When are we most alive?

When are we most alive? When we are participating in the life of God. The more we participate in his life, the more we are restored to our original design and the more alive we become.  

And what is the life of God? It is the love and joy God has had from all eternity past and continuously experiences in the union and communion between the Father and the Son as they gaze upon, share in and show forth the beauty, majesty and glory of the other in, by and through the Holy Spirit; the Spirit of infinite and eternal passion of love and adoration. 

This very same life is freely extended to any and all image bearers (us) who will receive it. 

We will participate in and experience that life to the degree we turn away from trying to secure life by our own efforts through anything other than God and instead let him fill us with his Life-Spirit-Love.

To say it another way, the degree to which we look to something other than God for life, is the degree to which we will not look to and experience the infinite life offered and found in him. 

Jesus said:

"And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.


I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.

And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one." - John 17:3-11 

"...that they know you..." to "know" in this passage is not knowing information about someone but is relational knowledge (in the same way we intimately know someone we love dearly, such as our spouse). This would be the same kind of knowledge the Father has of the Son and the Son has of the Father ("...that they may be one, even as we are one..." vs 11); a knowledge that creates the joy of union/relationship - not totally unlike the joy a married couple experiences through physical entimacy. 

Also, note the number of times "give, given, or giving" (i.e. sharing/relationship) between the Father and Son is mentioned or alluded to (highlighted above). 

It is in this same knowing (the giving and receiving of God's love, life, value, glory) we find life in all its fullness because God is the source of life-love and all things.