Day 31

“No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.” — JOHN 6:46-47

God has placed a sense of eternity into our hearts. It is something that exists outside of ourselves which we have a hunger for, and God has placed that hunger within us for very good reason. 

Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “The dust returns to the ground it came from and the spirit returns to the God who gave it.” In other words, the body is finished but the soul is not. When I lived in Zimbabwe, it was in the home of a very godly couple who taught me so much about the Christian life. One day, they were brutally attacked in their home. The husband was badly injured, but survived. Tragically, the wife was killed. On her tombstone, they had written, “Here lies all that can die of Jill Tracey”. The implication here is that there are parts of Jill Tracey that cannot die, so don’t look to her burial site for them.

Scripture is very clear about a post body existence. Paul says in Philippians 1:23, “I desire to depart and be with Christ which is better by far.” Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you shall surely be with me in paradise.” Inside each of us is something that thinks we ought to be around forever. God has placed that sense of eternity into our hearts because He has made provision for every man, woman and child to be the recipients of everlasting life with Him. 

There is a difference between eternal life and everlasting life. Eternal life has no beginning and no end. God, alone, has eternal life, but everlasting life presupposes a beginning and has no end. The gift that has been given us is the life of God, the Spirit of God Himself, and when He comes to indwell us, we become the recipients of everlasting life. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 

God did not create us to live a temporary existence but an everlasting one. That sense of eternity in our hearts is answered and satisfied when we have reached outside of ourselves; when we have fixed our eyes on Jesus, and discover we were not meant to live apart from our Creator. We are meant to live in the fullness of Christ by His indwelling Spirit, whereby we are united to Him, reconciled to God, and glorified with Jesus in a life everlasting.

PRAYER: Dear Precious Lord, what an amazing gift You are! Everlasting life with You! Thank You for being my Lord and my Saviour and for giving me everlasting life with You.

TO REFLECT UPON: Have I given thought to my everlasting life with Jesus that’s already in progress? Do I realize what a monumental gift that is? And how does everlasting life with Jesus affect my daily walk with Him?