18 Nov The God Life and How to Live It

You don’t need to be a Christian to have good life. Plenty of my friends live a great life without God. They are well educated, hold successful jobs and live in beautiful homes. For the most part they enjoy happy and contented lives even with a few bumps along the way.

In our Western world, it’s not difficult to have a good life. There are common-sense decisions we can make, self-help books to read and plenty of resources to make use of. We are blessed in this country with prosperity and opportunity. Even with a bad start, you can turn things around if you work hard and make some good choices.

But God has a very different life for those who choose to follow him. It’s a good life but it’s far from an ordinary life.

Listen for God’s Voice

Abraham was living what you might call the good life nearly four millennia ago. His life was prosperous and successful, and in his time could be described as ‘normal’. That is until God spoke to him… Genesis 12:1-3 tells us that God saw a different future for Abraham. He promised Abraham would be blessed, have a new home in a land of great significance and become the father of a great nation.

The ‘God life’ starts like that. Once we begin a relationship with God, we need to hear him speak about our lives. God does nothing without first speaking it (Amos 3:7). His words are powerful and contain the supernatural ability to fulfill themselves. They have the power to change circumstances, transcend time and override the natural world. When we listen to them, they initiate a life that is no longer normal. It is a life marked by the supernatural. A life undergirded by faith and vision, where impossibilities become easy and limitations are laughable… It’s a place where dreams reach far beyond our human imaginations. It’s a good life, but it’s far more than good.

Leave Behind the Ordinary

Though Abraham had signed up for the God-life, he was still tempted to live normally. Even after we hear from heaven, the God-life is challenging because it demands we do things differently. God had promised Abraham that a nation would come from him, but he and his wife Sarah were too old to bear even one child. So Abraham did the ‘normal’ thing and followed the custom of his day, sleeping with Hagar his maidservant. Naturally it worked, with a son Ishmael born soon after.

But it was a mistake of course. The promises of God are never fulfilled in an ordinary way. When God’s word eventually came to pass for Abraham, it wasn’t in the ordinary way. Isaac was born the result of a promise (Galatians 4:23). So miraculous, it was laughable. Here was the tangible hand of God breaking through normal circumstances and providing unforgettable witness to the reality of God.

We can all live a good life. But if we listen to the voice of God and respond in faith to what he says, we will see God intervene in ways we could never dream. We will see the miraculous hand of God on our lives and experience a wow-factor that nothing can compare with.

I love the good life, but I’m signed up for something far more extraordinary. What about you?