What is it about life that when you are feeling good, that feeling doesn’t seem to last very long, but when you’re feeling bad, that feeling lingers on and on and on? It just isn’t fair, even when you think you’re getting ahead, there always seems to be something lacking. You’ve been created to live in real abundance but, like a dog on a chain, you always feel like the good life always beyond your reach.
Try as you might to get, and to hold onto, the good moments- nice achievements, happy circumstances, milestones, great advances- there seems to be little time to celebrate them before you are onto having to figure out “what’s next?”. At the same time, you constantly battle belittling voices inside and outside of yourself that produce an all too familiar feeling of hopelessness and enslavement.
Such is the reality of living in the world of the Never-lasting where everything in it groans under this weight, the “here today and gone tomorrow” runaround.
So you might ask then, “if that’s the way it is and that’s the end of the story, what’s the point of really striving to make something beautiful out of the struggle of this life?”
Thankfully though, that doesn’t have to be how your story plays out nor how it ends! There is the ultimate Author, One who is from Everlasting to Everlasting, that offers to co-write and co-live your story right now so that these moment by moment chapters of life are filled with His never-ending goodness, extending further through chapter upon chapter that will unfold even through the age to come. That Author’s name is Jesus and He awaits your and everyone else’s response. The great question of your existence is will you ask Him about this offer beyond all offers and then take Him up on it?
This is one of the things that Jesus is doing right now and everything He has done before this has made it all possible to join Him in it. He’s been writing a story since before He created time to have a people, that includes you, that choose to live lives of everlasting goodness with Him. This is a life that overlays and transforms all of the struggles of living in this never-lasting time, as well as preparing us for the age to come when He takes away all of those struggles and their causes.
Right now though, Jesus is freeing people from the chains of the life of lack in the never-lasting and, at the same time, working to help people live in their new found freedom to live in Everlasting abundance. Are you ready to join Jesus in what He’s doing, to be one of those people who co-create and receive “life to the fullest” with Him?
Coaches Corner: How might you like to see your story be woven into the abundance and joy of His everlasting story at this very moment?
Below are 7 Free-doms of Jesus’s everlasting goodness that He wants all people to experience, their story integrated with His, and He promises to personally help you and anyone else who wants to live them out. Each of them represents something that He wants to free you from (Free-froms) and a corresponding something that you can be freed to (Free-dom’s). Each of the Free-froms is part of the never-lasting condition that all people are oppressed by to varying degrees. Each of the Free-dom’s can only come in a full and lasting way from beyond this world. How much better are those things from the Everlasting World, Jesus’ kingdom -Jesus’ doing, the One who is ultimate goodness, inviting us to enjoy Everlasting Goodness with Him!
1. You are set Free-from ever having to feel alone to instead have the Free-dom to experience the comfort and empowering of having Jesus with you every moment of every day. (Book of John 17.3)
Jesus’ great desire is for people to learn to experience Him- to hear what He’s saying and to see what He’s doing which is always truly Good. You are made to join Him in that activity at school, at play, at work, our relationships- everywhere you go and everything you do.
His promise to those who do take Him up on His offer is that He will “be with them always even to the end” and that He will “never leave them nor forsake them” etc. Experiencing Him with you all of the time is something that can happen on a personal level and also together with others who are likewise experiencing Him in the communion of His body which He is the head of.
Whether you’re someone who has taken little thought of Jesus before or you’re someone who has identified with but not “identitied” in Him before, jump in to “taste and see that the all-powerful King is good”.
2.Jesus wants to set you Free-from the tyranny of having to be in charge to, instead, have the beautiful Free-dom to “let go and let God”. (Book of Matthew 11.28-30)
It is an awful burden to feel that you always have to “make it happen” yourself and keep making it (whatever “it” is) happen over and over and over again. Whether it’s making a living or making a success of yourself and others or it’s about making yourself feel good, this becomes an unbearably heavy load with no relief in sight.
Jesus though, in the passage stated above, invites you and everyone who is interested, to come under His sovereign care and partner together with Him who is willing to do all the heavy lifting. This is where Jesus then becomes responsible for providing everything that that you need, which He knows far better than you in every way. Everything becomes clear with Jesus who is perfect Love and Truth as the focus of, and in charge of, your life.
As His precious possession, purchased back by His sacrifice, you are now able to do great things with Him in whatever endeavors He places you in.
With Jesus in charge, surrendered to His way and freed from the chains of self preoccupation, living becomes so much better no matter what outward circumstances occur.
3. Jesus wants you to be completely Free-from guilt, shame, and regret and now instead to live in the Free-dom of complete right-being & goodness, peace, and joy. (Letter to the Romans 14.17)
Imagine a life completely free-from all of those things that have hounded you from your past and present and now replaced by not ever having to prove yourself good enough again. In Jesus now, you can be forever “good enough” in the only One’s opinion that matters. In this Free-dom real life happens and healing from past brokenness takes root. Instead of the incorrect imagining of yourself from before, you now have the free-dom to be who He’s making you to be from now through eternity. Take a moment and ponder, what does that would that look and feel like if you embraced this Free-dom fully?
Let Jesus show you and take you further and further into that New reality.
