A Full Life


I have come that you might have life in all its fullness. John 10:10

After 12 years of living high rise apartments, we recently moved to a ground floor flat with a small garden. We were really happy in the high rise apartment with our lovely view down Hong Kong harbour which I was reluctant to leave, but I didn’t realise what I was missing in other ways. I now enjoy being able to walk out into the garden and water my plants and feel my bare feet in the grass. To sit and listen to the birds in the trees is just wonderful.

It is like that for people who don’t know what it is to find freedom in Christ. They are happy and comfortable in their lives, they don’t see a need to change until they take that step of faith and enter the new life in Christ. The difference is like night and day. They didn’t know what they were missing.

Like me with my garden, I didn’t realise that I missed being able to just walk outside without waiting for the elevator to take me down 8 floors, take a walk across the road and into the park. It isn’t that I was unhappy in my high rise living, it was good for that season of our life and it served a purpose as well as providing me an illustration for me to write about!

Not everyone feels the need to be set free from their current lifestyle. Some are living “the good life”. For them it is difficult to see that there could be more or something better for them. For people in hopeless circumstances it is easier to desire more to life, but we all need more because we are created as eternal beings. We need the spiritual life to be awakened within us in such a way that will enable us to begin a new kind of life that will take us safely through death to eternal life with God. That takes an active shift – a decision to move from one place to another. Jesus called it being ‘born again’ of the Spirit. Like me with my house move, we don’t get to appreciate the difference until we make the move by faith. It is only once the spirit within us is awakened that we experience the joy of abundant life which brings a growing freedom that we never knew before.

I hope that this has been your experience but if it hasn’t I invite you, even urge you to pray the following prayer which will make that shift for you.

Prayer: Dear God, I want to move into that dimension of full life that the Bible speaks about. Thank you for Jesus who died so that my sins could be forgiven. Please forgive me and come into my heart, waken my spirit. Help me to walk in relationship with you so that I can find freedom from the things that spoil my life. Change my heart Lord God I pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen