You have been struggling in your walk with God. You wish to walk more closely with God at your side. You want a life of victory and one embellished with plentiful successes. Within your heart, you have been yearning for much more than you’re experiencing. This article then is for you.
By Khen Lim
Living what
we Christians call a fulfilling life is one of the greatest of desires
for all Christians anywhere. Even so, many perhaps forget that your life’s
victories are what Jesus desires for you. Remember John 10:10, where Jesus
says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that
they may have life and have it to the full.”
This life that Jesus describes is available to all of
us Christians. He never meant it to be exclusive where only few are privileged
to enjoy. Indeed God wants this to be our very lifestyle.
I have a friend in Australia who once told me that he
asked his father how important it was for him and his mother that all six of
their children graduate since both of them had only early high school and not
much else.
His
father’s response shapes the inspiration upon which this article was written.
Growing up, his father lacked much of what we had. He
didn’t have toys and when he did, they were handed down by someone else. And obviously they did look very much secondhand. He would also make his cricket ball from trash liners and old newspapers that were then covered with cotton yarn
and duct tape while the bats were made from off-cuts picked up from building sites.
His father literally walked to school sock-less and barefoot through
the summer. During the wintry seasons, he had shoes from the Brotherhood of St Laurence op shop but they had either very thinned out soles or pocked with holes that had to be covered with cardboard in order to walk through mud and slime.
In his adolescent years, he worked in the early hours of the morning before
school delivering newspapers, borrowing a rickety push bike from the nearby milkbar he worked for. And then after school, he would return to his employer for other types of work like delivering groceries around the 'burbs. After that he would then get back home
to his chores. After eighth grade, he quit school so he could toil 8-10 hours
shovelling coal, not to mention a daily night stint. All told, that was 16
solid hours of work a day.
Listening
on, the father said, “Tom, I’d always wanted far better for all you
kids. I’ve worked with my hands all my life and that’s not why your mom and I
brought you to this world.”
Did you
know that your Heavenly Father wants what is better for you?
Your Father does not desire you to just get by,
spiritually. He does not wish to see you experiencing paltry joyousness either.
Your Heavenly Father does not want your prayer and Bible study to be boring as
well. God deeply desires so much more for you!
Are you tired of feeling a sizeable distance between
you and God? Are you weary of “just showing up for Church”?
Are you not exhausted from the mediocrity in your
“relationship” with Jesus? Have you not experienced far too many defeats in
your Christian walk and not enough victories?
How will you answer these questions:
What is a fulfilling or abundant life for you and by
that I mean, one that is defined in Christian terms?
Can you tell how different that might be from a
‘defeated Christian life’?
What should you then do to ‘enter into’ a walk with
Jesus that our Father desires of us to do?
It would be good to think about these.
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