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This series has been huge for me, and I hope it will be for you as well.  I believe there is a God-given desire for significance, to make a contribution to this world that matters, that there is a quality of life that you are only scratching the surface of.  I believe God has been calling me to go deeper throughout this study, and I believe He is doing the same for you.  You were meant to live for so much more; you were meant to live a life of significance, to make a unique, eternal contribution to this world.  But the fact is that not everyone knows where to find this life of significance.  Not everyone looks in the right place.  Like this man, for example.  Maybe you read in the Courant yesterday about an Australian performance artist named Stelios Arcadious, who had an ear implanted on his arm.  I’m sure Stelios will get his share of attention for at least a little while, but something tells me that this was not the life of significance Jesus was talking about.

The Bible reveals that there is a quality of life available to all that is beyond anything you can experience apart from God.  Jesus called this quality of life eternal life.  I’ve been making the point that the concept eternal life, “aionios zoe,” is more than just life after death; it’s a quality of life, the eternal kind of life, that you can begin experiencing in part now.  In John 17:3, Jesus defined eternal life as essentially knowing God – having a relationship with Jesus.  That is where this eternal life is found.  That is where every aspect of your life, from mothering to work to chores, can take on significance when it is done in relationship to God.  This is good news for those who did not know that you could know God, and it’s a reminder to everyone that at its core, Christianity is a relationship with God, something that you can never reach the depths of.

Of course, it raises questions, like how do you enter and experience this eternal life?  Last week I talked about Jesus’ message was “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”  Matthew calls it the kingdom of heaven, Mark & Luke use the Kingdom of God, and John uses “eternal life” or “life to the full”.  Jesus’ message was that He was Emmanuel, God with us, and in him God was accessible in a way that had never before been possible.  Turn from the way you’ve been living and tap into His love and power, forgiveness.  In Jesus, you begin to experience what God intended in the beginning and what he intends to do in the end.  At the end of time, all diseases will be healed, all hatred replaces by love, all injustice corrected with perfect justice, and when you enter His eternal quality of life, you begin to experience that in part.