The full life!

Hey family,
This past Sunday we have been talking about the full life, the life that BRIMS OVER with good days!  And I wanted to remind us on this midweek day to continue to have right expectations as we walk towards our full life closer and closer each day (or farther and farther) depending on your choice.

What is freedom?
Have you noticed that some days you “fall” and you feel so guilty?
Or so bad that the rest of your day is to be in a mood opposite of rejoicing?
You think “this sucks.”
I was there yesterday.
If we all live by God’s grace, why do we still try to earn His approval by obeying Him?
We will never be perfect at obeying God.
Expect that.
Also, Jesus obeyed God perfectly on our behalf (for us), so that we wouldn’t have to.

Now where does that leave us in our imperfection?  Where does that leave us in our relationship to Jesus.  Is He someone you love and trust knowing that He obeyed perfectly for you?

The question might arise:
“What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?”
- Roman 6:1

“Absolutely not!
How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
- Romans 6:2

It sucks because we know sin sucks!  Sin makes us greedy, unloving, fearful, and leads to all kinds of actions and thoughts that dishonor the God we profess to love!  It makes us feel divided and numb.  So why would we want to just keep on living in sin if there was a way out?  And not just a way out, but a way free-way out? (Get it? Hehe)

It leaves us in freedom to choose what sort of life we will pursue....FREELY WITH JESUS.

But of course there are some facts about the choices we decide to make.

It’s like a kid wanting to bake a delicious cake.  But instead of the required ingredients they want to use mud, sticks, and pebbles...because that’s all they have and it’s all they really know.  It’s familiar materials to them that they have played with and even enjoyed before.

So when Jesus comes along and says “let me help you make a delicious cake with materials you may not have or are not familiar with” the child might question Him.  Because Jesus is showing the child a new thing.

Let’s say the child decides to give it a shot.  But because his hands are small and stubby whenever he tries to crack the egg, the shells crumble into the bowl. Or whenever he tries to measure a cup of flour it spills on the ground.  The child is so frustrated!  “I can’t do it!”
This inability to do what Jesus says in order to make the cake makes the child feel hopeless, inadequate and quite frustrated with the whole ordeal.  This child doesn’t like feeling like a failure, but this child also wants delicious cake!

If we ended it there, does this story mean that if the child then uses his original plan of mud, sticks, and pebbles he will get the delicious cake he wanted?  Obviously not.

But to continue the story, we know that Jesus does not leave the child to “get it right” on his own.  Instead Jesus, who has baked this delicious cake before knows exactly how to make it—and not just how to make it but He makes it PERFECTLY delicious.  Then, what He does is He guides the child to learn how to grip the egg, how to measure and transfer the flour, and how to make this perfectly delicious cake for the child to enjoy with Jesus!  There are countless spills along the way, many bags of flour end up on the floor, and the batter is far from looking ready, BUT the child and Jesus are having a ball!  The child also notices little improvements here and there that bring him hope that he’s well on his way to being able to make his delicious cake!  So long as every slip up doesn’t bother him, but rather is used to show him where he could improve he is having a ball!  Because the child is making a delicious cake with Jesus who, every time the child’s cake fails, gives him a bite of His own.  So the child knows and realizes “Yes!  That is the kind of cake I want to be able to make too!”

However, it will take time because Jesus wants to teach the child to know how to make the cake not just make it for him.  So that, at some point the joy that Jesus has in being so familiar and confident with how to make the cake will also belong to the child.  The point of being perfect at it.  The child thought that the joy of being familiar with mud, sticks and pebbles was awesome...but Jesus knows it is limited—soooo limited!

Because the law shows us the way to a better life (it was written to make us perfect—like Jesus who fulfills it perfectly!). Jesus chose to live by the Law, the Psalmist David always saw the Law as so perfect and good, and if I can now have the Law (though it takes a process of living into it with the newfound help of God’s Spirit in me...then I choose the law!  Not because I can achieve it on my own, but because Jesus achieved it (ultimately) for me, and because it is good and His Spirit is helping me be like Jesus!  The law leads to our new life!  But we don’t get it by being good at it off the bat, we get it by following the leading of the Holy Spirit like the child having a ball baking the perfectly delicious cake!  The only rain on our parade is when our pride fails to recognize that our inability is part of the process.

“This means that, no matter how you feel, if you are a follower of Jesus you are never truly stuck. The Spirit is doing a million things in your heart and with your life, and while the theme song of your spiritual life may seem more like “Another One Bites the Dust” than “We Are the Champions,” you are indeed growing.

So we see that the Spirit is committed to making us more like Jesus. And in doing so, the Spirit is committed to making us more like the people we were designed to be.
The Holy Spirit is making us more like Jesus and at the same time more like our true selves.”
- Jared C. Wilson, the Imperfect Disciple

When we are our true selves, that is the full life, brimming over my loves!  We get there not by ourselves, but with Jesus, so have a ball with Him today!

Jmegrey

Christianity is easier

Rebuilding a blessed life. 

BRIMMING WITH LIFE! 

delighting in life

1. Shocking truth
2. Hard way vs easy way RE-DEFINED 
3. Pride is what makes Christianity hard 
4. Life is hard, but it doesn’t have to be harder
5. What to expect according to the Bible when we pursue this kind of good life 
6. Worldly happiness vs God’s blessed life 
7. Where do I begin? 

“The easiest thing in the world is to be a Christian. 

What is hard is to be a sinner. 

If God is real, if He is good, and He really does love be us then that means He made us to experience our best lives under His conditions.  Therefore...

Being a Christian is what we were created for. 

The life of faith has the support of an entire creation and the resources of a magnificent redemption.

“FOR THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S, AND ALL IT CONTAINS.”

