The Difference is Him

Text: John 10:10 I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

 Main Idea: If you want the most out of life, seek to gain the most out of your relationship with the One who is the Life.

1.  I came to make you qualified for the abundant life.

• Colossians 1:12 The Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.
• John 5:24 He who hears my words and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life.
• Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

2.  I came to teach you what the abundant life is.

• What exactly is life to the full?
• My definition of the abundant life is “the experience of the benefits of a thriving relationship with Christ.”
  • My definition is based on one simple verse: John 1:4 “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”
  • It is supported by Jesus’ words about Himself in John 14:6 Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the Life. By Paul in Colossians 3:4 – Christ is your life.  And again by John in John 17:3 – knowing Jesus is eternal life.
• Jesus didn’t point people to something out there as the life but always to Himself.
• Luke 12:15 “Even when a man has an abundance, His life does not consist of His possessions.”
• But what about the hard things Jesus tell us to do? Those are the things that facilitate our experience of the abundant life because those are the things that nourish our relationship with Christ.
• “What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!” (Romans 6:21).

3.  I came to help you experience the abundant life.

• By the power of the Holy Spirit. “He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you” (John 16:14)
• “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

Jesus’s statement sets before us two choices:  We can believe it or not believe it.

The Difference is Him.  If you want the most out of life, seek to gain the most out of a relationship with the One who is the Life. We cannot always control our feelings, we cannot always change our present situation, but we can always choose our focus. And He is our life-giving target.