ave you ever asked yourself, "How do I really experience the abundant life that the Bible talks about?" The answer to this question is summed up in Hosea 4 where God lays out for us His three essentials for living the Christian life.

God's Love

      Since our birth, everything within us wants to feel loved, to be satisfied, and above all, to be needed. It doesn't matter if we are married, single, widowed or divorced, we are all desperate for this kind of love. In essence, we have designed our own definition for what we want love to be. Love, as God meant it to be, however, is a supernatural Love. Supernatural because God's Love is not a human love or a human feeling, but God Himself loving through us. All He desires from us is the willingness to set ourselves aside so that He can love His Love through us. Thus, we must know and experience God's Love in order to truly live the abundant Christian life.

God's Truth

      What exactly is "Truth"? Truth is when what we say and what we do match and become one. A person walking in God's truth is someone who is genuinely "living" Christ's Life-genuinely showing forth His Love. He is not just talking about Christ, he is actually manifesting Jesus' Life in his daily actions. Romans 12:2 tells us, however, that the only way we can live the truth is by having a renewed mind. No matter how many Scriptures we read, how often we attend church or how much we pray, if we don't know how to renew our minds on a moment-by-moment basis, our lives will still have the same problems, the same failures and the same defeats as before. Therefore, we must know God's Truth in order to live an overcoming life.

An Intimate Knowledge of God

      So many of us talk about intimacy with God and we exhort others to it, but how many of us really have that daily, personal, intimate union with Him that the Bible talks about? Intimacy with Jesus means sensing His presence continually-knowing He is always there beside us, no matter what is going on in our lives. Even though we all long to have this kind of intimacy, many of us have, instead, settled for a pale imitation of Christianity. We declare that we are willing to pay the price for a deeper relationship with Him, yet writhe in agony when He begins to rearrange our lives. Until we learn to let our precious alabaster boxes be completely broken and let Jesus' Life be formed in us, we will never fully experience the intimacy and oneness with God that He desires.