E64 Why You’re Not Experiencing the Abundant Life (And How to Start Living It)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:02)
What does the abundant life actually look like? When Jesus said that he came to give us life and give it to the full, what did he actually mean? Those phrases have been tossed around in churches and Christian circles all the time. But does anybody even know what that tangibly looks like? How to take hold of it and actually live it out? That’s my topic for today. Let’s dive into the idea of not just living your best life, but living the abundant life.That God has to offer. Let’s dive in.

Welcome back to the show. I’m Jennifer, your host. This is where we go below the surface. And today I want to ⁓ take

a step further, the idea of living your best life. I did an episode on that a couple of weeks ago and just around the idea of what does it mean to live your best life and how do you actually take steps toward that and why does God even care? Like is that even a biblical concept? And so I flushed that out a little bit, but I wanted to go even further because for a believer whose faith is in the Lord Jesus, it’s it’s not even so much about living your best life, although I believe that is an important part

Of fulfilling your purpose, but it’s really about living the abundant life. And so, what do I mean by that? I want to tap in specifically to the scripture today in verse ⁓ John 10:10. And so let me read to you a couple of versions so that we can begin to understand where the idea of the abundant life even come from. So the NIV version says the thief, which is a reference to Satan, comes only to

To kill, steal, and destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it to full. Another version says, the thief’s purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy, but my purpose is to give a rich and satisfying life. Another version says, ⁓ I’ve come that you may have new life, have it abundantly, have life in its fullness.

And then the amplified, which I think explains it really, really well. It says

I came that they may have life and have it in abundance to the full until it overflows. And so these are the words of Jesus ⁓ in the scripture, John 10, 10. this is something that we, if you’re a believer, if you’re a follower of Christ, then you already have access to this, to living life to in fullness, to living a rich and satisfying life, to having a abundance in your life. And so what does that look like? And how do we get that?

And that’s that’s what I wanted to go over today. I think a lot of people have a wrong current view of what it means to have the abundant life. I remember there was a time where I was like, well, that must just refer to, you know, heaven, because we can’t really live an abundant, you know, beautiful life on earth. And and I realized that is definitely wrong. You can live ⁓ a satisfying, beautiful life while you’re on the earth physically. So it’s not just about.

getting to heaven, God wants us to be able to enjoy our lives while we’re while we’re physically here on the earth. And I touched on that a little bit in the other episode. So I won’t go very deep into that now. But if you do some research, you can see that the Lord does really want you to enjoy your life while you are on earth. But I think another thing too is that people assume it’s automatic that God is just going to drop this amazing life in your lap. And that’s actually not how it works. That’s a common misunderstanding. I definitely held that view for a long time.

Of, ⁓ I’m a Christian now. So life is gonna be great. but wait a minute, why do I still have all these problems? And and that was a a huge one for me, here I am. I’ve been a Christian for a long, long time. I, you know, I placed my faith in Jesus as a child at five years old and got baptized. So why don’t I have a better life? Why are all these bad things happening to me? why am I encountering all this negativity? And while I recognize there is a scripture where Jesus says,

In this life you will have trouble. Yes, you will. But there’s also a certain amount of trouble that you can be protected from that and that’s what is part of the abundant life. And so why the question I was asking myself is why is my life not more

Satisfying, not more rich, you know? And so I really had to delve into those questions and I realized there was a lot of things that were getting in the way. why isn’t my life better? Why is there still strife in my family, striving in my heart? Why am I feeling stuck at work? All the things. It’s because my baggage was getting in the way. And that’s the problem. Our baggage gets in the way of the abundant life. If we don’t deal with our junk, if we don’t deal with the wounds and the negative mindsets, we cannot tap into the abundant life.

Life. You are not experiencing blessing because you’re living under the consequences and curses of things that have happened to you, the consequences of sin in your life or sin that other people have done to you, and curses, things that have been said or spoken that are keeping you in bondage. So why aren’t you living the abundant life? Why isn’t your life more rich, more satisfying? Because you haven’t dealt with your baggage and gotten freedom. God doesn’t just hand it over. You have to fight for it. And I don’t

Think ⁓ very many people understand that that’s how it works. We’ve got to let God refine us, we’ve got to let Him close doors where the enemy has access to torment us and cause trouble. We you know it’s progressive, it’s part of sanctification and growing to become more like Jesus. It’s it’s a gift that God gives us. The abundant life is a gift, but it evolves over time. It doesn’t just suddenly happen to us there’s

Multiple facets involved in it. And so what do I mean by that? I would say that this is Jen’s definition of the abundant life. It’s a life of freedom. And that’s what I talk about here on the podcast all the time. How can you get freedom? Freedom from your wounds, freedom from negative thought patterns, freedom from self-sabotage, areas where you feel stuck, areas where you are dealing with strongholds. You want to live the abundant life, you want to have a rich and satisfying life. you’ve

Got to lean into freedom. as I was kind of jotting this, you know, thinking over this topic and just pondering what has the Lord showed me about the abundant life and how do I step into that and take hold of it? I made a list. And so these are the elements of what it looks like to live an abundant life, life to the full.

number one, you’re no longer s a slave to sin. There’s so many Bible verses about how before you know Jesus died for our sins and we accepted him as a replacement.

we were stuck, like we couldn’t help but sin. that was the old lifestyle where we were stuck in these ways and we couldn’t figure out how to get out. And there had to be a ⁓ payment for that, right? Which is why Jesus came and he died and he paid that payment for us so that we could get free of that. So do we still tend to sin as a Christian? Yes, we will always have that tendency to lean towards sin. But the thing is now we get to choose something different.

