Life in Abundance

This evening, I was reading the first few chapters of Genesis as I was preparing a lesson plan for a class I am teaching tomorrow morning. I think that the majority of us know the first story of Creation in which God creates the entire world and all the animals and then creates Adam and fashions Eve from him. But in the second chapter of Genesis, we hear another account of the story of Creation. And as I was reading this chapter, I was struck by verse 7 in particular. This verse reads "The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being". Very clearly this verse points to a simple reality: our life is in and from God. God breathes life into us. And if this is true, then the thought that must follow is that without God we do not have life.

And as I sat and meditated on this verse, I was brought to humility by the reality of my own experience of faith. Every day, God is attempting to renew and strengthen his life within me. At every moment, he is trying to breathe life into the dead places of my being. He invites me to receive his very self that I may be continually awakened and enlivened. But the truth is that every day I attempt to survive without him. As he tries to breathe his life into me, I run from him with face covered in rejection of that life. I don't want to be formed by him. I don't want his breath. I want life outside of that which he offers.

But it doesn't exist. C.S Lewis once said that "God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." And we can go even farther than this. We cannot have life apart from God because it is not there. There is no such thing.

But the beauty of our faith is that in a world of people suffocating from their own disobedience and pride, God continued to reach out. And he did so through Jesus Christ who says to us in John 10:10, "I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly". Jesus is our ultimate source of resuscitation. In our mere survival, Jesus invites us into the fullness of life that can only be found in the Father. As we gasp for air, dying in our own ignorance and sin, Jesus reminds us of our true source of life.

So the question is: in what ways are we willfully turning from the life that God wishes to breathe into us? How are we seeking our own survival? What areas of our life have become dead and lifeless because of our rejection of God, our source of life? Today, may we beg the Holy Spirit to shed light on the dead areas of our life that need to be awakened by the breath of God. May we humbly approach the Father and recognize the ways we flee from his invitation for life. And may we give thanks to Christ whose mercy and sacrifice allowed us to have life more abundantly.