“I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:9-11)

You Can’t Handle An Abundant Life Unless You’re Born Again

So, you want an abundant life; then first of all you must come to understand the truth that mankind does not deserve anything from God but death for our rebellion against Him. And no, that doesn’t sound pleasant; but spending an eternity in conscious torment in a literal place Jesus Himself referred to as Hell sounds just a bit less pleasant, doesn’t it? One must come to God on the narrow road of following Christ; complete surrender, no questions asked, or go your own broad way with the esteem of self: “I want what I want and I want it now,” which ends in Hell.

Those are your choices. And I tell you in the Lord that anyone who promises you otherwise like the Emerging Church rock star pastor Rob Bell is lying to you. This online apologetics and discernment work Apprising Ministries has been documenting for you how doctrinal lines continue to be erased with great rapidity in what’s becoming The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD). I’ve already warned you that evanjellyfish is only just beginning to pay a heavy price for its foolish embrace of the sinfully ecumenial Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church—which has now grown into a full-blown neo-liberal cult operating within its walls.

Evangelicalism was already infected with the spiritual cancer of the semi-pelagian (at best) Church Growth Movement (CGM), which was released by its host Fuller Theological Seminary, and quickly metastasized throughout the church visible. And part of the price being paid is how deeply the CGM arm of the Emerging Church has carried its new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology—aka “big tent” universalist Emergence Christianity—into the bloodline of the Purpose Driven/Seeker Driven mainstream of the visible church.

Under the guise of the postmodern Humpty Dumpty language of “missional” in came the new man-centered missional mantra summed up as follows, which has become the new gospel:

God loves you so much that He created you for a great purpose. He offers you hope and a wonderful plan for your life. So you need to discover the dream that God has placed in your heart and unlock your destiny.

He wants you to follow the lifestyle of Jesus and learn His ways enabling you to be a co-creator with God because we’re the King’s kids. Then together we will help Him make the world a better place, just as God dreams for it to be.

But you then say: “God wants me to have life and that more abundantly.” Let me ask you honestly, just who is it that’s saying He doesn’t? However, God’s idea of an “abundant” life e.g. for Jim Elliot and Nate Saint was for them to be murdered by the very people they were trying to reach for Christ. That ended up being their driving purpose; this was how these “followers of Jesus” were missional in seeking the best life now that God could give them. Still want to be a “Christ-follower”; or more accuarately, a Christian?

Then let’s consider the great Apostle Paul’s abundant life from his own testimony:

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Corinthians 11:23-28)

O and now let’s look at the greatest abundant life ever lived, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Who is only God Himself in human flesh. The Father’s idea for His “abundant” life was for all of the disciples of His only begotten Son to abandon Him; for Christ to be brutally crucified and punished for our sins. So away with all this seeker sensitive rubbish; this centered on self and man-pleasing infomercial gospel of pseudo-Christianity! Don’t listen to all this irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20).

The Spirit prompts me today and so I come before you with a Word from God; and this is what I hear the Lord saying — “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you” (Psalm 50:21). But now in all their great human wisdom men like Rob Bell and Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren think that mankind is just too sophisticated for the “old-fashioned” and horribly “out-dated” preaching of Christ on the Cross and then letting God the Holy Spirit do His work so that it is God alone Who receives the glory?

Friend, let me ask you: Do you want to come to the Master’s table through some supposedly better life that you believe you’ve lived and for what you think is upon that table? Or, rather are you coming to Jesus whether there is anything nice for you in this life on His table or not? For you see, the absolute truth is that your abundant life will only begin when you as His slave, who is deserving of nothing, have the Master Himself as your only desire. And there’s something that’s worth meditating upon.

See also:

ON THE FEAR OF GOD

WHERE ARE CHRIST’S SOLDIERS?

WHY DOES GOD ALLOW FALSE TEACHERS?