Have The Life! Series

A doctor told one of his patients, “I'm afraid you only have three weeks to live.”

“Okay then,” the patient replied, “I'll take the last two weeks of July and the week between Christmas and New Year's.” (Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky; www.PreachingToday.com)

People want to have the time of their lives in the time they have left. The question is how? How can you really live? How can you enjoy a full life? How can you have the life?

Consider what Dave Barry has to say. He’s a nationally syndicated columnist, now in his 70’s, who has gained a lot of wisdom over the years. Some time ago, he wrote a column called, “Things that It Took Me 50 Years to Learn.”

1st, Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2nd, If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”

4th, There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

5th, Never lick a steak knife.

And finally, a person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (Dave Barry, Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn, www.PreachingToday.com)

That’s pretty good advice, but I think we can do better. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 John 5, 1 John 5, where the Bible tells you how to have the life.

1 John 5:5-12 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life [literally THE LIFE]; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have [the] life. (ESV)

Do you want to have the life? Then you must have the Son. And if you want to have the Son, then you must...

BELIEVE.

You must believe in Jesus as the Son of God. That is to say, depend on Christ as your Lord and Savior. Trust Him to be your Leader in life and Liberator from sin.

First, believe in Jesus as God Himself in the flesh.

1 John 5:5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (ESV)

To say that Jesus is the Son of God is to say that He is God! In Bible days, when people wanted to describe the nature of someone, they would often use the phrase, “son of...” For example, Judas was called the “son of destruction” (John 17:12), because he was destructive by nature and headed for destruction. Joseph, in the book of Acts, was called “Barnabas”, which means “Son of Encouragement” (Acts 4:36), because he was always encouraging somebody.

He encouraged the church in Jerusalem by selling his land and giving them the proceeds of the sale. He encouraged Paul, who at first was rejected by the church, to become a world-wide missionary and church planter. He encouraged John-Mark, a washout in ministry, to become a leader in the First Century church and the writer of one of our Gospels – the Gospel of Mark. Barnabas was called the “Son of Encouragement,” because he was an encourager by nature.

In the same way, Jesus is called the Son of God, because He is, in His very nature, God Himself! He is God in the flesh!

I like the way Steven Smith describes it in his Dying to Preach. He says:

While Christ took on the form of a human, he set aside his rights as God. In other words, all of Christ's time on earth he was always Godlike. When he was tried in Samaria, he was all-powerful; when he was asking questions in the temple, he was all-knowing; and when he was present in a particular place, he was omnipresent. It is simply that he made a choice not to take hold of what was always, and always will be, his—namely, his God-like properties.