Today I want to share with you a story that I found in my reading. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the motive — the moral of the story — is true, and it’s very, very powerful. I read of a Union soldier, following the Civil War, who had been very badly injured. In fact, he was on crutches and unable to really hold down a job. So he would go from town to town and beg in order to survive. But he always boasted of his friend, Mr. Abraham Lincoln. One day as he was in a particular town, a skeptic came up to him and said, “You know, sir? I don’t think you really know Mr. Lincoln.” At which point the Union soldier said, “No, I have a letter from him, and it’s signed by him personally.” The skeptic said, “Let me see it.” And the old man pulled out the letter and said, “I’m not much on reading, so I don’t really know what it says, but I know that signature, and that’s Abraham Lincoln’s signature.” He handed the letter to the skeptic, who opened it up and read it, and said,
”Oh, my goodness! Sir, this is a pension signed by Mr. Abraham Lincoln! He has made you rich. It's a really good pension!
I don’t know if that’s a true story or not, but it provides a wonderful illustration for us of what I think happens to a lot of Christians. That man didn’t know what he had!
I meet a lot of Christians who are just like him; they think that when they received Jesus Christ they got a ticket to Heaven. That’s a wonderful thing, and I don’t ever want to demean it, but Christianity is so much more than that! If you don’t understand that Christianity is more in the here and now, and in the time between now and the time you go to Heaven, what’s going to happen in the meantime? Well, in the meantime, it’s going to be a mean time, because you’re living in a fallen world that you were never designed to live in with your own resources.
That's what this story is all about: We have so much more than we realize.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul tells us that Jesus Christ has made us rich! We have been granted everything that pertains to life and godliness; we have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter). 1 Corinthians 6 says we are in union with Jesus Christ. He not only gave us forgiveness, He gave us His own Life to be lived by us as we trust Him by faith.
There’s a fascinating thing in the book of Ephesians — I think the Holy Spirit anticipated that this phenomenon of not knowing what we had was going to happen — because in Ephesians 1:3-14 Paul spends 11 verses telling us some of the Glory that we have. We have redemption. We have adoption into the family.
We are accepted in the Beloved, chosen in Him to experience the treasures of the New Testament.
We have forgiveness. We have understanding of the plan of God. We have been given the Holy Spirit as a down payment of our inheritance… Now that one boggles my mind! How can you have God as an inheritance of more to come, if you can’t ever get more of God? I think the only explanation is that God is so big we’ll never exhaust Him! Think about that. All of this is what you have! But then Paul does an amazing thing, he prays that the Ephesian Christians would understand what they have.
We’re just like that Union soldier. I call it the Indy 500 syndrome: the car flies right by us, and we miss it. My friends, don’t ever assume that you have understood, and are walking in, all that God longs to be to you.
We need a revelation of how big God is, because as big as we think He is — He's bigger! And He offers to give to us out of His bigness.
Father, I pray for all those who read this, just as Paul prayed, that You would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation to have the power of the Holy Spirit open their minds to think the way You think about them, Father. May they be able to understand the height, length, breadth, and depth of the love that You have for them and be filled with the fullness of Christ. And now to Him who is able to do it, to Him be the glory. Amen.
Have a great day and walk in awe, wonder, and anticipation of what God is going to teach you. Bless you, now.
