Some people think Christianity is all about making sure you’ll go to the right place after you die. It’s all about what you’ll have in the next life. But Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). In other words, Christianity is also about what you have right now in this life.

As Charles Spurgeon said nearly 150 years ago, “Life is a matter of degrees. Some have life, but it flickers like a dying candle. Others are full of life, and are bright and vehement, like the fire upon the blacksmith’s forge when the bellows are in full blast. Christ has come so that his people may have life in all its fullness.” Christ didn’t come to give you an insurance policy for after you die, so you could keep on living your life on earth the same way you always did before. He came so you could go from a tiny little candle to a red-hot-glowing flame.

Spurgeon says there are seven concrete ways you’ll experience this kind of abundant life. When Christ is your shepherd, you’ll have:

• More stamina. “Christ will make us walk without weariness, and run without fainting. He will have us behave ourselves like men, and be strong.”
• A larger sphere of life. “What a blessed thing it is to be forgiven, to be dear to the Father’s heart, and to feel the Father’s kiss! This is a life of no confined dimensions, for we dwell in God, and are in fellowship with the Infinite.”
• Greater spiritual powers. “You pray; yes, but if God gives you more life, you will pray as prevalently as Elijah. Even now you seek after holiness; but if you have life more abundantly, you will walk before the Lord in glorious uprightness as Abraham did. I know that you praise the Lord; but if the more abundant life fills you, you will rival the angels in their songs.”
• More energy. “A man is said to be full of life when he is worked up into excitement and fired with passion. Enthusiasm is life effervescing, life in volcanic eruption. Where there is determined resolve, if you arouse the man by opposition, you will see his whole life coming into action. He was quiet enough before, but you have aroused the lion in him.”
• Overflowing joy. “When Israel came out of Egypt, she was young Israel, and how merrily did she strike her tambourines and dance before Jehovah. When churches are revived, what life there is in them, and then what singing! There never comes a revival of religion without a revival of singing.“
• Greater sensitivity. “When the Lord Jesus Christ gives his people life in its higher forms, they become more capable of pain. The same sin will pain them a hundred times more than it used to do, and they will shrink from it with greater anxiety to avoid it. If you are only just a Christian, you may do wrong, and you will be penitent; but if you have much life and you do wrong, ah, then your heart will be wrung with anguish”
• A triumphant attitude. “Christians should have such abundant life that their circumstances should not be able to overcome them; such abundant life that in poverty they are rich, in sickness they are in spiritual health, in contempt they are full of triumph, and in death full of glory. Glorious is that life which defies circumstances.”

That’s what abundant life looks like, and that’s what Jesus promises when you trust him as the shepherd who laid down his life for you by dying on the cross to take away your sins:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:10-11)