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Do you ever wonder why we love stories where an ordinary person discovers that the reality they're living in is a little bit bigger than they thought? A kid finds a whole world of magic hidden behind the world he's always known. Someone wakes up and realizes that reality is deeper, stranger, or more alive than they could have ever imagined.
I think those stories grab us because deep down something in us believes they're telling us something true. Not that there's a secret school of magic somewhere, but that life as we have made it is not quite as flat as we have made it. There's more going on than we can measure, more at stake than we can see, more available than what we may have currently settled for.
What I love about John 10 is that Jesus is telling us exactly that.
"Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber... I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture... The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep... I know my sheep and my sheep know me." (John 10:1-15)
There's a shepherd, sheep, voices, a thief, danger, rescue — but most importantly, Jesus says there's also a life to receive. A kind of life so much bigger than survival that Jesus calls abundant.
Has anyone ever been in a season where you find yourself somewhere you don't want to be, only to discover that God is using it to reveal something about your life you didn't know you needed?
Think of Lightning McQueen — a fictional race car obsessed with winning, who gets stuck in a forgotten town he never wanted to visit. Slowly, the place he was desperate to escape became the place where he woke up. He found friendship, humility, rest, and love — a kind of life he couldn't measure by achievement and speed. He didn't know what he didn't know.
Here's the big idea: Jesus offers a life far bigger than what we settle for. But many of us have lost sight of this abundance, or maybe we never really saw it, and we've settled for functional. We know how to work, pay bills, raise kids, attend church, and look like we're okay. We've settled into a kind of spiritual low-power mode — on, but dimmed, just conserving energy.
But Jesus didn't say, "I have come that they may survive" or "just keep going." He said:
"I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
As C.S. Lewis put it, we are far too easily pleased — like a child content to make mud pies in the slum because he has no idea what is being offered by an invitation of a holiday at the sea. When our imagination for life gets too small, we settle for mud pies because we can't see the sea.
Before Jesus talks about the abundant life, he paints a picture of reality: there is a thief — the enemy of our souls, who hates us and wants nothing good for us. He will stop at almost anything to steal, kill, and destroy every good thing God has for our lives.
But the thief doesn't show up with a name tag — he shows up as a voice. Every one of us is being discipled by voices, whether we realize it or not. Culture says achieve. Fear says control. Shame says prove yourself. Pain says protect yourself. Comparison says keep up. Comfort says avoid hard things.
Like a navigation app, if you blindly follow the wrong voice, you can end up somewhere you never intended. The wrong voice can give you very confident directions to the wrong destination.
The thief's strategy isn't usually to destroy you outright — it's to get you to settle. To steal your vision for what life could be, to kill your belief that more is possible, and to destroy your relationship with the shepherd who makes it all work.
The thief doesn't have to destroy your life — he just has to get you to settle for a smaller one. If the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy. Just because something keeps you occupied doesn't mean it makes you alive.
Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." In the ancient world, shepherding was dirty and dangerous. You slept with the flock; you stood between your sheep and whatever went bump in the night. Jesus says, that's me, for you.
He is not the hired hand who runs when the wolf comes because the sheep aren't really his. Jesus says, "Those are my sheep. I know them. I know their names. I know where they've been and what they've done... I'm not leaving."
It's not a transaction with Jesus — it's a relationship. The thief will always speak to your fear, but the good shepherd will call you by name.
Think about what it means to be called by your real name — not your title, your performance, your ambition, or your worst moment. Something shifts. You stop performing and pretending; you just are.
You cannot live the abundant life Jesus provides while simultaneously believing lies about who you are.
The thief says, "You are what you make of yourself." The shepherd says, "No — you are what I call you. I call you mine. I call you known. I call you loved. I call you seen."
Both voices give directions. Both tell you what to chase, what matters, what you're worth. The thief's road leads to kill, steal, destroy — not as dramatic language, but as the logical conclusion of building a life on the wrong voice. And the scariest part is we usually won't see it coming; it's a slow shrinking until we wake up in the wrong destination wondering how we got there.
