THINK ABOUT IT 8-11-23
FINDING FULFILLMENT
I love the following true story told by Pastor Tom Goodman:
Newlyweds Doug and Sylvia Whitt were not impressed their honeymoon accommodations.
Their wedding reception had gone late into the night, and it wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that they made it to their hotel room.
They had booked what they thought was a fancy honeymoon suite. But when they walked in the door, all they saw was a sofa, a table, and some chairs. They found the sofa had a hide-a-bed with a lumpy mattress and sagging springs.
The next morning, the new husband went to the hotel desk and gave the management a tongue-lashing.
The clerk asked, “Why didn’t you open the door and see the rest of it?”
Doug went back to the room. He opened the door they had thought was a closet. There, complete with fruit baskets and chocolates, was a beautiful bedroom.
Some of us might say our Christian experience has been a lot like that. We’ve been living in a cramped little room and we’re calling that Christianity. There is so much more to life with Jesus.
We open the door to more life with Jesus when we understand what it means to be “in Christ.” That phrase and close variations of it show up 164 times in the New Testament. We tend to use the word “Christian” to describe ourselves today. But while that word only shows up three times in Scripture, again and again Paul preferred to describe us simply as people who are “in Christ.”
Marinate your soul in this truth—and, yes, the word “marinate” is the right one. It’s not enough just to hear this truth once or twice every now and again. We have to soak in it. We have to sing songs about it and attend Bible studies about it and reflect on it in personal devotion times and remind each other about it.
