3 Ways to Walk In Abundant Life

Do you want to walk in all that God has for you? Do you want to live a life filled with radical blessing, purpose, wellbeing, and prosperity in your soul, relationships, calling, health, marriage, family, and finances?

If so, you are going to need to take purposeful action to eschew the culture of death that this world tries to put upon you, and to follow Jesus through the narrow gate into His way of abundant life. Let’s talk today about three specific ways you can walk into that abundant life of Jesus!

First, let me say that this article is not intended to be a treatise on every way to walk into abundant life in Christ.

Obviously, the first way to receive abundant life in Jesus is to receive eternal life by making Him your Lord and Savior. (Download the free guide below on how to walk in the manifest presence of God to learn more about that.)

Then, after that, the next most important, and obvious way is to seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, so that all the things you need and desire can be added to you. As Jesus told us in Matthew 6:33:

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 NKJV).

Related: 7 Ways to Seek First the Kingdom of God

However, in this article, I want to talk about three more hidden, non-obvious ways to walk in the abundant life that Jesus died and rose again to give you.

To help inspire you on this topic, let’s first read John 10:10:

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (- Jesus Christ, John 10:10 NKJV).

Beloved, Jesus came to give you abundant life!

But, this sinful world is doing all it can to trap you in a culture of death in insidious ways. I’m not even talking about obvious ways here, like overt sin (such as murder, sex outside of legal/godly marriage between one man and one woman, lying, cheating, stealing, and so on). Of course we should avoid those things.

But, additionally, the enemy has set traps for people that are far more hidden than that, and those traps are producing a culture of death in which many Christians are entombed even while they yet live.

When I say “a culture of death,” I’m not talking about literal death, like murder and euthanasia and abortion. Of course, you should stay away from those things too. But, I’m talking about a culture of death that sneaks in insidiously–and people don’t even know they are agreeing with the enemy’s attempts to steal, kill, and destroy.

Never forget that JESUS came to give you abundant life, but the enemy’s only agenda is to steal, kill, and destroy.

Let’s read that Scripture in John 10:10 again:

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (- Jesus Christ, John 10:10 NKJV).

So, anything that steals, kills, and destroys is not from God; it is a trick, attack, lie, and device from the enemy. And you have to beware of these things and stay away from them if you want to walk in all that GOD has for you! If you desire to receive abundant life from Jesus, you have to cleave to Him–and accept only those things that bring LIFE!

Here are three ways in which I see people, even Christians, embracing (perhaps even accidentally) a culture of death–and how they can embrace ABUNDANT LIFE instead:

1) People embrace death by embracing time-stealers.

Time is your most precious commodity. With your time, you can:

• Walk fully into your calling and destiny in Christ;
• Nurture an amazing marriage and friendships;
• Build a business that will make you extremely wealthy over time;
• Make an eternal impact on the Kingdom, bringing potentially millions of souls to Christ;
• Nurture your health and emotional wellbeing.

But, if you want to do any of those things with your time, it’s going to take purposeful action. The Bible tells us that your life is but a vapor:

“… whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14 NKJV).

And that vapor comes and goes quickly. Even if you live 80 or 90 or 100 years, that’s not very much time.

(Before the flood, people lived hundreds of years! Methuselah, who lived the longest recorded life in history, lived 969 years, according to Genesis 5:27!) Everyone who has children has an acute awareness of how time passes too fast: one minute they’re a baby, and the next minute they’re taller than you. Where does time go?

Well, that’s precisely my point. Where does time go?

Unless you purposefully put up boundaries and barriers and take very careful stock of your time, your time can too easily go to:

• Doomscrolling on your favorite social media apps;
• Endless and pointless texting or online shopping;
• Watching TV;
• “Kicking it” with your friends after work, every day, for no real benefit;
• Endless hobbies, or even endless volunteerism (church work, anyone?) …

And there’s nothing wrong with small amounts of social media, internet reading, texting, online shopping, TV-watching, hanging with friends, and hobbies. However, my point is, most people don’t manage these things. They just “fly by the seat of their pants,” always putting out fires with their time, always answering what other people want them to do with their time …

… And they neglect spending time alone, one-on-one, with God–whether first thing in the morning or at all; they neglect quality time with their spouse in favor of always looking at their phone or holding the remote control …

… They tell their children to go away and play by themselves, or watch cartoons, or look at their own phones, and their family gets neglected, and children are not raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, instead being raised by social media, peer pressure, and by the pornography that they find on those phones …

And the list goes on.

