The Abundant Life

       When I was a student at Fuller Seminary in the 70’s, one of my friends discovered a surefire way to stir up conversation at a quiet table in the dining hall.  He would suddenly put down his fork, turn to one of the women students and say: “I don’t understand about this women’s movement thing.  What do women really want?  What do you really want?” 

        That question guaranteed at least a half hour of good conversation.  But the question is more than a conversation ploy.  It is an important question for both women and men.

        What do we really want?  What do we expect from Jesus Christ?

        The way we interpret Jesus’ promise of an abundant life in John 10:10 and David’s phrase “I shall not want” in Psalm 23, reveals what we want out of our lives.  We sometimes take things that are mere desires and think of them as genuine needs.  I mean how did people ever survive and live meaningful lives without microwave ovens, home computers, cellular phones, plasma T.V.s and my own personal favorite, Tivo. 

       Well God is not in the business of meeting our inflated, destructive, or peripheral desires.  But he does promise to meet all of our genuine needs, spiritual, physical, emotional, and social.  Jesus said that this is why He came, that we may have life and have it in abundance.

       A psychiatrist at a state asylum was intrigued by a patient who sat huddled in a corner all by himself, scratching for hours on end.  The doctor addressed the patient gently and asked: “Why do you stay huddled in a corner all by yourself, scratching?” “Because,” said the man in a world weary voice, “I’m the only person in the world who knows where I itch.”

       The Bible says that our Lord also knows where we itch.  He knows our needs as individuals and he knows the needs we share with the rest of humanity.  And He is capable of meeting all of these needs.

       He has a big job cut out for himself in the modern world.  “There’s a vague emptiness within the heart of modern man.”  That’s what Dr. Carl Menninger says.  He says: “It may sound surprising when I say on the basis of my own clinical practice, as well as on that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the late decades of the twentieth century is emptiness.  By that I do not only mean that people do not know what they want.  They often do not have any clear idea of what they feel. When they talk about the lack of wholeness and lament their inability to make decisions, difficulties which are present in all decades, it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants.  Thus they feel swayed this way and that with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty.”

       Do you know anybody like that?  People without a center?

       Dr. Robert Audrey has written:  “I feel a restiveness in man, a dissatisfaction of a universal sort.  The average human being, as I judge, is uneasy.  He is like a man who is hungry, gets up at night, opens the refrigerator door and doesn’t exactly see what he wants because he doesn’t know what he wants.  He closes the door and goes back to bed.”  Then the whole process is repeated.”

       What we want and what we need, is to know that, despite it all, everything is okay.  We need to have a center.  We need to know that we belong.  We need the knowledge that somebody cares for us.  And the cross where Jesus Christ laid down His life for us demonstrates the reality that someone does indeed care.  The arms of the cross are the open, loving arms of God.

      “A few years ago I saw a marvelous piece of communication on a subway wall in New York City ,” writes Bruce Larson in No Longer Strangers.  “The subway walls are irresistible magnets to graffiti artists of all ages, people who come to draw pictures and scrawl messages: some of them obscene, some sad, some funny.”

       “An advertising poster showed a very austere, proper older gentleman recommending a product and someone, perhaps a little boy writing the dirtiest thing he could think of, had sketched a balloon coming out of the man’s mouth containing the words: “I like grils.”

       “Underneath, someone had written with a felt-tipped pen, “It’s girls, stupid.  Not grils.”

        “And below that, in still another handwriting style, someone else had added the plaintive question: “But what about us grils?”

       We all feel like grils sometimes, out of step, imperfect, not quite fitting in.  This is why the twenty-third Psalms speaks to us so forcefully.  Sheep are the grils of the animal world, and it is when we most feel our grilness that we are most aware of our need for a shepherd.

       From his own experience as a shepherd, David tells the benefits of being under God’s watchful care.  He writes: “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”  Jesus echoes this promise in John 10:9 where He says: “I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

       Sheep will not lie down unless several requirements are met.  The implication of the Psalm is that God meets these needs in our lives.

       First of all we must be free from fear.  Sheep that are fearful are restless, discontented and agitated.  They walk around but they won’t lie down.  It is the security of being with the shepherd that puts the sheep at ease.  They have seen what the shepherd can do.  They know they are protected.

       Sheep also will not lie down unless they are free from friction with other sheep.

       Jesus makes it clear that jostling and shoving for first place has no place in Christian community.  You will not find worldly rivalry in any fellowship where the people are keeping their eyes on the shepherd.  For they know that in the end, only one opinion counts and only one rating matters.  It is the shepherd, Ezekiel writes, who will judge between sheep and sheep.  And the standard He will use is the standard of servant hood.

       Knowing this sets me free from slavery to “looking good” and “impressing the other sheep”.  For if I know that Jesus is the one who judges, and I know that Jesus has accepted me, and I know that Jesus can make me stand, then I don’t need to run around looking out for ol’ number one.  I can lie down in green pastures.  I can trust him to do what he has promised to do.  I can leave the other sheep alone.  David declares that our shepherd provides the food and the water we need for life and productivity, and that He also enables us to enjoy them.

       Still speaking as a sheep in the shepherd’s care, David then affirms, “He restores my soul.”

       The Hebrew word for soul also means life.  The word restore often has a physical or a psychological sense.  David pictures here the deep and continuous renewal of the man or woman who is under God’s care.

       But why is David’s statement in the present tense, “He restores my soul.”  Can’t we assume that anyone in the good shepherd’s care could never become so distressed in soul as to need restoration?

       No, we can’t.  David himself faced depression, tasted defeat and fell into temptation.  David was well acquainted with the bitterness of feeling hopeless and without strength in himself.  He knew that restoration is an ongoing need.

