You CAN live an abundant life!

I remember as a young teenager often praying: “God, help me to do what’s right, help me to say what’s right, help me to think what’s right,” meaning what was right, or righteous in God’s eyes. I failed miserably in all those points! I had given God my heart and really wanted to live for Him and serve Him. I knew that the Christian life was supposed to be an “abundant life,” as Jesus promised in John 10:10, but I felt very far away from such a life.

Don’t know how?

We must never, ever give up if we have a sincere and urgent desire to live for God, and please Him, but don’t know how. Jesus said: “Blessed (fortunate and happy) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” Just as He has promised, He will fill us, and show us the way to a right life, an abundant life. All the answers are in the Bible, of course, but we need God’s help to find them.

Jesus’ example

I am very thankful that, as a young Christian, God led me among people who showed me from the Bible that not only was Jesus my Redeemer, the One who atoned for my sin, but He was also my Savior from the power of sin, the sin that I found in my own nature. He was my example, and left behind Him footsteps for me to follow. As it says in 1 Peter 2:21-22, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth.” 

So Jesus did what was right, and spoke what was right, and we know that He only thought what was right because “Love thinks no evil.” (1 Corinthians 13:5) He did this in a body just like yours and mine through the power of the Holy Spirit! What a hope and what a promise that I can come to the same life as He lived by following His steps, with the help of the same Holy Spirit!

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

It is easy enough to say that I am a “follower of Jesus,” meaning that I have cast in my lot with the “Christian community” as opposed to being an atheist or following some other religion. But to “follow Jesus” is to follow His steps, as Peter describes them. His steps lead to His life, a happy, fulfilling, wonderful life where I can grow in all His virtues and characteristics, or as Paul explains it in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” In other words, no limit to how much of these good things I can gain and grow in! This is truly a satisfying, abundant life.

The more I experience of this good and blessed life, the greater is my hunger and thirst for more of it! And we know that God is no respecter of persons. The way is open for everyone who hungers and thirsts, believes Jesus’ words and chooses to follow His steps.