Monday, June 5, 2023
Is There More to Life?
Yes, joyful are those who live like this! Joyful indeed are those whose God is the Lord. (Psalm 144:15 NLT)
Before I became a Christian at age seventeen, I was sick and tired of this world. I had been raised in a home without God. I didn’t have anything to overcome as far as obstacles to the Christian faith because I knew nothing about it.
I had been to church a few times with my grandmother, but what I heard never really penetrated for the most part. I was truly godless.
As I watched the adults in my world, I saw affluence and all the world had to offer. But I also saw how miserable they were. So, I went out on my own path and experienced enough to see the emptiness of it. And by the time I was seventeen, I knew that life as this world offers it is empty. Coming from a broken home and a disillusioned generation, I was searching for meaning.
My question was not so much whether there was life after death. It was whether there was life during life. Was there more to life?
Then I heard about Jesus Christ. I heard one of His statements in which He said, “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT). Jesus not only offers life after death; He offers life during life. And that got my attention.
I noticed that Christians seemed to have found meaning. They weren’t doing the things I had been doing, and they had contentment. And when I became a Christian myself and started reading the Bible, it came alive to me. It was the user’s manual for life that I’d been searching for.
The world offers a fleeting happiness that comes and goes. But God offers a happiness that will be there despite our circumstances. This happiness doesn’t come from what you have; it comes from who you know.
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