“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it to the full.” – John 10:10
If you’ve been around Cornerstone for any length of time, you may know that our foundational Bible verse – the source of our inspiration behind the work that we do – is John 10:10. Frequently we quote the latter half of the verse when Jesus states explicitly that he “came that they may have life, and have it to the full.” After all, we’re in the business of helping people heal, grow, and thrive (our mission statement!) and our heart’s desire is for people to work through whatever hurt, habit or hangup is impacting their lives or relationships so that they can experience greater joy and satisfaction in life – in other words, life to the full.
It’s from this verse, then, that our second core value is expressed:
Life to the full: We believe God redemptively uses both our joys and struggles to help us experience the abundant life Jesus died to give us.
Wait, what? Let’s read that again…
We believe God redemptively uses both our joys and struggles to help us experience the abundant life Jesus died to give us.
Seeing as how we’re in the counseling field, we know that humans are fickle creatures. We have a hard time with gray. We like black and white. Right and wrong. Yes or no. Anything other than this leaves us in the messy middle, and we experience a tension that our brains want to resolve. And so we – and our clients – ask, “How can life be ‘abundant’ when things aren’t going well? When my marriage is falling apart? When my kid has gone off the rails? When I lost my job? When I got a diagnosis? You’re telling me Jesus died for that? Well that doesn’t feel very abundant.”
Let me tell you a story…
In the early years of Cornerstone, it felt like most things were always up and to the right. We didn’t have much, but we sure were trying to be as faithful as we could with what God had entrusted to us, and things began to multiply. Maybe so we wouldn’t so easily lose heart or get scared, maybe because God knew we needed some wins under our belt to give us the confidence to weather the harder times ahead. But in that season, we didn’t know that. We were simply experiencing the “abundant life” that we thought following Jesus was all about.
Turns out, that’s an incomplete understanding of abundant life.
In case you missed it, John 10:10 also states that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Enter: hardship. Trouble. Difficulty. Suffering. We have an enemy that wants to “devour” us (1 Peter 5:8). And yet, Jesus came that we may have life, and life to the full.
But, how?
A quick survey of Jesus’ life reveals that he was no stranger to hardship, trouble, difficulty or suffering – he died on a cross, after all. He was a “suffering servant,” despised, rejected, and familiar with pain (Isaiah 53:3). And he tells us that if we choose to follow him, we, too, can expect the same, as a “servant is not greater than his master” (John 15:20).
So if we follow Jesus, we can expect trouble?
Yes.
And if we follow Jesus, we can expect abundant life?
Yes.
As it turns out, the both/and in the Kingdom of Heaven can be hard for our brains to reconcile. But it doesn’t make it any less true.
Back to my story:
It wasn’t too many years into Cornerstone’s “up-and-to-the-right” trajectory before Sean and I experienced our first example of both trouble and the abundant life Jesus died to give us. Without going into too many details, a working relationship with someone on our team that we had once considered to be a friend deteriorated very quickly and ended very, very poorly. It shook Sean and I to the core. Our team was much smaller then, so everyone knew something was going on, but no one really knew what. Sean and I wrestled for weeks with what to share or how much to share or whether or not we should share anything at all. And then one Wednesday morning during group Supervision we had a “family discussion” with the team and it was one of the most restorative conversations I have ever been a part of. In the words of Brene Brown, we “wrestled with vulnerability,” were honest and authentic with one another, and true healing took root. And from it, we grew stronger. It was, truly, abundant life.
Isn’t that usually the way it goes? None of us like hardship. We would be crazy to willingly invite it into our lives. And yet when we go through it, we can end up stronger because of it if we trust the Lord to guide the process.
“For the joy set before him he (Jesus) endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” – Hebrews 12:2-3
Our God is a God of abundant life. Jesus himself says so. And yet, he also experienced suffering.
And so we stand on that as we acknowledge that in our values as an organization.
We encourage our clients towards that abundant life in the work they do with us in the counseling room, knowing that sometimes things will get worse before they get better.
We encourage people on the phone or in our inboxes to take that next step of courage and set up an appointment because we know God has something better for them on the other side of whatever they’re in the middle of right now.
And we employ this internally, in our team, as well. There will be ruptures as we work together, because we’re humans and we’re sinners and frequently we’re selfish when we think or speak or act. But we believe that even in the midst of hard things – hard seasons, hard conversations, hard decisions – that God has abundance on the other side, even if it doesn’t look like we thought it might.
And so we join Jesus in that pursuit of “life to the full.” May it be so here, in us as an organization, and in you, as an individual.
And may He be made much of because of it.
