In recent days we have learned that abundant life yields forgiveness– Forgiveness for us and forgiveness through us. What else does abundant life yield to us? Others that immediately come to mind are rescue and redemption.
Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He came to rescue us. So, abundant life yields rescue. Abundant life yields rescue to us, and in turn empowers us to participate in God’s rescue of others.
The way we are rescued is through deliverance. First of all, we are delivered from sin and death through salvation offered to us when we become followers of Jesus. And after our initial deliverance, God often graciously reveals along the way other areas in which we are in bondage. Those in bondage, even saved believers who have opened the door for Satan to trap them in certain areas, will not experience the abundant life Jesus is offering them unless they receive the rescue He is extending to them.
Many Christians have certain areas from which they need deliverance. Mine was fear, especially concerning my children. I used to be bound up in fear, even many years after I had accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. But he delivered me from it, when I finally acknowledged it was an area in which I needed His deliverance.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
Our focus verse tells us that Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy us. So very opposite of why our Good Shepherd comes. What we as believers need to know is…Satan is a defeated foe. His time is short; God’s time (and ours when we believe on Him) is eternal. Our struggles are merely a blip on the screen in comparison to eternity. Even still, God has not merely told us to be patient, “this too will pass”; He has told us to trust Him and He will make us more than conquerors.
Romans 8: 31-39
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today, my friends, know that you are more than conquerors. With this truth, live freely and abundantly. Praying for you today!
Sara