O beloved, look at what the Scripture says about our time:

“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16 NKJV).

“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12 NKJV).

Our lives are but a vapor. Even if we live 80-100 years, it’s just a breath, and then it’s gone. O God, teach us to number our days! Give us wisdom!

Beloved, you can have all that God has for you.

You can walk in the fullness of blessing, abundance, prosperity, dignity, and purpose that God has ordained for you to have from the foundation of the world. However, it’s going to require purposeful action on your part. You’re going to have to put down your phone, pick up your Bible and your journal, and make a schedule and routine for yourself that puts:

• 1×1 time alone with God FIRST;
• Your spouse and health SECOND;
• Your children THIRD;
• And your work/job, business, friends, hobbies, and extended family AFTER ALL THAT.

Walking into all that God has for you is going to take purposeful action on your part.

But, purposeful action is only possible when you manage your time well. Beloved, don’t let this culture of death rule your life through convincing you that bad time management is okay! Look to God and live; learn to number your days, that you may gain a heart of wisdom!

Time management is a process that requires constant recalibration. However, if you will ask the Lord for wisdom, and specifically for HELP with your ability to manage your time, He will help you. Ask Him to convict you firmly, and to disciple you into walking in wisdom in this area!

If you will redeem your time, you can walk right into abundant LIFE in so many ways:

• Your spirit, soul, emotions, and mind can thrive because you suddenly start seeking God first, and spending enough time with Him that you GROW and are encouraged by Him and His Word every single day.
• You can live free from anxiety, because you suddenly start investing the time it takes to cast your cares upon Jesus in prayer, so that you can have peace. (A real, solid prayer life definitely takes an investment of time, but the Lord will multiply the time back to you!)
• You can build a thriving marriage with a spouse who actually feels loved, desired, and cherished.
• You can raise amazing children who LOVE Jesus with all of their hearts, and act like it.
• You can build a business that prospers your family, advances the Kingdom, provides jobs for others, and is a source of great personal satisfaction to you!
• You can have an everlasting impact on the Kingdom, whether you preach the Gospel yourself or fund and send others to do it! You can leave a legacy for Jesus everywhere you go, with everyone you talk to, and with everyone you deal with–but only if your example catches their attention; only if your example and experience are worth listening to! (Which you can only obtain if you have managed your time well!)

Friend, do yourself a favor and step out of the clutches of the culture of death.

Death wants to steal your time. Don’t let it. Embrace the abundant life that JESUS gives instead by learning to manage your time, learning to number your days, and making the most of the time, redeeming every moment and putting it to work for the glory of God.

And the next way I see people embracing the culture of death is:

2) By embracing impression-stealers and dignity-stealers.

It’s a fact that people think about you based on how you dress and act. Additionally, it’s a fact that your own level of motivation, inspiration, confidence, and creativity are heavily influenced by how you dress and look.

If we look at the concept of how you dress and act, the most important part of all that is your appearance. People will tolerate it if you act badly (although they shouldn’t, and you shouldn’t act badly anyway); but, everyone forms an opinion:

• about you;
• about your intelligence and/or potential; and
• about what kind of relationship they want with you …

… based on how you look and dress.

And yet, we have people–Christian people, made in the image of God and bearing His name and claiming to be ambassadors for Him on the earth–purposely wearing clothes made of rags, with holes in them, sometimes with barely enough fabric to cover their private body parts (or NOT covering such), and looking cheap and trashy and LAZY and disreputable, all to fit in with “fashion.”

Beloved, this world teaches a culture of death through many aspects of fashion, and Christians are just going along with it.

