Play a clip of Stacie Orrico’s music video, "More to Life" – fade after second line
LIFE. The word conjures up a flood of ideas. Marilyn Meberb pushes the buttons of our first reaction to the word LIFE. “Cornered. Boxed in. On our last leg. In a pickle. Between a rock and a hard place. Sitting on a powder keg. Out of options. Nowhere to turn. At the end of our rope. At our wits’ end.” She cites Webster as defining wits’ end as “to have our back against the wall.”
My mother said more times than she cares to remember, "I’m at my wits end!" My two brothers made life very difficult for my mom!
“There’s gotta’ be more…”
Philip Yancey, simply a fascinating author, slaps us awake to reality. He wrote in “Reaching for the Invisible God”, of the senselessness of trying “to explain a life of spiritual ecstasy to a person who spends all day taking care of a cranky, bedwetting Alzheimer’s parent…”
Whether the situation is light, surface stuff or the deep tough stuff, many have been known to feel and cry, “There’s gotta’ be more to life."
God extends to you and me some LIFE LESSONS to help us through!
LAST WEEK – finished the “I AM” sayings of Jesus.
Three spoke of LIFE
- John 6:35 – I AM the Bread of LIFE
- John 14:6 – I AM the Way, the Truth, the LIFE
- John 11:25 – I AM the Resurrection & the LIFE
LIFE has always been God’s design
- Genesis 1 – “Let there be”; “and there was!”
- Genesis 2:7 – breathed into man and he became a living being
- “Never godlier than when you give” has been an oft quoted phrase. Another one is worthy of attention, though I cannot remember the author. It is, “We are never godlier than when we create!”
- LIFE – GOD LIFE – defined: Sensitive awareness of God touching you and affecting your world through His presence.
- Our text is written against the backdrop of an intellectual; a man, Nicodemus, who was a member of the Court that condemned Jesus (though he himself argued in his defense)
- Nicodemus was honest in his questions (“how can this be?” v.9), careful in his interaction – came by night. Not cowardice but intrigued and must give this undivided evaluation.
- Led to Jesus declaring that two things must take place to have this LIFE: (1) People must repent and see their need and 2) there is a Divine part that only God can play. It is called, as coined by G. Campbell Morgan (English- preaching Puritan-raised man), “the regeneration of the spirit of the {person}.”
This LIFE creates controversy and defies reason. It runs counter-cultural to human behaviour and priority. Where we loathe, God loves.
Have LIFE because God and Christ simply chose to GIVE it. Receiving something not deserved – just because…
No small transaction. Renowned author Philip Yancey notes, “when the Son of God became a human being he played by the rules: small towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity.” Meaning: many questions about who the father was. And so, says Yancey, “Jesus the Christ entered the world amid strife and terror, and spent his infancy hidden in Egypt as a refugee.”
Evangelist, preacher and scholar, John R.W. Stott tells us that “our sins were the obstacle preventing us from receiving the gift (LIFE) he wanted to give us. So they had to be removed before it could be bestowed.” God gave us grace before he could give us his gift! What love!!
Let me draw your attention to John 3:16 and the phrase “This is why: so that NO ONE need be destroyed”
Being destroyed does not always involve waiting for “life after death” and find out we didn’t make the cut and are separated from God. LIFE can be destroyed by simply wasting it on personal pursuits and preferences and ignoring God’s design in the process. The Bible calls this CARNAL versus SPIRITUAL living.
Those who are SPIRITUAL or know satisfying LIFE, REAL LIFE, are those who live the way Galatians 5:24 (The Message) speaks of. “Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.” On the other hand, the LIFE destroyed, lost, is called CARNAL. It means this (Romans 13:11-14, The Message): “But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God…Be up and awake to what God is doing!.. We can’t afford to waste a minute…grabbing everything in sight.”
Author Andrew Murray said, “With the carnal Christian, there may be much religion and much zeal for God and for His service. But it is for the most part in human power. With the spiritual, on the other hand, there is a complete subjection to the lead of the Spirit, a deep sense of weakness and entire dependence on the work of Christ.”
Often LIFE is not lived because our priorities are all wrong.
John states further, “By believing in him, anyone can have a WHOLE AND LASTING LIFE.”
There is an experience, though usually brief and short-lived, of an awakening sense of LIFE when we invite Jesus Christ to come into our lives and control our destiny and direct our paths. WOW! Then, reality comes caving in like being in huge hole with ground falling in around you.
We have to deal with reality and reality demands that we have to order and prioritize our lives. Reality demands that we face the facts that life is tough and problems don’t just disappear. To quote the guru and “master” of psychiatry, your favorite shrink and mine, DR. PHIL (don’t tell me guys you don’t sneak a peak at his shows!), “It is important that you understand that the term life can be just as broad and ambiguous as the term happy. Thus, for you to say, “I want to be happy in my life” is so broad as to be completely meaningless. You must be specific in determining where you are and where you want to go.”
I cannot say DR. PHIL did or didn’t have God in mind when he said this. I don’t know where he is on LIFE with purpose and the Cosmic Creator in control. I agree with him though in principle. In following his advice of determining where we are and where we want to go, we have to decide what we’ll do with God’s gift.
Putting God in right perspective is the key to A WHOLE AND LASTING LIFE – the verse says, “BY BELIEVING IN HIM…”
Carol Mayhall is well known for ministry to women as an author and conference speaker. She tells her own story how her “marriage was developing some serious problems, my spiritual life began to stagnate…The reality was there weren’t many big things happening. My life consisted of dishes, dust and diapers. And at that point, God wasn’t the Lord of the everyday for me.” She discovered why this was her reality some time later. Her thoughts are stinging and may hit close to home for too many of us. “I began to realize that…much of the knowledge I had stuffed into my head had never dropped into my heart. Part of my faith was authentic, yet part of it consisted of going through the motions. I was living a routine…”
Jill Briscoe, another woman known for her conference speaking and ministry says the key is honesty. She writes “To make your faith authentic you must be honest. First, be honest when you pray. Second, be honest in your thought life. Third, be honest with your family and friends. Finally, be strict with yourself. Don’t allow yourself to be “shoddy” in your Christian disciplines. Check your lifestyle. If you were watching yourself, would you consider yourself hypocritical? If so, be honest about it – then deal with it.”
- God offers you LIFE - here - NOW
- That LIFE is found in responding to the invitation to be in relationship with Him
