What Makes your Heart Come Alive

I love amusement rides. What I don't love is standing in those long lines just to get on the ride. The ride is what I am waiting for, wanting to experience, but which takes longer? (the long boring line) What is over so quickly? (the exhilirating ride) While I wait in these long lines, my heart is aching to hurry up and get on that ride and experience life to the max. Most of us are willing to wait ridiculously long amounts of time for a few brief moments of "LIFE". Jesus was talking about the kind of life He desired us to experience and why He came, but it came as a good news/bad news announcement. John 10:10 "The thief comes to rob, kill and destroy..." get us in the long lifeless line we call life. He robs us of what God truly wants us to experience, he kills our desires and hopes and he destroys within us the longings we have to make a difference, to make our life count. So maybe we experience life every once in awhile like God intended, but like that ride it's brief and then we hop back in another lifeless line where we spend the bulk of our lives. We were called to be aliens, not to imitate the others, this is not our home, this place robs us and kills us and destroys us. We become like cattle/sheep following the one ahead of us doing what everyone else, in a line that is going to eventually slaughter us.
But Jesus went on to say at the end of the verse "but I have come that you might experience the life I intended for you to live, one that overflows (not just trickles). There is a constant (sometimes second by second) battle going on between the life God intended and the one we settle for. God says we must "be alert, always standing firm for the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour." Alert! What, we must be alert? Absolutely! But do you feel alert most of your life? Or more like you do when standing in those hideously long lines? Now since God truly loves us and wants the best for us, I don't think it included the long lifeless life. But the overflowing, live life to the full kind. Can it be done?
That's next!