"A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of." - says Christ in John 10:10 (MSG)
Out there is a world devastated by sin, lives tortured by it; sordid, broken, a world crying out in depression - seeking for life and love in the wrong places. It's an endless cycle of trying to stand up but stumbling again and again and again..... it never ends.
Each individual's life apart from Christ, is most likely similar to being trapped inside a snow globe, it may look attractive and happy on the outside but inside it's - cold, lonely, dull, in need of comfort - you find yourself trying to escape the vicious cycle of the wintery-like-atmosphere and the suffocating-space inside. Unfortunately, you'll find yourself ending up with bruises and injuries because the glass wall governing your snow ball is impenetrable; impossible to pass through. Thus, one becomes devasted, lets out a deep cry of anguish and bitterness, feeling helpless and has no more sense of direction.
Once upon a time, I lived in a snow globe like that. A place of my own, a lonely, full-of-self & empty little world I've created - so cold, so distant, and that no matter where you look or where you try to move, right or left, you're still caught in the same old suffocating space. I try to escape my snow globe, I started finding ways and planned my way out with my own vain efforts, only finding myself even more devastated than before. Not even a single plan worked out, I ended up just the same. What a disastrous cycle.
However, Someone was looking at me, carefully studying everything I've been doing, patiently waiting for me to break down from my self-centeredness and realize He was all I needed - inside that seemingly endless struggle I had inside my snow globe. Losing all of every ways I made up, nothing else worked out. Because of His great love for me, He couldn't just stand and watch me killing myself with methods that would just fail - He made His way towards the immovable, impenetrable glass wall and set me free. He carefully removed the strongholds, sorted out the bondages and chains, and started striking the wall off layer by layers.
Until such time, when He took me out from my own snow globe, then I realized the kind of life He wanted me to experience.
I can never break that wall if He didn't do it for me. I could've tried everything else, all the techniques and disciplines, the strategies and all the amazing and the most intelligent plan man could ever think of, but no... it would always sum up to one thing: I could've never done it on my own.
The impenetrable glass wall, in order to be broken down, required a God-strength and I was no God. I was only a human being trying to break it using my own Human-strength.
And just like that, we've all had similar experiences.
We've all been struggling hard to make our lives beautiful on our own but never really actually realizing that there's more to what He has laid out for us than what we imagined it to be.
The thief's goal is to steal our joy from us, to make us despise our lives, to rob us of our blessed state, to twist the Truth, to put negative thoughts in our minds until we give into them. I bet we could go on listing all kinds without even being aware that it's happening in our lives, too. The thief doesn't only want to cut off our joy, but he intends to actually destroy our true state. He wants to destroy us with sickness, with grief, with doubts, with unbelief, with loss, with self-pity, with impure thoughts - with SIN. He wants to destroy our purity, our ministry, our passion and even our own identity. He kills us with mind-poisonining-lies until we give up on ourselves.
And this is really happening somewhere out there, where sin devastates everyone else.
But Christ came, to set everyone free from themselves, to give everyone else a life they've never had before.
To your left, and to your right, someone else is suffering from the heartaches that is a by product of sin.
So beloved, take heart and don't lose hope, keep spreading the fire and don't dim the lightbecause someone needs it, someone needs you to keep on fighting the good fight of faith, someone needs a reason to believe. They need to know that the Man upstairs loves them, that they deserve more than their present state, that they were bought at a High Cost, that Someone went as much as dying for them to only prove his heart for them, that through him they can have a life that is so much more.
We have to keep running our race with consistency as we allow God to lavish His perfect love in all of our imperfections. We may not be perfect, but Christ already perfected everything else at the Cross, His blood justifies us. We may not be strong enough, but through Christ, we can do everything. We are favored by God through Christ, who lives and dwells in us, and who in return gave us a beautiful exchange - a life better than we dreamed of.
Beloved, never quit praying, never stop believing and continue pointing the lost world to Jesus, because he is the Way the Truth and the Life. - (John 14:16)
