When we read the words “eternal life,” we tend to think about life unending in heaven. But the essential factor about eternal life is not quantity, but quality. “Real life” is not merely something we will experience in Heaven someday; it’s something we can enjoy now. It is the full quality of divine life lived out in our situations now and increasing in fullness forever. “Real life” is the discovery of God’s program for every opportunity, instead of ours.
Every time we are confronted with a problem, there are two things we can do. In the finiteness of our own intellect and our own human resources, we can try to work out the problem. But the result is always far less than what we desire. Or we can have God’s solution to any problem or any opportunity. In any situation we can say, “Lord, You are in me, and You have come in me to live through me. This situation has been brought about by Your planning and provision. Now, Lord, do through me what You want to do with it.” Then we watch to see what God does, and we become available to God to move in whatever direction God reveals to us.
As we yield to God, we discover God’s program unfolding in that situation. Obstacles become glorious opportunities to display the fullness of wisdom and power of God, who has come to abide within us.
When we read Paul’s promise in Ephesians 3:20, “God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!” we are sometimes led to ask ourselves, “Is that really true? Does God really offer to do for us beyond that which we can ever ask or think at this moment?” And the answer comes back resoundingly, “YES!”
If we are ready to give ourselves to God’s Word, to let it possess us, to understand it, and to obey it—if that which we heard from the beginning abides in us, we also will abide in the Son and in the Father. The experience of that is eternal life, real life—not later, but now!
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