Building a Platform To Stand on and Live the Abundant Life

While working with leaders in the marketplace and ministry, I often hear the same complaint: “The life I have built is not working well. My marriage is in trouble. I’m not happy and no one knows it and I can’t tell anyone how miserable I really am.”

So, with this kind of confession and invitation for help, we begin to lay out a new platform for building a whole new life.  We can’t just start being happy or start living a different kind of life. We need to build a new platform—a new foundation for living the life we want to live. 

In Search of the Abundant Life

When we want to live a life that Jesus described as the “abundant life” most of us don’t really comprehend what the abundant life really means? Does this mean something about living in heaven? Does it mean I have to wait till heaven to really live? Just what is the abundant life?

Most of us have tried and are still attempting to live a life marked with the synonyms describing the abundant life: a rich and satisfying life; a life marked by grace, peace and love; a life of well-being and more.  But many of us are still trying to balance all of the competing demands and rivaling priorities we face day to day. There is the daily pressure each one of us faces. There is our busyness. There is our jobs. There is our family. And it all seems like a life we need to manage rather than a life we get to actually enjoy.

In His Hands

The timeless image of the Divine Potter at work on the clay is really the story of all of our lives. The Potter forms us, re-forms us when a marring happens; then transforms us and finally conforms us to an image that really is a better image of ourselves.

When we use this image to know and tell our story, we can see how it is God’s hands that have been pursuing our clay all along. Even in utero, God has formed us and shaped us, given us the color of our eyes, our gender, our DNA and shaped our souls to our families of origin. David says it so well in Psalm 139:13, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Our inmost being is our soul—our inner life combined with our body—we are marvelously made. But through life, we get marred. We live through many impressions that miss-shape our personality, our well being, our abilities.