Jesus said that He came to give us an abundant life. And living abundantly means living a life that’s full of Jesus. Here are a few biblical ways you can start living that abundant life today!

Resources Mentioned:

The Thrive Bible Study Vault: https://ashleyvarner.com/thrive
Renew180: https://ashleyvarner.com/180

Highlights From the Episode:

Hey there. All this month, we’ve been talking about having an abundant life, and what that looks like for us as Christians. And so today, I just wanted to share a little bit about biblical ways that you can live an abundant life, or I’m going to share a little bit about what it means to just practically live an abundant life, and how you can go about your Christian walk, wanting to seek after God. If you haven’t watched the video on how to live an abundant life or how to have a deeper relationship with Jesus, make sure to check those two out, because this kind of piggybacks on those two. All right, let’s jump in.

Hey there, my friends, and welcome back to The Renewed Mind. As I said, we’ve been talking about abundance, and this is something that I wanted to talk about because it seems like in the mindset world that there’s a lot of talk about mindset and abundance, and kind of like bringing in abundance into your life. And I wanted to share how we can do that in a biblical way, because I truly believe that any kind of wisdom or knowledge that the world is going to have is always going to come, if it’s true knowledge or wisdom, it’s going to be rooted in some truth, some way of in the truth of God’s word.

I believe that this idea of abundance does come from God’s word. There’s a verse in John 10:10 where Jesus talks about giving an abundant life, how he came so that we would have an abundant life or a life to the fullest. And in a video a couple of weeks ago, I shared how that means in Jesus’ terms, it’s a life more of him, a life full of him.

And so how do we go about living that life? What are some biblical ways that we can do that?

Because the world is going to tell you that it’s all about, you know, trying to manifest abundance into your life, or like the law of attraction, things like that. But what are some biblical truths about seeing God more in your life, inviting him more into your life? So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Be Expectant

The first biblical way that you can live an abundant life is by being expectant. And this is something that is huge, because I really believe that this is something Christians forget about. This is something that they go about their day not really expecting God to do anything.

What if whenever we show up every day, whenever we wake up every day, we’re going to work, we’re being with our kids, we have in the back of our mind that God is going to do something big? Because I believe he’s doing big things all the time. And because we’re not expecting it, we are not seeing it.

So, think about whenever you are getting a new car, and all of a sudden, everywhere you go, you see this exact car, right? It’s not that all of a sudden, everybody is just copying you and wanting to have a car like yours. It is really because your mind is focused on your car. And so you’re seeing that car everywhere else. You’re seeing the results everywhere else.

And so the same can be true for Jesus. Whenever we are wanting to live an expectant life, we can fix our mind on things above. We can fix our eyes on Jesus, and say, “Okay, Lord, I am expecting you to do something big today.” And he will. I mean, he’s working in our lives every day, and it’s just us not seeing it.

If you go to church, and you come in with the attitude of, “Lord, I know that you’re going to do something big in my life. I know that the sermon today is going to impact me in some way. I know that the worship that you knew I was going to be in this service for worship, and so I’m here, I’m ready for it.” That is something that the enemy can’t take away from you whenever you are expectant, and just being watchful of what God is going to do.

This is something I have seen over and over in my life. If I come into it saying, “God, give me opportunities, show me the opportunities that I’m going to have to reach somebody for you. Show me a way, show me a person that I can be kind to today. Show me a person that I can pray for today.”

And this actually happened to me recently. I was at a meeting, and there was, I went into the meeting really praying that God would do big work. And it was just kind of like a board meeting. It wasn’t like a conference or anything like that, but we were meeting with some people. The board was meeting with some people, and I went in really wanting a heart of expectation to say, “God, you can do so much more than we think. Like you are able to do all of this.”

And during the course of this meeting, there was a woman there who was really struggling with a lot of fear and anxiety. And because I was open and expecting God to do something, I was able to see her through her words. So she was really saying a lot of things like she was fearful or overwhelmed, and I was able to say, “God is this an opportunity for me to see you? Is this an opportunity for me to be a minister of your love?”

And so after the meeting, I just went to her, and asked her if I could pray for her. If I hadn’t gone into that meeting with a sense of expectation, that prayer time that I had with her may have never happened. There are going to be opportunities in your life that God is working behind the scenes. And if you ask him to show you opportunities or places where he’s working, he is going to be faithful to do that. The flip side of that is that once he does do things, and he is showing you things, then you need to give him credit for the things that he has done.