But Jesus says, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." The only thing that determines which road you're on is which voice you're listening to and trusting.
"My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me."
The life he promises flows from relationship, not effort. The life is in the following.
So let me push back on the predictable churchy answer — "just spend more time with Jesus." What a lazy, cheap slap in the face to the exhausted mom who only hears one more religious thing she's not good at, or to the only believer at their job who hears one more spiritual task to add to a stressful plate.
Don't misunderstand — prayer, scripture, and time with God matter. But Jesus didn't come to be another appointment on your calendar. He came to inhabit all of it. The goal isn't to escape your ordinary life to find Jesus — it's to stop living your ordinary life as if Jesus is absent. Abundant life is not found beyond Monday; it's a different way of inhabiting Monday.
As I prepared this message, I felt God put a few specific situations on my heart. If any of these land, it's not a coincidence.
To the only Christian at your job — abundant life means doing excellent work without work needing to tell you who you are. It means refusing to be formed by anxiety, ambition, gossip, or comparison, and becoming someone whose presence brings honesty, courage, peace, and dignity into the room even when it's chaotic.
To the exhausted mom — abundant life may not look like adding another perfect quiet time to a silent house. It means receiving your limitations without shame, asking for help when you're drowning, and recognizing that repetitive, unseen acts of love are sacred work. Abundance will find you in your kitchen.
To the spiritually mismatched marriage — your spiritual life is not held hostage by your spouse's participation. You can grieve what you wish you shared without punishing or controlling them. Your joy does not require their agreement.
To the person who can't seem to change — abundant life doesn't look like trying harder. It looks like letting the shepherd lead instead of sprinting ahead of him, and surrendering the illusion that you can fix yourself.
To the successful but empty person — you built the life you were told to want, and the winning didn't feel like you thought it would. You got to the top of the ladder and realized it was leaning against the wrong wall. Jesus is offering you the life you actually wanted when you started climbing.
Abundant life can be found wherever we find ourselves — right here, right now. That doesn't mean our circumstances never need to change; Jesus will always be healing, confronting, and sometimes calling us to courageous change. But this abundant life is not held hostage until everything becomes ideal.
Here's the beautiful and frustrating thing about grace: you don't have to show up, serve, or give. God is not withholding his love until you get back here on a Sunday. But for those willing to actually jump in, it will change things.
The church is not abundant life — Jesus is abundant life. But the church is one of the primary places where Jesus forms us to live ordinary life differently:
This isn't about guilt or shame — in the name of Jesus, any spirit of shame, guilt, fear, or condemnation has no place here. Lightning McQueen didn't find life by trying harder. He found life by stopping, by being known, and by following a different voice.
The invitation today is not to feel bad about your mud pies — it's to lift your eyes and realize there is a sea. This isn't a fix-your-whole-life-in-one-day moment; it's a lift your eyes, there is more, take a step invitation.
For some, taking a step means coming back to Jesus. For some, it means saying yes to Jesus for the very first time. For others, it's returning to regular church attendance, joining community, serving, giving, or surrendering the voice you've been following. For all of us, it's daring to believe Jesus really does have more for us than just surviving.
Tomorrow most of us will wake up in the same life — same job, same family, same unfinished problems. Jesus isn't asking you to wait for another life before you begin living. He's offering you a life inside the one you already have.
"I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly" — not someday, not when everything's perfect, not when you become impressive enough, disciplined enough, healed enough, or spiritual enough. The shepherd is still speaking. The shepherd is still leading. He knows exactly where you are.
Jesus didn't die to make your life more comfortable — he died to invite you into a bigger life than you knew how to want. Abundant life is not a program or a set of principles. Abundant life is the life of the shepherd becoming the life of the sheep. And the sheep follow him — not because they have it all figured out, not because they're the most disciplined sheep in the pen, not because they've earned the right to be led — but because they know his voice, and they trust it.
Abundant life means being known by God, living secure in his care, becoming free from fear and striving, and receiving your identity instead of trying to achieve it.