Now picture not being able to have those negative feelings anymore but instead to be filled with a sense of what it means to live by and in the goodness of Jesus Himself, experiencing His very own Peace which overflows into a Joy that goes beyond what can be described in this world.
Coaches Corner: What would that feel and look like to you?
That’s exactly what Jesus intends to do with you as you truly follow Him.
4. Free-from a distorted view of yourself and of your worth, Jesus can bring you fully into the Free-dom of seeing yourself correctly as He sees you, and then, to live wholly from that truth. (Book of John 10:7-15 and Letter to the Ephesians 2:1-10)
Like a very little child who has not entered into the sad distortions that come later, you can live securely and truly in wonder and your true identity. In fact, Jesus said that to enter into life with Him in His Kingdom now, we must become as little children.
In journeying with Jesus you learn from Him who He truly is and then learn truly who you and others are. The journey only gets better as well in that, as we do so, you become more and more conformed to His very image as you recognize what it is to live in His abundance.
This, and all of the other freedoms, are themselves part of the wonderful abundance that are only found in Jesus.
5. Great relationships are part of the abundant life that Jesus brings where you become Free-from division and discord to where you have the full Free-dom to enjoy and celebrate others. (Letter to the Philippians 2:1-5)
Created to bless (which means to project good to) others, both God and people, is where you will find real abundant living. You and I were never meant to experience being out of sorts with others and now, with Jesus, we can learn the Free-dom of being in accord all of the time in so far as it depends on us.
Life is beautiful when we, together with Jesus, are constantly focusing on and acting out of a desire to celebrate others. Stephen Covey once said, “seek first to understand and then be understood” which can only be carried out best with Jesus. Jesus was the perfect example of this while He walked in a human body and He is now the One who offers to go alongside us to live in the same way.
6. Imagine a life Free-from having being afraid of anything. That’s the life that Jesus promises to help you live and what no amount of money or human effort can deliver. That life is not just being free from fear and worry, it’s expressed in living in the Free-dom of having the confidence to face and do anything, live generously out of Jesus’s generosity, and love without limits knowing Him to be one who loves you that way. (Book of John chapter 14)
There are two sides of fear that Jesus is looking to free you from: fear of losing and fear of gaining. People get all locked up with the fear of losing status, losing their life, losing their security, their job, their dignity, their health, their money, their relationships, their autonomy, not doing things perfect, etc. In their regular nature before letting Jesus transform them with the ability to live in a new nature that He wants to give them, neuroscience reveals that they are five times more effected by these threat fears than the possibility for good things to happen.
Coaches Corner: how have you noticed this tendency in your life and what are the one or two greatest fears that you have faced?
Besides the fear of losing, people also have fear in the area of gaining. Examples of this could be the fear of gaining more notoriety or responsibility or opportunity. This expresses itself in voices inside of yourself as well as from others saying, “you’re not really good enough for this” or “you don’t deserve such things” and, “what if you fail?” These, and others like it, also are fears that cripple and enslave you that Jesus wants to move with you to remove completely and forever.
Being Free-from these limiting fears is absolutely part of opening up the abundant life but what about the incredible power and possibility that Jesus wants to provide to you to confidently walk in the Free-dom of His abundance?
As you get to know Him and about Him more fully, you come to understand that his ability and desire to provide for you is limitless. You also learn that His ability and desire to work in and through you is limitless. You come to know the incredible things that He has done for you that you can have complete confidence in. You come to be able to know what He is presently doing and then get to join with Him “in the action”. And, if that’s not enough, you get to glimpse at what He will be doing in the days and age to come, knowing that you can have complete security and joyful anticipation of an incomprehensibly good future.
Wow! Out of this world abundance now and everlasting abundance to come living with Jesus who is the one source of it. Will you join Him?
7. Many people struggle with a desperation of not knowing why they are here and what their life is for. Jesus most certainly came to see you and all people become Free-from this state and He now works to help you to live in the blessed Free-dom of knowing your purpose and fulfilling it. (Book of Daniel 11:32, Letter to the Ephesians 2:10, Book of Matthew 5:3-16, Book of John 6:27-29, Letter from James 1.5-8)
Thoreau once identified the human condition of purposelessness by saying, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. That is not what Jesus intends for you but rather that you learn from Him what the purpose, individually and in the context of His body, is that He designed you for from before the universe was even formed.
Jesus refers to an evil being that seeks to keep people from their purpose and His life in a statement in the Book of John 10:10 where He also indicates what He came to do for you and everyone else: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
While this opposition exists, Jesus is far more powerful and able to give you His life and enable you to walk in the abundance of it. To do so, you have a part to play in this with Him by pursuing Him in His kingdom first and always. By asking Jesus , listening intently, and doing what He says, you most assuredly do find your purpose and walk in the Free-dom of it. There is nothing so wonderful as this in the entire universe!
Hopefully this framework of the really good and abundant life that Jesus has made possible has aroused your interest and desire to experience and grow in it yourself. My desire is to help you do just that in ongoing writings, videos, coaching, etc. and please let me know what can be most helpful to you?
While this has been a framework to describe what is possible with Jesus, going forward I will help you to know the Source of it, how to truly tap into that Source, and then how to most fully enjoy and share the abundance you’ve tapped into. Let’s journey further together to experience all of these things so that you don’t settle for anything less than all of what Jesus has for you in His-story.