In my prayer room, I have a frame that is full of, it has like a slit at the top, and we drop in little wooden hearts that on the hearts, we write prayer requests that have been answered. And there are things like healings in there. There are things like someone getting a job, someone being healed or being provided for whenever we adopted our children, things like that, that whenever we drop those hearts in, what we’re doing is we’re saying, “God, you did this. We’re giving you credit for what you have done.”

That is huge because what that does is it gives it back to God, right? It gives all the credit and all the glory back to God. And this is a way to live an abundant life, because like we learned a couple of weeks ago, abundant living has less to do with stuff and even experiences or happiness as it has to do with Jesus being part of your everyday life, right? Him being so, your life being so full of him.

Surrender

The second biblical way that you can live an abundant life is by surrendering. And what this is is it’s saying, “God, everything that I think about my life, all the plans that I have, I’m giving it to you.”

One thing that always comes up is an old song by TobyMac, it’s called “Steal My Show”. It’s basically a song from him to God. And he’s saying, he’s about to go on stage to perform. He’s saying, “God, all these people are here. They want, you know, they want the great music and all that, but what they really need is you.”

And he’s saying, “Everything is yours. God, you can take it, steal the show. It’s all for you anyway.” And a couple of lines in there, he says, “You can take my plans, my dreams, my family, my career, it’s all yours.” And whenever we do that, he brings back into our lives more than we could ever imagine.

So what I want you to see is that your plans for yourself, your plans for your family or your career, anything like that pales in comparison to the plans that God has for you. His word says, it says that “No mind can conceive what God has prepared for those who love him.” And that includes heaven as well. Like no one can conceive what heaven is going to be like, but also we can’t even conceive the things that he’s going to do right now.

If you were to tell me 10 years ago that I would be here in this place in my family, in my career, in my home life, and in my church life. If you told me that 10 years ago, I never would’ve believed you but God, right? But God. And so if we surrender, it’s not like you give everything up, and never get anything in return.

When you surrender, he gives it all back. That verse that says push down and overflowing, right? It’s all for him anyway. So if we can surrender everything to him, then he gives it all back, and that’s when we experience abundant life.

Be Humble

The third area is just to be humble. And if you are wanting to live an abundant life, being humble might not really seem like the right response. You might say, “Well, no, I need to be confident. I need to be bold. You know, I need to be out there and open and sharing.”

Being humble is what really makes the difference, and what that is is just getting back to basics. You know, whenever we started going to our church, one of the biggest ways that I could see, one of the biggest reasons that we decided to attend there was the love that they had for people. And it wasn’t just that they said it from the pulpit, like, “Oh yeah, we love people, we focus on family.” It wasn’t anything like that.

It was the actual individuals that were intentional about showing kindness and love to my family and to my kids. And it’s, that’s really what humility is all about. It’s saying, “God, I am humbling myself before you. I want to love you and I want to love people.” And that is, that’s it, right?

I don’t know anyone at the end of their life, like on their deathbed that is saying, “You know, I really wish that I had put more hours in on the weekends, or I really wish that I had, you know, pushed through, and really got that third boat or whatever. Or I really wish that I had fought for, you know, getting the color of carpet that I wanted at the office or at the church or whatever.” No one says that, right? What they say is, “I wish I had spent more time with my family. I wish I had been more intentional in my relationship with the Lord.” And because at the end of the day, that’s what matters. At the end of our lives, that’s what matters.

If you can get back to basics, and love God and love people, that adds so much joy and fulfillment to your life, and that’s when you start to attract, I guess, for lack of a better word. That’s when people start seeing God in you and start coming into your life.

If you want to attract, I hate saying that word, because I don’t like the idea of just this, like we can draw things in. The Lord, everything good comes from the Lord, right? And so if you want to have those good things from the Lord, it starts with knowing him. It starts with having a life full of him first.

If you can be expectant for what God’s going to do, if you can surrender to him, and if you can be humble and just get back to basics, those are some biblical ways that you can live an abundant life right now. Those are ways that you can say, “God, I want to have a deeper relationship with you, and these are three things I’m going to do in order to get there.”

All right, today’s video was a little bit shorter, but I wanted to share it, because I think that these are some areas that we sometimes forget about, right? These are some things that we sometimes kind of lay on the back burner. Other things seem more urgent or more important, and they sometimes get forgotten about, so make sure that you love God this week. Make sure you love people. And after that, the Lord is going to bring more of himself into your life, and you’re going to see it in so many ways.

I did want to encourage you to check out Renew 180. It is the six month program that includes some coaching from me on really renewing your mind, so that you can have a transformed life. If these are topics that you really want to talk about, but you need some additional help or some teaching, make sure that you check that out. You can see it at ashleyvarner.com/180.

And I’ll see you guys next time, have a great week.