Fullness of Joy Part 2
Life is one of John’s core themes in his Gospel and 3 letters that is directly associated with Jesus. Jesus is presented as the Light of life, the Water of Life, the Bread of life, the Resurrection and the Life, the Word of Life, and in this verse He is the eternal life that was with the Father and was manifested to the apostles. It’s out personal experience with this life that was manifested to them in Jesus, that they shared the Good News. This was the experience of Peter and John in Acts 4 as they gave witness to the risen Christ before the Sanhedrin. As this group of Jewish leaders, who were the same people responsible for having Jesus crucified by the Romans, looked at the boldness of Peter and John, the Scripture says in Acts 4:13 that “…they realized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13b NKJV. In other words, they marveled at the boldness of Peter and John, because they knew that they were speaking out of having personally experienced Jesus. And this is what happens when you recapture the wonder of experiencing Jesus. When you recapture the wonder of experiencing Jesus, you’re moved to…
SHARE JESUS OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
As a teenager, and on into my twenties, I used to work for both food and clothing retail stores that offered me an employee discount. The company’s idea behind giving this to me was to encourage me to eat or purchase the brand so I could sell it out of having a personal experience with it. And this is what happens naturally when you recapture the wonder of experiencing Jesus; you begin to share Him out of personal experience with Him!
Now, you may be hearing this and saying, “Yeah, ok CJ, but John was an apostle who personally and physically encountered Jesus. Of course he would be awe struck. I don’t have that same privilege today.” And while I hear what you may be saying, John recorded Jesus, Himself, saying to Thomas, who believed only after seeing and handling the risen Christ, “…Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29b NKJV. This gentle rebuke to Thomas is telling us that we too can know, encounter and experience the real risen Christ enough to believe in Him, though not physically seeing Him, and are even more blessed for doing so!
So how do we practically and personally experience Jesus now? Jesus, the Word of Life, said in John 5:39-40 that all of Scripture points to Him and by coming to Scripture to find Him we receive life from Him. Then in John 6, Jesus describes Himself, spiritually speaking, as Bread to be taken in and digested. Then He tells His disciples the words that He speaks to them are spirit and are life. What we discover here then is that when we pray, read and meditate on Scripture with Jesus as the central focus, in order to digest or internalize Him, the Holy Spirit leads us to practically experience Jesus in a way that’s life giving. It’s in this daily experience that you begin to recapture the wonder of when you first received Jesus. And when you begin to recapture the wonder of experiencing Jesus, it’s then that your heart is moved to share Jesus organically with those who are in your circle of influence. And the best way for you to share Jesus is to tell your Jesus story or your testimony, which, whether you were raised in church or not, is essentially your life before Jesus, how you heard the Good News and received Jesus by faith, and what is life like now having trusted in Him. I even highly recommend writing it out for your own benefit and clarity when you get the opportunity to share it. You want to become so familiar with your Jesus story that you can share the short version of it whenever asked.
However, John also wants you to know that sharing Jesus from personal experience leads to something wonderful, which we discover in verse 3…