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Follower of One : Missions For The Rest Of Us


A show for marketplace Christians to energize and encourage you to live out your faith every day, right where you are. Begin your day with Christ-centered ideas to share your joy with those around you. Add in weekly interviews with other like-minded Christians so you can share in their joy and learn how they make Jesus visible in their workplace every day.

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Apr 26, 2022

What is eternal life? And what difference does it make?

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thank you for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. We do these podcasts to just give ourselves a shot in the arm as we get ready to go to work each day.

Today, I want to read from John 17:3, "and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Much of what I talk about today is something that I first really understood reading a book by John Ortberg called "Eternity is Now in Session" and the kingdom of heaven, or eternal life, in my opinion, those are two of the same things.

The kingdom that we have, we enter it when we do what God says, a kingdom is where what the king says goes. And so when we do what the king says, we enter the kingdom of God. That was the first claim Jesus made. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And so we experience when we enter the kingdom of heaven when we begin by trusting Jesus and we begin obeying what God says, and that's when I believe our eternal life begins.

Many people, I think believe their eternal life begins when they die. So they die from this life and they go to heaven and they get to live their eternal life. But I believe I live my eternal life when I'm listening to God and doing what he says. When I'm interacting with his people, when I'm praying and serving him. When I'm engaged and talking when I'm recording these podcasts, I believe that I'm stepping into my eternal life a little bit now, as the down payment. As an encouragement, I get to experience this eternity now because I will live there forever. And the joy that I experienced in my work, the joy that I experienced by integrating my faith into what I do every day, that joy is living my eternal life now. That's the idea behind the book. "Eternity is Now in Session," I would encourage you to check it out.

For us today in the workplace, this eternal life is our opportunity to experience the joy that we will experience forever on the other side of heaven, we can experience pieces of it now. When we know God, and when we see him for who he is, I believe we're going to be very blown away. I don't think it will occur to me at that point in time to disobey him. But for example, this morning, I woke up before the alarm clock and I had this instant thought that God wanted me to get up and exercise, yet I was tempted to roll over and stay in bed. I chose today, I don't often choose this, but I chose today to get up and obey him, and I experienced joy because I did what Jesus asked me to do. I believe that's what he wanted me to do.

When I really know God, I don't think I'll ever want to disobey him. When I see him for who he is, I believe I will obey everything he says. In fact, I believe that if we could see him for who he was now, we wouldn't really have a choice. And that's why I believe he's hidden. We have to choose, but when we choose that's, when we get to see him. Because we've chosen to follow Jesus, we have this opportunity to step into our eternal life right now in the middle of a miserable staff meeting, or in difficult meeting with a customer, or a challenging situation with a coworker. We can live our eternal life now by being willing to obey Jesus and to take our relationship with him into those relationships that we have with people. We do this by praying and appreciating others, by knowing what we believe, and by serving others, and by speaking for ourselves. Those are the five daily activities that we talk about in Follower of One.

And Follower of One is an online community. It's designed to help each of us challenge one another to live our faith on a full-time basis. Why not check it out and join us at https://community.followerofone.org. Thank you for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for bringing your faith with you wherever you go. Our faith matters. When we step into our eternal life, it becomes visible to the people around us, and hopefully they'll want to join us there too.

Thanks very much.