding of his blood Jesus made a new covenant in his blood for the forgiveness of sins.

Paul in his letter to the Romans puts it this way, “You see, just at the right time, when we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)