THE GOOD LIFE

The Good Life: What is it?  Let me guess... It’s having all the money you need, with a nice house, financial security, travel, and friends (you will surely have people around you with all that money!)  It’s health and little to no worries.  It’s having a voice where people stop and listen.  It’s sounding good, looking good, feeling good, but.... is this really the good life?  How much would you give for this kind of life?  Most people I believe would say “Everything!”

Jesus had no place to even lay His head. He was financially dependent on others -- supported by several wealthy women and friends. He didn’t look good and probably didn’t smell very good either.  He spent most of His growing up with at least six siblings in a disrespected poverty-laden village learning how to work with wood.  He had a voice at first but later was disrespected, left alone, betrayed, persecuted, and murdered. How many want a life like this?

Questions:

Who taught you about living?  Where did you learn how to live? When did you buy into how you are living now as the way to live out the rest of your life?  What have you discovered about life and it’s meaning and purpose?  What is (to you) true living?

Dallas Willard in his book “The Divine Conspiracy” believes that the Sermon on the Mount can be divided into two parts, answering the following 2 questions: 

• 1)What is the Good life?  (Matt 5:1-21)
• 2)Who has it? (Matt 5:22-7:24)

Christians, he says, for the most part consider the primary function of Christianity to be admittance to heaven.  Willard refutes this "fire escape" mentality by exploring the true nature of the teachings of Jesus, who intended that His followers become His disciples.  He taught that we have access now to the life we are only too eager to relegate to the hereafter.

Consider what is missing in this Good Life:

Pride; wrath; lying; lust for more and more and....; life of misery; animosities; bad will for others; jealousies; grudges; evil desires; uncleanness; covetousness; shame; guilt; hypocrisy; filthy language; fornications; inward frustrations; controlling spirits; fear of being different; fear of being persecuted; fear of death.

Consider what is included in this Good Life:

Joy; humility; love; hunger for good; freedom from the rat race, self, & other’s expectations; purity; desire for your fellowman’s highest good; rejoicing and serving even in the midst of suffering; and experiencing THE FLAVOR OF GOD AND THE LIGHT OF GOD ON THE EARTH!

Consider these Good Life promises:

Partaking of the kingdom of heaven (now); comfort; inheritance (now); satisfaction; mercy; having a personal, indwelling, transforming, and empowering relationship with God (now)!                                                   

Do you have the Good Life?  Are you pursuing Jesus and HIS lifestyle?  

God is good.  Mr. Steve