Tag Archives: John 10:10

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It has been said that after this New Year’s Eve, every pronunciation of the year “2021” will sound like an admission that “2020 won.”  While I admit 2020 seems like confirmation of Jesus‘s words in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble," the encouraging reality is in the second half of that verse: “but take heart! I have overcome the world.“ This year has brought division, discord, disease, and depression, all evidence of a competent destroyer, which seeks to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Still, you and I have the assurance that 2020 did not win, the world doesn’t win, the destroyer doesn’t win, and whatever struggle you are facing today doesn’t win either. Jesus did not say that he may someday overcome the world, or that he will overcome the world, but that he has already overcome the world. It’s done. “It is finished” (John 19:30). The great tribulations we endure here on Earth serve to refine, prove, and prepare us for our divine graduation, so long as we do not give up (Galatians 6:9). 

Let this next year be the “twenty-twenty-first” year of our Lord rather than an announcement of defeat. 2020 did not win! Christ Jesus is still Lord! He has overcome racism, hatred, disease, isolation, grief, and hopelessness. In this world those things will still exist, but you and I can take heart, because they don’t win.

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I’m hurting. My spirit is dark and my heart is heavy. I felt like a liar every time I told someone this morning that I was doing fine. If you think missionary wannabes don’t have dark periods, I’m proof they do. The one who steals, kills, and destroys is busy in the lives of those who seek to do Kingdom work! Our Bible study this morning addressed the first of the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit...” (Matthew 5:3) and I was overwhelmed with a familiar relationship with that description. 

The way I relate to it, poverty of spirit is the recognition that, without a Savior, all I have, am, will, or do amounts to precisely NOTHING. It is the “bottom” from which I can look up and say, Lord, lift me up, fill me, and be my everything. It is the point at which, according to Jesus’ first sermon, blessing begins. 

In recovery circles, this recognition is Step One to building an arch through which to walk into the sunlight of the Spirit. Some of you know that I am recovering from an eating disorder. Today I recognize again that, while I serve the god of my selfish appetites, I am spiritually bankrupt. Absent a vital connection with Christ and His life-giving Spirit, I am powerless over sin and selfish desires, and my life is unmanageable without God’s influence in it. 

The glory of the proclamation of this Beatitude is that the blessing begins here. Though, in my darkness of spirit, I may best relate to Noah in a torrent, Shadrach in a furnace, Daniel in a lion pit, Jonah in the depths, Lazarus in his grave, or David the Psalmist whose waves and breakers had overwhelmed him (Psalm 42), every one of those stories ends in deliverance — a deliverance that is promised to me too when I live in the life-giving grace that God, through Christ Jesus, breathes into us one moment, one breath, one day at a time. 

Today, I die again to self, because the idol of self-service is lethal, and I call again to my Creator, “Breathe into me once more Your breath of life, and hold me close in Your grip of grace.” I place myself at His feet in the knowledge that He will gently lift me into His embrace. 

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 NIV)

May the abundant life for which Christ came to deliver to us be yours as well, as we each draw His next breath of life. 

References: Genesis 2:7, John 10:10, Matthew 5:3, Psalm 9:13, Romans 16:18, Genesis 7:17, Daniel 3:26, Jonah 1:17, John 11:43-44, Psalm 42:7, 11, Galatians 2:20 (Read all)