YOUR ABUNDANT LIFE
You just barely got through a life’s test, and now it seems that another one is coming up. Your semester not going well? Father sick? Your contacts hiding from you? And when will that allowance come? Its just one after the other! Are you sure God loves you?
Consider the life of Paul. Paul lived a full life—but not with the kind of fullness that we’re thinking of. Second Corinthians 11 tells us he does not look like he was bored while being stoned (once), shipwrecked three times), beaten (three times), and whipped (five times). In fact, at one point he was in such despair that he wanted to die (2 Cor 1:8 ).
The apostle gives the carnal-minded Corinthians a glimpse of the abundant life. He told them that he had been condemned to death. He was hungry and thirsty. He lacked clothing. He was beaten and now had nowhere to live. Even with his established ministry, he was forced to work with his hands. He was reviled, persecuted, slandered as the filth of the world. What a terrible, uninviting path Paul walked down. One would think that he would put up a sign saying “Don’t enter here.” However, he did the opposite. He told the Corinthians to imitate him (1 Cor 4:9-16).
How was it, then, that the apostle Paul knew God loved him? What did he look to for assurance of God’s love for him? He didn’t look into his lifestyle, because to the untrained eye, it didn’t exactly speak of God’s caring hand for him. His “abundant” life was certainly full, but it wasn’t full of what we might think it should have been if God loved hIm.
Picture Paul, lying half-naked on a cold dungeon floor, chained to hardened Roman guards. You look at his bloody back and bruised, swollen face and you say, “Paul, you’ve been beaten again. Where are your friends? Demas and the others have forsaken you. Where is your expensive chariot and your successful building program? Where is the evidence of God’s blessing, Paul? What’s that? What did you say? Did I hear you mumble through swollen lips that God loves you?”
Now picture Paul slowly lifting his head. His blackened, bruised eyes looked deeply into yours. They sparkle as he says two words: “The Cross!” he painfully reaches into his blood-soaked tunic and carefully pulls out a letter he had been writing. His trembling and bloodstained finger points to one sentence. You strain your eyes in the dim light and read,
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, emphasis added)
Christ's sacrifice was Paul's proof of God's love, the source of his joy, and thus his strength!
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modified and taken from The Way of the Master
R. Comfort
Subject: Everything about Memorizing Verses, Chapters and all 
Wed Sep 27, 2006 11:29 am
