In our culture today, it's become quite popular to live out the easy-to-swallow pieces of Jesus' testimony while discarding the rest. It’s too difficult? Toss it out. Too controversial for popular culture? It couldn't possibly be true. Confusing or a bit uncomfortable? Forget it - literally. It's almost a trend, and it's an easy one to follow.
In order to make ourselves happy, we fragment the gospel and take for ourselves the pieces that best fit us without changing our hearts. We like a message that doesn't step on anyone's toes, but the more we seek out who Jesus is, the more we find that Jesus wasn't like that at all. He was okay with contradicting someone or saying something hard if it meant leading them to true, full life.
The truth is, this trend that is even sweeping some churches is fragmenting the gospel - it's splintering it, severing it, to distribute to everyone in part but to none in full. Some of us have, and accept, just enough of Jesus to make us miserable. It’s a pretty simple truth: when we accept only fragments or parts of Jesus and His words, we will never experience true life fully.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10
Yet there’s something about that word “abundantly” - as some other translations put it, “to the full” - that has always sort of struck a chord in my heart, and made it ache with a longing. Maybe it does to you as well - the thought of life to the full, free and bursting with joy, overflowing with hope and vibrant in color and laughter, even with dynamics of pain and struggles and confusion coming into play. Compared to the life many of us feel like we’re living - one of going through the motions, hoping for something true to catch our hearts - life to the full can sound foreign, and enticing. To some of us, it might even sound impossible.
When we decide that because something in the Bible is too difficult that we'll simply disregard it, we reject abundant life, the life Jesus gives. And the confusing, frustrating, messy parts of the Bible that awaken in us questions and discomfort are often where most beautiful truths are uncovered. They take some digging, some time and a lot of prayer, but through accepting all of God's word, we can embrace the fullness of life He offers - and we are so desperately in need of the Giver of Life.
When God breathed into Adam and Eve in the very beginning, as Genesis says, His breath flowed through them and brought them to life, made their hearts begin to beat. Like Adam and Eve, in the beginning, we were truly alive, spirit and body, because of the combination of a beating heart and Jesus in that heart. Yet today it is so easy to live partially alive, with fragments of truth and pieces of joy. While we’re breathing, we don’t know the One who loved and believed in us so deeply that He gave us that breath. The longing to know our Creator, the source of our life is present in each of us - but sometimes we don't know what we're missing until we see it for ourselves.
It’s so easy to pretend or even believe that we’re happy until we taste and see true joy, the true love of God. When we go to a worship service that moves us or hear a verse or testimony that leaves us longing for something more, we realize what we've been missing all along. We could be eating Easy Mac or Ramen Noodles, feeling more or less satisfied, until we behold the man who partakes in a feast.
We can believe we're alive until we see someone truly living; then comes the realization that we are just dead men walking, dead men speaking, dead men groping for any drop of fullness or life. We are empty without Jesus, but we may never realize it until we see what true fullness and full life looks like.
This is the responsibility we have as Christians, believers of the gospel - to embrace His fullness and live it out. What a beautiful responsibility, to live life fully with our Savior! To accept an abundance of life to overflow into us, to flood into our hearts and give us life that is deeper than merely a beating heart. In the dark, quieter corners of our hearts, so many of us constantly look for someone to show us the way to the life we crave - and we crave it so intensely, so fiercely, that words can’t even wrap around it, that acknowledging our need for this all-consuming light would bring us to the point of breathtaking vulnerability. We all look around to take courage in the brave Christ-followers who dare to live as they are called, embracing the fullness of life and God's word even when they're hard or confusing. Empty and searching, sometimes we hardly risk believing that there is more to this life than this weary pretending, more than the hopeless ups and downs, and not only is there more, that there is life unending, a love unfailing: life to the full.
That is why Jesus bids us to come die to our own desires, that we may inhabit life in its fullness or rather, be inhabited by Life in its fullness. Living as a transparent vessel for His overwhelmingly beautiful flood of love will brighten the darkness and wash over others through our very being. When our very breath engages in the atmosphere of heaven and acknowledges the Giver of Life, our beings will speak loudly for the love in which we live. We must die to our dead-man-walking schemes in order to begin to crawl, walk, run, dance; we must remove our masks if we wish to cry, to laugh, to love, to be - to live.
---
Holly Fohr
is a senior in High School in Central Florida. She works as a children's ministry associate at University Carillon United Methodist Church and plays in the worship band on occasion. This past summer she spent in India working with a ministering to students there.
No comments:
Post a Comment