Everyone desires to have an abundant life. Abundance is defined as an extremely plentiful or over-sufficient quantity or supply. We all have the goal of living life to the "fullest" but it is how we come about reaching that goal that differs from each individual. One who believes fullness of life is found in status will devote themselves to climbing the ladder of success. Their happiness is most likely defined by getting a certain job promotion. Another person might believe that fullness of life is found in riches and monetary gain. They believe that they can buy happiness whether it be a big house, fancy car or designer clothes. Others may look to people in order to live abundantly, believing happiness is the result of having a close family or many friends....simply being liked by others. The source of abundant living does differ from person to person but the common factor in each scenario is the excessive amount of work we put into achieving our goal of happiness. We devote our all to pursuing happiness discovering that we are never truly satisfied. If one thing does not work we turn to another. If we look in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, we see Solomon living the same way. "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun." Solomon clearly tells us in this passage that trying to do things our way and trying to fill God's place in our lives with something of our own choosing is like striving after the wind, and is foolish. Look up the word "striving" in a thesarus and you will get synonyms like, to make great efforts, to try very hard or even to struggle. When put in the context of ecclesiastes we see a whole lot of work put forth but no outcome of achievement. In John 10:10 we finally grasp hold of the source of abundance- that is Jesus, our Saviour. In Him we experience all that we could ever need. Jesus has come to heal our emptiness, he has come to fill a void, that nothing in this world can satisfy.How does Jesus fill the emptiness, He fills it with real joy, love and peace, He fills us with the Holy Spirit. A superior, superabundant spiritual life, is a life empowered by the indwelling of Jesus Christ. Because Christians "have" Jesus Christ, because he lives within them, they have the source of the superabundant life- the source of true joy which leads to complete satisfaction. Abundance isn’t an abundance of things, but rather an abundance of Him. It isn’t that God has changed the circumstances of the world we live in, but He has changed us from the inside out.
Abundance isn’t looking around, but looking up with fixed eyes on Jesus.
If you are living abundantly you can praise God through the storms of life, you can dance for joy even in difficult circumstances, and you can walk through fires and come out refined. A pastor once put it this way ~ Abundance isn’t absence from life, but rather victory through life.
