Vibrant: A Life of AbundanceSample

Let me make this incredibly easy for you. There are two vital choices that are linked together...yet they are different. You must determine how you will respond to these choices before joy is allowed to knock on your door and before holy purpose holds your hand in friendship. You must decide:

• Will I continue to trust the Lord when I hate my circumstances? 

• Will I continue to be a blessing to others even when my life is hard?

Your answer to any of those questions reflects the level of trust that you have in your Father and in your Creator. When you trust in the Lord, you have set your hope and confidence wholly on the Lord. Because you have chosen to make this dynamic choice, you know that you are secure and that you have nothing to fear. If you are

When you put all of your trust in God, not in yourself and not in the systems of the world, you will be like a tree planted by a bubbling, gurgling stream, which will cause you to have nothing to fear when the searing seasons of life come your way. Circumstances will be no match for your overwhelming trust in your good, good Father. You will be so aware of Him and of His care for you that the physical conditions of your life will have no impact on your growing season at all.

God’s grace is the fertilizer that can turn our “not enough” into “more than enough.” I believe that God cheers us on even when the fires of affliction are searing and there is no visible protection. God’s grace added to our insufficiency becomes a verdant place of growth when we fertilize it with generosity.

Your ability to live a life of uncommon hope and irrepressible joy is not linked to your circumstances, but it is linked to your choices. So many people slog through their time on this earth expecting a life of beauty to be handed to them while others are determined to create a life of beauty in spite of their pain. There are folks who feel entitled to kindness while there are others who go about simply being kind. There are people who presume that every circumstance in life will result in easy living and people whose chief goal is to make the lives of others easier.