Category: Abundant Living

Family Partnership

The most effective method of transforming the inexperienced into effective partners is example.

Meditation Thought: “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” (John 12:26)

If anyone ministers to your child, how you appreciate him! To help your child is to be of more joy than if they help you yourself. So the Father honors you who help His Son.

The Son has given you a transformed life: can you but desire to continue in His company? The way is not easy, but it has every other positive aspect.

It brings peace and joy in all circumstances.

It is exciting.

It is fulfilling.

It abounds with love and satisfaction.

To serve Jesus is to not be a servant, but to be in partnership, one family member working with another family member toward as exciting goal, with many benefits along the way. Jesus is the Teacher, the Leader – but always He does His teaching and leading in love, compassion, understanding and wisdom. We are not a slave, but a “junior partner”, learning from the more experienced partner. The most effective method of transforming the inexperienced into effective partners is example. When we are with the most perfect Example of God’s methods and purposes and desires for His children, we are able to become more the image of the unseen Father through the visible Son.

Choose the Primary

God is not only creator – but Continuing Creator in your life.

Meditation Thought: “My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him.” (Psalm 62:5)

Choose the primary, then concentrate upon this: the secondary and other causes and effects will automatically fall into place if you perceive that which is primary and concentrate your mind an energies upon harmonizing it in your life.

You know now that God is not only creator – but Continuing Creator in your life. As you perceive clearly (through the insight of your yielded will to allow the light of His will to shine within you) – you can then act in harmony with the creating will of this indescribably powerful and loving Force. This creative action can be channeled in your life to be awesomely effective. In fact, this is the primary: To base all of your thoughts, your allegiance, your energies upon listening, looking – and obeying the Spirit who is
1) Creator
2) Demonstrator
3) Power Source
– is to order and harmonize every facet of your life – on “earth” and in “heaven”. This is the “coming of the Kingdom on earth.”

Environmental Change

Life is no longer a “line” from “here to there”. Life is a sphere, encompassing ever-widening perceptions and knowledge, our awareness of the interrelation of all things seen and unseen.

Meditation Thought: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38)

To believe in Jesus is to move into a new world: one minute we live on a physical plane only – the next we have moved into a totally new environment. It is so different that it takes much effort to explore and understand the implications of its various facets. What excitement greets each day! There is mystery of the unexpected – there are the “impossible” coincidences, there are “miracles” of healing – physically, in relationships, within self, others are given more tranquil hearts because God guides us to say and do helpful ministries.

All is not “sweetness and light” all of the time – but never is there a “dull” time if the Word is in our mind, for contemplation of it always “entertains” us as it enlightens us. Never is there a hopeless situation for “in everything God works good to them who love Him, to them who are called according to His purpose.”

There are the glorious times when prayers are visibly answered, when love abounds, when the presence of God is so real it is as strong as a physical presence, a visible presence.

Life is no longer a “line” from “here to there”. Life is a sphere, encompassing ever-widening perceptions and knowledge, our awareness of the interrelation of all things seen and unseen. The contrast is as dramatic as going from blindness to sight – and life is as dramatically changed.

Where is God?

The key to experience abundant life – now and forever.

Meditation Thought: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Luke 10:27)

If you do love the Lord your God with every part of your being, you will love your neighbor as yourself – for God is love in every one of His creations, and when you love God you love Him everywhere He is located!

This statement of Jesus’ is not only the key to inherit eternal life – it is the key to experience abundant life – now and forever.

Change Agents

We be changed beautifully, effectively,

Meditation thought: “…we shall all be changed…” (1 Corinthians 15:51)

We shall be changed: by the power of our Father, by the power of our Savior, by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, by the power of the Body of the saints. By these shall we be changed beautifully, effectively, to reflect the Christ Who reflects the Father, Who is Perfection.

We shall not be perfect in our humanness – but we shall be perfect in the Spirit when the Spirit is in full control of every one of our faculties, including our spirit AND our will.

New Beginning

A new beginning! Oh, how we rejoice!

Meditation Thought: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ” (Luke 24:45-47)

A new beginning! Oh, how we rejoice whenever a new understanding has made us long to undo what our old understanding has wrought, and then the opportunity is presented to negate the old results, and start fresh with the new understanding!

