I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: John 14:6
John 14-16 is a major dialog between Jesus and His disciples. There are so many truths contained within the passage it would be difficult to have a single blog about them although Jesus seems to have summed them all up in His simple statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” However, it’s Monday and we are here to discuss and respond to Sunday’s sermon, which fortunately, was on John 14:6.
I was feeling rather ill during the service so I most likely missed something but to me, Pastor Bart preached a fairly tight sermon. Its focus was to answer the question, “What makes you happy?” He said we are often led astray in our pursuit of happiness.
We can have a successful pursuit of happiness by
- Following in the footsteps of Jesus – He is the Way
- Following Jesus in obedience – He is the Truth
- Allowing Jesus to transform our lives – He is the Life
When we follow in the footsteps of Jesus, we see in John 14 that not only can we do the same things that Jesus did, but we can do even greater things. This is a rather powerful statement. After all, Jesus gave sight to the blind, cured leprosy, walked on water, and raised several people from the dead (as we saw last week in the story of Lazarus).
I feel that most of us have very little belief in what Jesus said. Hmm, read that again. Yeah, thats what I thought I said. We who believe in Jesus often do not really believe what He said. If we don’t believe what He said, no wonder we don’t then live a life that follows His footsteps. Lord, I do believe, help me in my unbelief.
When we follow Jesus in obedience, we will find ourselves often at odds with the world. It wants us to smell, look, feel, be one thing. Christ calls us to be something else, people set apart from the world.
The world’s idea of a proper pursuit of happiness is one that is futile. It never results in happiness. Having the right toothpaste, weight, clothing, car, house, food and drink will lead possibly to a brief time of happiness but ultimately, it is named correctly, a pursuit. If we follow what the world would have us do, we can only purse happiness but never gain it. We are like Wile E Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. We never get it.
When we follow Christ in obedience, we have already obtained happiness. The pursuit is over! Ok, sure, there is still going to be nastiness that comes along. But in Christ, we are content no matter what comes our way.
It all comes down to life in Christ for He is Life. If we allow God to transform our lives from what the world defines to what Jesus defines, we will find happiness. Not only will we find happiness, we will bring through Christ happiness to others.
So our challenge this week is to discover where we are pursing happiness that is according to the standards of the world but not of God. If we can find those areas and eliminate them – stop pursing them, we will in turn find that which we are pursing, happiness.