Abundant Life

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” – John 10:10 ESV

Life here literally means life, to live, vitality, the simple fact of being alive. It is life here and now, on earth, waking up, going throughout your day and going to sleep at night.

Abundant means: superabundant (in quantity) or superior (in quality); by implication excessive; preeminent (the best there is)

This verse is part of a larger message that Jesus was giving, talking about why he came to Earth and the importance of people and how much he loved them and how his mission was to protect them and save them and gather them all together.

Jesus came to Earth for multiple reasons. One of those reasons was to pay the penalty for our sins, for the wrong things that we have done. One of those reasons was to make it so that we could be reunified with God and so that we could go to heaven and spend an eternity with Him. However, one of the reasons that he came was to give people, to give us, abundant life here and now, life that is full and meaningful and with purpose.

There are so many people who live life in a state of despair or despondency, who feel like life has no purpose and no meaning, who feel like they are just doing what they can to get by, and not really living.

However, that is not what God intended for us. He never wanted us to be miserable. He didn't want life to be melancholy and mediocre. His intention and plan for people was to have a full, beautiful, overflowing, superior, the best possible life that could exist.

In Genesis 1:31 it says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

God could have made the world in any way he wanted. He could have created us in any way He wanted. The world could have been a barren landscape that left people in misery and desperation. He could have set Himself up as the sole beacon of light in a dark and terrifying existence, essentially forcing humanity to love Him. He could have made us as robots that had no choice but to follow and obey, but He created an existence that was abundantly beautiful and fulfilling and offered Himself as the most beautiful and fulfilling thing within all existence, asking that we live with Him in abundance, not out of fear or obligation, but out of choice.

When Humanity chose to reject this, to reject Him, we invited corruption and fear and disease and death and mediocrity and have been struggling against it since, but Jesus came to give us life in abundance, as we were meant to have. We still live in a broken, messed up world, but He offers hope and love and life within that world, here and now, and promises an eternity in paradise. We just have to choose to embrace that, to embrace Him.

Since He is perfect, and He is Love, and He is Life, anything apart from Him will be imperfect, flawed, a semblance of life and love, but not as it was intended, as is possible with Him.

So, I encourage you today, live a life of abundance, a life that is full and overflowing, a life that is representative of everything God is and everything He offers. Don’t just survive, but experience an abundant life with the one who is the Author of Life.
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