Thrive + Abide = Love

Thrive + Abide = Love

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Thriving starts with you. Enjoy the journey. Step up to the challenge to thrive, to dream, and embrace life with all of its challenges, joys, and tears.

Thrive, Abide, and Faith. I would like to have made the three words rhyme but for not. In order to Thrive we must Abide and to abide cultivates Faith.

Let’s break it down.

To Thrive: Flourish, Prosper, Succeed, Bloom, Blossom, and increase are words we associate with thrive. We’re not talking about existing but flourishing regardless of our circumstances.

There have been times in all of our lives where we could say things weren’t that great and in fact, they were downright awful. Sometimes we could probably use far more dramatic words to describe those times in our lives; I know I could. But in those darkest and most difficult times, I found when I leaned into God, He didn’t move; He stayed, He was abiding in me. He supported me. He gave me strength. I like the analogy of the vine and the branches Jesus give us in John 15.

“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.

Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes when you mature as my disciples.

I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.”

John 15:1-10 MSG

There are other times that we’ve gotten so caught up with the things around us that we forget to stay connected to the vine. We forget to do the maintenance in our lives to keep us healthy and connected to God.

For those of us that are gardeners the only way to have a healthy plant is to prune the dead leaves and branches off. Otherwise, those diseased or dead portions of a plant drain the life from the healthy parts. We need to not only stay connected to the vine but know sometimes we need God to come and cut off the areas of our lives that drain the portions of our life that is healthy and flourishing. My garden more than once has been left to survive on its own. Some plants in my garden get gangly and thin; others whither right up. Then, there are plants you couldn’t kill if you tried, but flourish, bloom, and look spectacular. That’s a different story. They require care, pruning, fertilizing, water, and sunshine. This is where abiding comes in.

In the NAS Exhaustive Concordance as well as Strong’s the Hebrew the word is “Shakan” meaning to settle down, abide, dwell.

To settle down, abide, and dwell; huge words regarding our topic of thriving. It is difficult to thrive when there is no place to rest our hearts. It isn’t about where we live physically it’s about where we live in our hearts – the inside of who we are – the deep place inside that longs for a place to call home, to belong, to be loved and to love. It is in this deep place that we are connected to God and He to us.

On the outside, we can go through a lot without checking in with God and not be completely disconnected from the vine. We can bump along and even lean on our own understanding and look good, sound good and even find success without completely severing our connection to the vine, God. But are we flourishing? Are we becoming like some of the plants in my garden? Do we eventually risk our hearts and risk falling off the vine due to any host of diseases and pests – humanly put sin and self-deception? Hmm…

Abide as a transitive verb it means to remain stable or fixed in a state or to continue in a place. We have a choice where we will abide; connected to God and He in us or to the glitter and seductive calls for our attention that are all around us. If we are not connected, those things around us will win. Satan has a job: rob, kill and destroy. He is really good at it.

This brings us to faith. One definition of faith is a judgment that the person and work of Christ stand in the continuity of God’s character. Another is “a conviction that words uttered in trust to God are not mere vibrations of air in an empty universe, but that there is an actual relationship between a believer’s petition and God’s act.” CBS Bible Study of Mark.

Jesus taught us how to pray, as He often prayed; “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” At so many other times He concludes His prayer with…”not my will but thine be done.”

We can only have faith in God if we spend time getting to know the one in whom we believe. If we read the Bible and search for the knowledge of who God is, then we can know God, have faith in Him, and not just “hope.” If we don’t search God’s word we will never understand the pain and destruction of Satan in this world because there is a war for our souls and a war between God and Satan. By searching, we will understand Christ died and conquered sin, death, and the grave and that He will come again to defeat the enemy of our souls in a final battle. We will understand that Christ is going to bring a New Jerusalem to the earth and the whole earth will become new.

Paul gives us true faith in Ephesians:

“Faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.”

Ephesians 2:19-22 MSG

Are you willing to abide, stay, and take time to get to know Who God is? Are you willing to find that place in your heart that you and God can call home? Are you willing to be used of God by being a reflection of God in all you do?