Rebuilding a blessed life.
BRIMMING WITH LIFE!
delighting in life
- Shocking truth
- Hard way vs easy way RE-DEFINED
- Pride is what makes Christianity hard
- Life is hard, but it doesn’t have to be harder
- What to expect according to the Bible when we pursue this kind of good life
- Worldly happiness vs God’s blessed life
- 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?
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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?
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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.
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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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