January 28, 2024 - How to Experience a New Dimension of Living

John Series, John 6:1-15 HOW TO EXPERIENCE A NEW DIMENSION OF LIVING What brings true fulfilment in life? Once the basic needs of life are met, then what? For many, it is simply acquiring more things, experiences, adventures, and novelties. Some people are looking to discover something new as the old becomes boring. There is a restlessness in the human experience, and it can be only filled with something eternal and not temporal. The wisdom writer in the book of Ecclesiastes easily summarizes it. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. (Ecclesiastes 2:10a) D.A. Carson relates: “Choosing to live in a purely naturalist world, ‘the Teacher (NIV) plunged himself into immense projects, sex, work, pleasure, learning, reflection, unrelenting self-gratification. His conclusion could be the epitaph of secular humanism: ‘Meaningless! Meaningless! ...Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” (Eccl. 1:2). There is, finally, only one way out of the Teacher’s despair: a return to the theistic universe in which he was reared. ‘Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.” (Eccl. 12:1).” The purpose of God coming to our world in the person of Jesus was to give us life to its fullness. So, why do so few experience this dimension of living? It begins when we encounter Jesus and surrender to his amazing love and purpose for our lives. It starts with knowing that we are loved and, out of that, living for a purpose greater than ourselves. John’s purpose in selecting specific incidents and their message is to enable us to come to an important discovery regarding Jesus’ identity and what the proper response to Him should be. When that happens in our lives, it will bring about the kind of future that is worth living. What we are going to discover in John chapter six is not just the nature of Jesus’ identity, but beyond meeting our needs as human beings, understanding the necessity of coming to Jesus on His terms and not just based on what we desire. What Jesus demonstrates is the power he has to meet every need, even with limited resources. We can all identify with having limited resources, particularly when we need to meet a need beyond what we thought was possible. The fact that Jesus more than met the needs, is designed to teach us that our focus must move beyond our materialistic world, or the world we see, which is all temporal. We need to move beyond simply trying to survive in life and experience what God intends for us.  We can easily misunderstand the nature of eternal life as something futuristic in heaven. Still, the reality is that eternal life is a quality of life we can enjoy now. So, how can we experience this new dimension of living?