“… and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20: 31b)
This truth about what life really means: a deep heart connection with our loving Creator, needs to be wholesomely absorbed. For some of us, the notion of “life” can seem a bit gruelling – too many daily challenges, health problems, financial worries… and I can relate to all of that. But when we step aside and sacrifice space to just ‘be’ with the Lord, there comes a wonderful reassurance that we have found life in him.
As I wrote that, I had a picture in my mind just now, seemingly out of nowhere, about Lucy, one of the fictional characters in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S. Lewis. In the story, she hides in a wardrobe and stumbles out the back of its interior into the completely different world of Narnia, where she finds Aslan, an allegory for Jesus. Similarly and using that fictional moment as an illustration, we need to stumble out of our world, find that space to seek truth and then open the door to find life: our Lord and saviour.
Jesus once said: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” It is an overwhelming comment and our calling is to heed his words seriously – understanding who he really is. Yesterday I was reading about the woman who pleads with the Lord to cast a demon out of her daughter (Mark 7:24-30). Healings recorded in the New Testament often involve Jesus commanding evil spirits out or taking physical action to resolve a health problem – placing his fingers in a deaf man’s ears, for example, or telling the ‘legion’ to flee into pigs. However, in this instance He simply tells the mother, “… for such a reply, you may go: the demon has left your daughter.”
Just think about the fact that Jesus Christ is so powerful that demons flee when He says it’s ALREADY happened! He doesn’t command the demon to go. Neither does He tell the little girl, in this instance, to get out of bed. He simply states the healing has been done. It has already been confirmed and actioned. It’s almost daunting to realise just how authoritative He is.
That is why when we are told that life is “in his name” and that He came to give us life “to the full,” we need to really, really listen to what He is saying and take that seriously. Open the wardrobe door, like Lucy in Narnia, push through the clothes to the back to find the place where he, life defined, inhabits: “And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off.” (from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S Lewis)
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