Beware of Seeking Fake Happiness

John 10:1-30
The thief has come only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come
that they might have life and have it more abundantly.
 
There is a real concern that those who have received eternal life through faith in the Lord Jesus can miss living in the true daily experience of it.  The passage refers to those that are the sheep of Jesus, but there is a danger of being robbed, fooled, and deprived when we discern wrongly about choices and pursuits in life.  Jesus came that our lives now would be first and foremost influenced, even dominated by His life lived through us.  Jesus not only gave His life for us, but He gives us His life right now (Gal. 2:20). Some have mistakenly used this verse as a promise or an entitlement and expectation of material things, but this perspective makes our lives unstable, fleeting, insecure, and most of all spiritually unfulfilling.

When our lives are dominated and influenced by the inward life of Christ, we are not ruled by pursuit of anything that takes the place only designed for our personal connectedness with the Lord Jesus.  It is this sense of lacking fulfillment that sets us up to begin to develop pursuits and attachments that become adulteries and idols of the heart.  These never fill the true needs of the soul, but give the delusion of fake happiness.  They are like the sheep that eats poisonous grass just because it is green.   Jesus’ sheep have been given the capacity to live and enjoy the fullness and the freedom that He provides to each one that believes on Him.

Prayer: Lord you are my shepherd, my protector, and the keeper of my soul.  I thank you for every provision, and I pray today that you will help me to always see your guidance into the paths of righteousness for your name sake.  In your name I ask these things, amen.

(by Pastor Wayne Cockrell)