Christ has brought us a new beginning. But we must first negate all of the wrong attitudes and actions and results that permeated our life before the revelation of Christ to us that we can start over. We rectify what we can, and ask forgiveness for the rest. And that is the end of it. We can accept the past as no longer being a millstone around our neck because Jesus removed it the moment we sincerely requested Him to do so.

We are as born again: we can have the innocence and enthusiasm and energy of children combined with the wisdom of our loving God working in our lives. The results should be miracles!

Why do we restrict God’s work by refusing to believe the good news? We hinder God by our stubborn clinging to the “oughts and shoulds” that other interpreters of the Word and the Spirit have either imposed upon us or we have sought out of laziness in learning for ourselves who God is, and what He wants to do in and through our life.

The only way to know who god is and what He wants to do in each person is to personally so search His Word and seek His Spirit that we receive His particular words and suggestions intended exclusively for us.

Fellowship is good and needed, shared information is good and needed – but the only way a child can have close companionship and understanding with his parent is to come to spend time and to converse honestly and deep from the heart with the parent. No matter what his brothers or sisters tell him about their parent, it is not going to bring them into intimate fellowship. It takes personal contact, with mutual communication to accomplish this.

Look! The Kingdom of God!

The Kingdom is here, in the midst of you – inside of you.

Meditation Thought: “…behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:21)

Behold: Look. Notice. Observe! The Kingdom is here, in the midst of you – inside of you. The Kingdom is not outside of you and outside of others and near all of you – it is within each, and it is as a magnetic force drawing all together. As the parts of the Body of Christ are more closely brought to one another, so are they able to more capably affect healing and superb performance in one another.

Never fear to draw near to anyone – for it is the Kingdom within each which seeks to bring you to a person. Even though this may not be recognized by the other – yet – you can know the Truth and it makes you free to move everywhere without fear, and in confidence and joy and anticipation and hope and sure knowledge, in wisdom, and with love. Is this state of being not a perfect description of “The Kingdom”?

Giving Poured Out

You can have the desires of your heart, which are peace and joy, by your own decision to do so.

Meditation Thought: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:13-14)

Giving is a pouring out, taking pleasure in spreading joy. Thus you can have constant pleasure, for it is possible always to give, whereas you cannot control receiving. If you find pleasure only in receiving, you limit your pleasure greatly – and you limit the pleasure released in the world even more.

You can have the desires of your heart, which are peace and joy, by your own decision to do so: the price is to surrender pride to unselfish love, and sin to righteousness through the thinking of others and acting in their behalf.

Unfathomably Superior

The wold has so deluded us as to what will bring us joy that we must seek to know the truth of our own nature.

Meditation Thought:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

“Love God – neighbor-self – love everyone – how! By sacrificing to do good for another! Whether it be giving of our time, our emotions, our thoughts, or the work of our hands matters not – only that we are giving. For we are ‘programmed’ to have joy in helping, joy in a clear conscience, and joy in the ministries which flow back to us as a result of our giving.

The world has so deluded us as to what will bring us joy that we must seek to know the truth of our own nature. And when we begin to know the truth, what freedom and joy it brings! No longer do we have to grasp, to manipulate, to order others to do our bidding, or to be at the mercy of others for our satisfaction.

We find peace within ourselves – more accurately, peace within our God within ourselves. And it is almost as having frosting on the cake to discover that God who gives us peace within ourselves is also in everything, every place, at every time outside of ourselves too.

And the realization that brings us to a state beyond peace – a kind of ecstasy, a transporting of life being lived on both a higher plane and the human plane – is that our God is totally loving, totally powerful, always working for our good, and at the same time never violates our free choice, respecting us as a person: This Creator, unfathomably superior in every area to all He created, nevertheless chooses to yield to us, to our decisions. He responds to those decisions, but allows us the privilege and the dignity of doing our own thinking and acting.

Repair and Remodel

Each needed replacement is an opportunity to upgrade the individual component and the value of the whole.

Meditation Thought: “ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

“Take the aggravation of the wearing out of the various components of your house and make it a parable in your life. Each needed replacement is an opportunity to upgrade the individual component and the value of the whole house.

Let Me replace your old creature with all new components more suitable for a daughter of the Kingdom, for old habits and old desires and old methods are no longer suitable for the building which has been converted into a temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

You are learning the methods of remodeling: dealing with the “breakdowns” immediately – taking time to repair by prayer and meditation upon My Word, which is the step needed to get My restoring work in operation.”