{"id":40530,"date":"2026-05-29T20:39:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=40530"},"modified":"2026-05-29T20:45:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:45:00","slug":"26-0530-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/26-0530-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Life of Joy and Abundance"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Max Lucado<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jesus was accused of much, but of being a grump, sourpuss, or self-centered jerk?\u00a0 No. People didn\u2019t groan when he appeared. They didn\u2019t duck for cover when he entered the room. \u00a0He called them by name. He listened to their stories. He answered their questions. He visited their sick relatives and helped their sick friends. He fished with fishermen and ate lunch with the little guy and spoke words of resounding affirmation. He went to enough parties that he was criticized for hanging out with rowdy people and questionable crowds.<\/p>\n

People were drawn to Jesus! Thousands came to hear him. Hundreds chose to follow him. They shut down their businesses and walked away from careers to be with him. His purpose statement read, \u201cI came to give life with joy and abundance\u201d (John 10:10 The Voice). Jesus was happy and wants us to be the same.<\/p>\n

\"\"Read more\u00a0Just Like Jesus<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus was accused of much, but of being a grump, sourpuss, or self-centered jerk? No. People didn\u2019t groan when he appeared. They didn\u2019t duck for cover when he entered the room. He called them by name. He listened to their stories. He answered their questions. He visited their sick relatives and helped their sick friends. He fished with fishermen and ate lunch with the little guy and spoke words of resounding affirmation. He went to enough parties that he was criticized for hanging out with rowdy people and questionable crowds.<\/p>\n

People were drawn to Jesus! Thousands came to hear him. Hundreds chose to follow him. They shut down their businesses and walked away from careers to be with him. His purpose statement read, \u201cI came to give life with joy and abundance\u201d (John 10:10 The Voice). Jesus was happy and wants us to be the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40532,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530\/revisions\/40532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}