Life and Light
These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John 20:31 NIV
C.T. Studd, the famous Cambridge cricketer and missionary pioneer, wrote the following couplet while still a student at Cambridge:
Only one life, ’twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
Life is a glorious opportunity if it is used to condition us for eternity. If we fail in this, though we succeed in everything else, our life will have been a failure. There is no escape for the man who squanders his opportunity to prepare to meet God.
D. L. Moody said, “Let God have your life; He can do more with it than you can!” Moody also said, “A holy life will produce the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns; they only shine.”
Look again at John’s words (quoted above): “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” I trust that you have believed in Jesus and accepted Him as your personal Lord and Savior; if not, I urge you to do so today. But have you discovered the truth of the second part of that verse, that in Christ, we have life—not just physical life but life in all its fullness, as God intended it to be?
People today try to find happiness in a multitude of ways: wealth, prestige, education, sex, drugs, physical health, entertainment, relationships—you name it. Most of these aren’t necessarily wrong, if we follow God’s laws concerning them and keep them in their rightful place. But true life, life that gives eternal significance to everything we do, comes only from putting Jesus Christ at the center of our lives. Is He the center of your life?”
Our Father and our God, thank You for making my soul immortal too. When I think of eternity in heaven, I can see the rainbow of hope around my future, and I can feel Your comforting hand holding mine. Thank You for hope, Lord. I pray through Jesus, who is the anchor of my soul. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).