       Some people seem to believe that when a child of God falls, when he or she is frustrated and helpless in a spiritual dilemma, that God becomes disgusted and fed up.  Sometimes churches act this way on God’s behalf.  Hurting people are seen as an embarrassment.  But this should never happen in a church that is faithful to Jesus Christ.  For Jesus, the head of the church, has the same identical sensations of care, concern and compassion for hurting men and women as a shepherd has for his sheep.  He is anxious to help, to save and to restore.  He does this with tenderness, love and patience.

       David knows and affirms what God can do.

       But we know something that David couldn’t have known.  We know that the shepherd himself became a sheep.  He experienced the confusion of identity we all experience.  He experienced the shrinking away from the hard path as He prayed in the garden.  He knows what it means to be human.

       We know, as David did not, that our Lord knows what it means for us to be who we are.  And we also know, as David did not, that our shepherd has Himself tasted the bitterness of death.

       For not only did the shepherd become a sheep, but as a sheep laid down his life for the sake of and in place of the sheep.  Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

       And we also know, as David did not, that our shepherd is the one who has experienced the fullness of the promise: “He restores my soul.”  Jesus laid down His life for the sheep, and, on the third day, God restored His soul, raising him in glory with the promise that He will also raise from death those who belong to Him.

       This same Lord Jesus is the one who leads us.  “He leads us,” David says, “in paths of righteousness for the sake of His name.”

       Do you know what that means?  It’s vitally important.  It means that Jesus stakes His reputation on our eternal security and happiness.  Jesus has bound up His own honor in fulfilling all of the promises He has made to us, including the promise of abundant life.  The glory of Christ’s own name is at stake in Him completing the good work He has begun in you and in me.  He guarantees His work.

        But at the same time, the Bible is very realistic.  It is not a book of “life as we wish it were” but of “life as it is.”

       David affirms to the Lord: “You lead me in the paths of righteousness.”  But this affirmation is coupled with the recognition that some of these righteous paths take us where we may not wish to go, places like the valley of the shadow of death.

       Jesus said in John 16:33: “In the world you have tribulation.”  And no matter how we work the deck, we can’t shuffle that card out.  Jesus makes this clear: “In the world we have tribulation.”

       In other words, Jesus says, the paths of which He leads us are righteous, not because they are smooth or easy, but because they are the paths we need to take to reach our destination.  We can’t be airlifted.  We have to walk.

       The Bible does not gloss over the very real problems of living in this imperfect and incomplete world.  From the first family producing the first murderer, through the wars, famines, slavery and wilderness wanderings of Israel , through the heresies, tribulations and persecutions of the church, we see that God knows that life is not easy.

       The Bible does not present a fake view of life.  Life is harsh and demanding and sometimes cruel.  The Bible is very realistic.  There is much in life to fear.

       But the Bible also affirms that we who belong to God cannot hit ultimate bottom.  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, or the Evil One, for you are with me.”   It is when we are in the valley that we most need the awareness of the Lord’s personal presence.  There are many fears that haunt us in this valley of death, fear of what happens to the body, fear of judgment, fear of the loss of sensation, fear of loss of “self”, fear for our survivors, fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of separation from those we love.

       It is here that David assures us that we can be most confident of our Lord’s strong presence, when the light fades and we find ourselves in darkness.  The Lord is with us in all kinds of darkness, in times of depression, serious illness, rejection by friends, the horror of discovering the sickness in our own hearts, as well as the experience of death itself. 

       This is the hope of Christian people.

       A number of years ago the young wife of a good friend was diagnosed as having terminal cancer.  My friend later shared with me how they sat in the doctor’s office as he revealed the results of the lab tests and the exploratory surgery.  An office nurse stood outside prepared to administer a sedative to help them cope in the face of the terrible and unexpected news.

       But the sedative was not needed.  My friend’s wife nodded to the doctor and said that she understood.

       The doctor was not prepared for her lack of anger and denial.  He knew that she must not have heard what he had said.  He began once again: “your tests conclusively show…”

       She stopped him.  “Doctor, I understand what you’ve told me. I have cancer.  It can’t be treated.  I am going to die soon and I will experience a lot of pain before I go.”

       The doctor sat there in silent surprise as she continued:  “I’ve always known I was going to die.  You have only given me the date.  And I also know who will be with me and will walk with me to the other side.”

       Grief is natural for the Christian.  But so are trust and hope.

       David then speaks of an experience that would not be shared by a sheep:  “You anoint my head with oil.”

        A sheep’s head doesn’t need to be anointed with oil.  It’s oily enough without outside help.  But David is aware that God has shown him great honor.

       There is a story about a little boy at school.  He was supposed to bring a copy of his birth certificate for school records, but lost it along the way.  He went to his teacher and sobbed:  “I lost my excuse for being born.”

       God says that we don’t need an excuse for being born.  He honors us.  He makes us joint heirs with Jesus Christ himself.

       David knows this about God.  He declares in grateful awe:  “My cup overflows.”

       Sheep don’t have cups.  But people do.  We are not sheep.  We are God’s creations in His own image.  We share in his creative potential and in His shepherding responsibility.  Our needs are much more complex than the needs of a sheep; to create, to give, to love.  We need challenge and meaning for life.  And David points to God’s extravagant provision for us.

       We have a great future.  “We will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

       And when we arrive, what will we find?  C.S. Lewis insists that our biggest surprise is that God will not look strange to us.  We’ll have no faintest conception till that very hour how He will look, but when we see Him, we’ll know we’ve always known Him, and we’ll realize with a start what part He has played at many an hour in our lives when we thought ourselves alone.  That fleeting sense we’ve often had of someone friendly nearby will be explained.  That central music that sings through every moment of happiness, and then evades our memory, will be recovered for we won’t say to God when we see Him “Who are You?”  We’ll say, “So it was You all the time!”