Yes, fashion changes from year to year and season to season.

It’s fine to be fashionable, as long as you don’t make God look bad through your choices. But, if you aren’t representing yourself as a royal son or daughter of God through your fashion choices, what are you doing? What are you thinking?

You don’t have to dress in the first stare of fashion if you don’t want to. But, at a minimum, you should be modest and dignified.

Please, beloved, hear me: don’t lose your dignity in the eyes of others just so you can fit in with people who have no common sense, no wisdom, no knowledge of who they are in Christ (or perhaps no knowledge of Christ at all), and who are themselves operating in a culture of death. Leave your house looking like the ambassador of Christ that you are!

(Yes, even when you’re going to the airport, on a plane, or to the gym! Selah!)

I believe the enemy tricks people into allowing themselves to dress badly.

The Bible talks a lot about clothes, including robes of righteousness; royal robes; robes of sonship; clothing yourself with dignity; and more. And the enemy knows that if he can convince people to let themselves look bad, he can steal their motivation, inspiration, and courage.

Beloved, how you dress makes a huge impact on every part of your life–and on your ability to believe God for abundant life. 🙂

Your physical appearance changes your mindset, your psyche, everything. Its importance is often overlooked, but this is SO HUGE!

If you want to walk into abundant life, this is an easy place to begin changing your outlook, mood, and heart posture. You don’t have to have a big budget to make changes. You can look good with items from a thrift store or charity shop. The point is to care, and to make the effort to look like you care–like you value yourself the way God does.

That said, the third way I see Christians embracing the culture of death is:

3) By embracing words that bring death, rather than only speaking words that bring the abundant life they desire.

Every word you speak matters. Every single one. Look at what the Bible says:

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21 NKJV).

“A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth, but the soul of the unfaithful feeds on violence” (Proverbs 13:2 NKJV).

You can choose to speak words that bring life, or you can choose to speak words that bring death. It doesn’t matter if you mean the words you say or not. If a word you speak is something that you would not want to be literally true, then it’s a curse, and it has power.

God created the entire world out of nothing, simply by speaking. He is the Creator, and He made us in His image. That is why He made us to be creators too, and He gives us power to create by the spoken word, just like He does.

Therefore, if you want to create positive outcomes in your life, speak positive words that line up with the Word of God. But if you do not purposefully speak positive words, not only will you not see those positive results–but the negative words you speak will actually bring curses upon yourself and others, and will produce a negative outcome.

So how can you embrace abundant LIFE in this area?

By guarding your tongue. As David wrote in the Psalms:

“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3 NKJV).

Beloved, learn to speak words that bring LIFE, and only life.

Don’t let sound proceed out of your mouth if the words you’re going to speak are negative in any way:

• Don’t use slang expressions that bring death (e.g. “I love you to death!”);
• Don’t joke around with other people (or yourself) using words that are not positive, even if you meant them as a joke;
• Don’t make dire predictions about your health, your future, your finances, your family, your job, your potential, your calling, your relationships, or any other thing.

Learn to speak LIFE. Ask God daily to set a watch on your mouth. And practice purposefully speaking the Word of God over yourself until the Word of God, and things that align with His Word, become your whole vocabulary.

(I actually wrote three whole books for you, full of abundant-life-filled confessions from God’s Word. They are called Speak Life Volumes 1-3, and I use the confessions in them every day myself! I highly encourage you to do so as well!)

Beloved, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Do you want death, or do you want life? If you want life, eschew the culture of death and the tricks of the enemy and go after LIFE purposefully by speaking words that are pleasing to Jesus, and which will create the results you want, based on the Word of God.

My friend, this world’s culture wants to kill you. But, Jesus came that you may have LIFE, and have it more abundantly.

Nevertheless, you can’t walk in the life that Jesus died to give you unless you make specific and concrete choices to flee from the devil and all his tricks–including the tricks of this world’s culture of death–and walk purposefully into LIFE.

Which will you choose today? Do you want to walk in the abundant life that Jesus lived, died, and rose again to give you? Leave a comment below!