Isn’t it funny that we have all this incredible technology to make our lives simpler and give us more time, yet we are busier than ever? For many of us, twenty-four hours in a day just doesn’t seem to be enough to get all the stuff done that we need to. We’re constantly on the grind, and many of us are feeling depleted. We’re tired, but we don’t feel we have any other choice but to keep pushing ourselves to exhaustion. We’re doing what everyone else is doing, and this isn’t what God wants for us. He wants us to be intimately familiar with the life He has called us to live. This is an abundant life, and we need to know what it is so that we can achieve it.
Jesus Christ tells us in John 10:10 that he came to the earth so that believers in him might have life and have it more abundantly. We need to be shaken into awareness of the overwhelming work that God has accomplished for us through Jesus Christ. Too many of God’s people have ignored the authority and power that He has given us through our Savior and Redeemer. We forget about the potency of faith and the awesome reality of our purpose in God’s plan. Somehow, we allow our walk in the Lord to slip to second, third, or fourth place. When this happens, our lives become almost unrecognizable to us, and we begin to live beneath our privilege.
We must make room in our hearts and minds for the life that Jesus Christ lived, because this powerful life that is full of love and light is what God has made available through Christ for all of us. God’s Word tells us about the life of Jesus Christ. He walked with Holy Spirit power! He healed people. He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and delivered those that were possessed by demons. He feed over five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread. Jesus Christ did all these things and much more because he had faith that God was with him every step of the way. In John 8:29(KJV), Jesus said, “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”
In John 6:38(KJV), he said, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” Jesus Christ prayed continually. It was the first thing he did each morning. He walked with God and lived by God’s Word. In Matthew 4:1-11, when he was tempted by the devil, Jesus Christ didn’t roll off a bunch of words of his own. With every temptation, he responded with, “It is written...” His response to every situation was to believe what God says in His Word, and he was never disappointed, because God’s Word is true and powerful! Our Master Jesus didn’t come to earth to do his own will. He delighted in doing the Father’s Will, and we must do the same.
The key to living a more than abundant life is to do God’s Will. Well, what is God’s Will? God’s Will is God’s Word. Living by God’s Word is the key to power, but most people do not see things this way. They believe they know better than God, and do not consult Him about His plan and purpose for their lives. In Jeremiah 2:11, 13(NLT), God’s people living in Old Testament times had strayed away from following His Word. He said to them, “11 Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God. 13 “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” He said that the heavens were shocked by this horrendous betrayal by those He had so richly blessed.
In Jeremiah 2, God is not speaking to those that were outside His fold. He is speaking to those He had chosen to serve Him. He made a covenant with Abraham and said to him in Genesis 17:8(NLT), “And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.” Our Heavenly Father kept His end of this covenant, but His people did not.
God is the fountain of living water. He has unlimited and unending supply, but His people chose to forsake Him for cisterns—for bottles with cracks in them. These cracked cisterns that people chose instead of God were infinitely less than foundations. They were mere containers with cracks, so the water—the necessity of life that they so desperately needed—continually leaked out of these cracked cisterns. So, those who chose those cracked bottles were in perpetual lack and dismay. God doesn’t want this for any of us. He wants us to have the maximum supply of His goodness. When you and I find ourselves unexcited about life and simply going through the motions, it’s a pretty good indication that we’ve swapped out the goodness of God for a broken cistern. Instead of going to the Source of unending supply, we’re looking to ourselves or other people for something that neither we nor them can provide.
God said in Hosea 4:6(NLT), “My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me.” Again, God is talking about us, His people. Those living in Old Testament times refused to know Him through His Word. We should never allow this to be said of those of us that have received the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts. Today, we have no excuse. God’s Word is nearer to us than our own hands. We can read it through cell phones and computers. It’s available through just about every form of media, yet many of us will not study God’s Word. We have lots of knowledge about our jobs, sports, our recreations, and the latest on social media, but when it comes to the example of Christ, we’re not nearly as well-versed. This is serious, because God makes it plain that what we don’t know about Him and His Word can severely harm us or take us out!
Our Heavenly Father created us to be His children of love and light. By this, we should know that an abundant life isn’t all about prosperity and riches. An abundant life is one where we have enough knowledge about Jesus Christ to live powerfully through His example. 1Thessalonians 5:5(NLT) tells us, “For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don't belong to darkness and night.” As God’s people, we are the lights of the world! These means that we help illuminate the light of Christ to others. God’s Will is that we operate out of His overflow, out of His fountain of living waters, so we can then give to others what we have so freely received ourselves. As we keep on giving to others out of God’s love, that same love continually infuses us with more. There’s no greater way to live than this!
Living through the love of Christ is what it truly means to live an abundant life. It’s not to hoard God’s goodies for ourselves. If we do this, we’ll implode from the inside out. God’s Will is for us to continuously expand and increase in the abundance of spiritual goodies from Jesus Christ. God tells us in 2Peter 1:4-7 that He has empowered us to share in HIS divine nature, and we’re to share it with others. If we do this, we will escape the world’s corruption. And this corruption is caused by human desires, by lust and greed. Let’s not be that way. He tells us to make every effort to respond to the goodness and brilliance of His promises. We are to supplement our faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, patience, Godliness, and love for everyone.
Living the more than abundant life that Jesus Christ made available is one in which we are thankful for his life, sacrifice, and resurrection every day. And not just this, we are demonstrating the love and power of Christ in everything that we do. Heavenly Father tells us in 2Peter 1:8(NLT) that “The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are to work hard to prove that we’re really among God’s called and chosen ones. If we stick to God’s script, we’ll never fall away. We live abundantly through God’s Word, and as 2Peter 1:11 says, we’ll have a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our powerful Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Living A More Than Abundant Life!”, written by Vince Mack. Blessing Beads and More© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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