• 1 Cor 10:26

Hard way vs easy way:  re-DEFINED 

In the course of Christian discipleship we discover that 

• without Christ we were doing it the hard way 
• and that with Christ we are doing it the easy way. 

It is not Christians who have it hard, but non-Christians.

If God is in control and He gives us the way for how to enjoy life, who will most benefit from really enjoying life?  

Either God is right in what He says about a life brimming over with delight or everyone can is capable of coming up with their own equally or more better life making God wrong.  There cannot be both.  You cannot say God’s way is right and then also say but people can find the good life apart from God.  You either believe He is God and gives us the ONLY WAY (John 14:6), or you believe He’s not God and we can be our own gods to give ourselves the good life.  

Which way makes more sense? 

That God who made you and all the world knows how it operates at optimal joy (and gives us the manual), or that you or anyone else is smart enough to know how best to live their lives having created neither their life nor having control of what will happen throughout it or after death, tell me which makes more sense?

—-

What makes Christianity hard is PRIDE. 

It’s sheer pride that says:  I can create my own ideal life.  

Sure you can.  But if you profess to believe that God is real, then your ideal life will end up not so ideal.  

We are made from dust...we are specks....but Pride wants to turn dust into gods because it loves to elevate itself above others, even above God.  It likes to think it can come up with its own way of doing life.  To be in control.  

But if we believe God is real, then being a Christian who obeys and follows God is the easiest and best way to live. 

We don’t foolishly try to be above God, but we get all that God gives us: and if He gave us His one and only Son...what good thing would He possibly withhold from us?  

—-

Life is hard, but it doesn’t have to be harder:

Jesus said it: 

“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." 

-Matthew 11:30

David, who in so many ways embodied the intensities and joys of faith, was “richer in blessing than any other Israelite”—a long series of blessings, not without sorrow to be sure, but always brimming with life.

“I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world." 

• John 16:33

Life without Jesus is simply life without hope.  

Have you ever met a hopeless person? 

We call them Debbie downers or perpetually depressed, and in the worst cases: suicidal. 

But when we have our hope in the assured victory of our final destination, it makes going through all the ups and downs a little less traumatic.  We can endure the worst of things so long as we know the end will be okay.  Sure we might feel pain for a while, sorrow, or experience losses, but if we know that in the end all things will come together for our good then even the trials become easier.  

On the flip side, there is no such thing as a life without troubles.  

Troubles in life will happen to both Christians and mom-Christians.  The only difference is that for Christians even the troubles are blessings in disguise since they are only bringing us to our assured victory in Christ.  Whereas the troubles of non-believers leads to their worst fears: death.  

—-

Biblical expectations for a life brimming over:

Blessing leads to sharing life with others

Why does the Bible always teach us so many ways to love others and serve? 

Blessing has inherent in it the power to increase. 

Abundance is to have A LOT. 

“Life consists in the constant meeting of souls, which must share their contents with each other. The blessed gives to the others, because they just have so much overflow . . The characteristic of blessing is to multiply.” 

God will bless the one who desires this overflow, because that is the aim of being blessed.  It is not meant to isolate but to increase through sharing. 

—————————

Worldly happiness vs Blessed life 

We must develop better and deeper concepts of happiness than those held by the world, which makes a happy life to consist in “ease, honours, and great wealth.” 

Too much of the world’s happiness depends on taking from one to satisfy another. 

To increase my standard of living, people in another part of the world must lower theirs. 

The worldwide crisis of hunger that we face today is a result of that method of pursuing happiness.

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Acts 20:35

Live the brimming-over life of awe and wonder not the lie that to have ease, wealth or whatever will somehow lead to your happiness.  It only leads to your emptiness and disappointment.  For who’s joy has ever lasted in having something they got...(honors, money, ease) those joys expire quickly the moment it is gotten.  It’s the thrill of the chase, but the grasp of a mirage. 

Because of the ambiguities of the world we live in and the defects in our own wills, we will not do any of this perfectly and without fault. But that isn’t the point.

The way is plain—walk in it.

It’s just common sense. 

People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question: “What went wrong?”

“If you go against the grain of the Universe, you get splinters.” 

Example: 

All my home appliances or things that I now own, of which I can most enjoy if I take care of them.  

• washer maintenance 
• Dryer maintenance
• Once a month cleaning my new dyson vacuum filter 
• Once a year calling the filter guy for clea, drinkable water
• Every six month calling costco to come change my water filter on the fridge
• Hanging the toothbrush head every 3 months to avoid too much bacteria build up. 
• Doing monthly accounting for how much we have saved up for what we can or cannot afford. 
• Deep Cleaning the toilets and bath tub every month to avoid mildew and mold. 

I have a list because I can’t remember all these or the last time i did each one so I know when I need to do it again!  But although it is “work” to do, it is work that leads to the enjoyment of what is mine!  On the flip side, if I don’t follow the manual guidelines, and then ask what went wrong...it’s silly.  I didn’t follow the guidelines! That’s what went wrong.  If I don’t follow them I’ll get hat they warn will happen, damages, mold, breakage, misuse, and trouble.  

Where do I begin? 

Dismantled —> but Rebuilt 

Pain—> but satisfaction 

Tough ——> but blessed 

The world works the other way around. 

Ease and comfort come first and then destructions happens.

Easy way leads to the painful consequences

*The road we travel is the well-traveled road of discipleship. 

• It is not a way of boredom or despair or confusion. It is not a miserable groping but a way of blessing that endures all those things in God’s perfect timing.  We just have to get rid of Pride and let God be God.  

Quotes and notes taken from “a long obedience in the same direction” by Eugene Peterson.

Jmegrey 

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