Abundant Life

Text: “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6).

Is the Lord going to move away? Some people might get that idea when they read this Scripture. If you think for a moment, “Seek the LORD while he may be found” does sound like He is going to leave us. The real truth is He is not planning to move away from us or leave us.

The real issue here is that His children tend to move away from Him. Many young people are raised in very good church-going families. Sometimes these young people do not want to go to church, but are pressured into going by their parents.

The parents do this in hope that when the child becomes of age and out on his or her own, they will remember what mom and dad tried to impress upon their mind. Not only will they remember, but hopefully they will guide their children in the same direction.

If young people are taught to seek God on a daily basis, chances are they will not drift from Him or build any kind of partition or barrier separating them from God. Barriers are built when people become worldly.

Barriers can be money, job, living accommodations, automobiles, clothing, gadgets, or any other thing of the world. Barriers can be a lifestyle of drugs, alcohol, marijuana, wild living. Barriers can be anything that comes between an individual and his or her relationship with Almighty God.

Barriers can come about because an individual is looking for what they believe is the abundant life. Some people believe that an abundant life come from possessing worldly possession. The more money that can be made enables a person to buy more things which give them the feeling that they now have an abundant life.

Did God say that in order to have an abundant life, one must acquire as many earthly things as possible? I don’t think so! Jesus had no earthly possessions, but He had an abundant life. What did He have that put Him in the abundant life category?

Jesus had a very close relationship with His Father. He had love in His heart. He was willing to listen to people who were in need. His healing hand was available to anyone who was in need. He was not concerned about time when someone approached Him.

Jesus didn’t need a Blackberry to check His calendar to see if He had time to help the needy. He didn’t need to check with His secretary concerning his itinerary. When people were hungry, he fed them. When they couldn’t see, He gave them sight. When paralysis was present, He removed it. When life looked bleak, He gave them hope. He did not erect barriers, but He lived the abundant life.

Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus wants each of us to live an abundant life, but for some reason we choose to erect barriers. We erect barriers because we believe we are in control of our life.

We want what the world has to offer instead of what God offers. We think the abundant life is what we can acquire. We are like the man the Psalmist spoke of when he said, “Here is the man who did not make God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness” (Psalm 52:7). We leave God out of our life. We believe He is present, but He is not interested in our daily existence.

We forget to involve Him in our daily routine. We don’t call upon Him when blessings come our way. We are not thankful for all He provides for us. Oh yes, we do call upon him when we are in some difficulty, something has not gone our way, or we have an issue and see no way to get through or around it. We often think of God as an emergency device and use Him in that capacity.

We tend to think we can hide things from God because we can’t see Him. We forget that God is present everywhere, He is all-powerful, and He knows everything. We are thinking worldly with our earthly minds instead of thinking heavenly.

We begin to realize we have drifted from God when we encounter trials and tribulations which bring us to our knees and the only way to look is up. When we begin to worry about things that have not happened or may never happen, we have a tendency to look to God.

We realize we have drifted when we start to question our faith. Life has been good to us for a long time, we have taken everything for granted, and then events in our life change and we begin to question our faith. The good life, the abundant life, the life of joy and happiness seems to have been lost and we realize we are drifting from God. God does not drift from us, but instead, we drift away from the presence of God.