We have this extra strength inside of us. Like we’re no longer a slave to those old behaviors. Like the old is gone, the new has come, right? That’s what the Bible tells us. So we’re not stuck in that anymore. And some things can be a little bit easier to overcome than others, but we now have the capability to overcome.

we now are able to say no to that and stop doing those things that we know are not good for us or hurting other people. So yeah, number one, we’re no longer enslaved to a life of sin. We’re free of that.

The second one is that

There are several scriptures that talk about how Jesus frees us from captivity, how he pulls us from the pit. Like God doesn’t leave us stuck in our junk, but we have to choose to heal. We have to choose to go to him. We have to face our pain. We’ve got to let him, as the scripture says, exchange beauty for ashes, right? The ashes of our life where things just things just fell apart. We dealt with all this pain and all this wounding. we have to let the Lord heal our hearts by facing those things.

And sometimes we have to get some help for that.

Because when we have unhealed wounds, the enemy that opens a door for the enemy to come in and attack us. Satan is able to keep pricking on those things that are wounded us. He keeps reminding us of our past. He keeps bringing back past memories. He keeps ⁓ keeps us stuck in those trauma triggers where we are dealing with fight or flight or ⁓ freeze mentality over different areas where we feel like we can’t respond well. We don’t know what it looks like to respond well. We’re on autopilot in different situations.

Situations we get super upset over things and we overreact over things that really didn’t require that kind of response, but we didn’t know how to tone it down. There’s so many different ways that not dealing with our wounds causes us a lot of problems. It causes problems in our relationships, it causes problems in how we show up at work or

what we accomplish as far as ⁓ moving into our calling and our purpose. There’s so many different ways that our wounds get in the way of living the abundant life, of living life to the full and living our best life. So we’ve got we’re gonna have to deal with those things. We’re gonna have to get some healing.

So to live the abundant life is to be free from

the weight of those wounds and be free from the pull of all of those emotional overreactions because we can think about those situations that caused all that pain and we no longer have that crazy emotional reaction anymore. We’re just like, yeah, that was something that happened in my life and we can move on. So getting healing, getting freedom is extremely important

If we want to live life to the full, we’ve got to deal with our wounds. So the third one is a renewed mind. I think for those that live life to the full, they’re going to think differently. Like they’re not going to be stuck in fear. They’re not going to be stuck in negativity. They’re not going to be stuck in scarcity or victimhood or self-pity or you know, complaining and criticizing. A person who’s living life to the full.

they’re gonna be able to just brush things off. They’re like, yeah, okay. They’re gonna they’re going to look at life as ⁓ look at all these opportunities instead of, poor me, look at all these negative things happening in my life. It’s such a different outlook. And the more you get free from habitual negative thinking, the more you’re like,

This is so much better. Or looking at it this way is so much more freeing. Like I don’t have the weight or this heaviness on me anymore because I’m seeing possibilities and opportunities and I’m seeing positivity and goodness all around me. I’m carrying this heart of gratitude and I’m so thankful for this and that and the other thing that I don’t have time for negativity anymore because I’m enjoying things. Like I’ve got good thought processes in place. And so it’s helping me to have a higher perspective.

And that’s part of what having a renewed mind is all about. Setting your mind on things above. I feel like the Lord tells me all the time, come on, Jen, you’re down here in this really awful way of thinking. Come back up here. Come back up higher. This is where we live. We live up here in this higher plane. we think from a different perspective, a higher perspective, one that God has given us.

So a renewed mind is a wonderful element of living the abundant life because you’re not stuck in all of this really negative thinking. Another one is that your relationship with God is it just gets it’s really amazing. It’s really beautiful because you were adopted, right? It the scripture talks about how he adopted us to be sons and daughters. We develop that intimate friendship with him, that intimate relationship with him.

And there’s a depth there that we we don’t know or that we can’t experience when we’re holding on to all of this baggage because that stuff gets in the way. But when we get free of it, when we lay it down, when we let him heal us, when we let him renew our minds, that stuff gets out of the way. And so we’re able to enjoy our life. We’re able to enjoy our relationship with the Lord. And we’re able to frame things properly in the way that we think and speak. And so life becomes beautiful.

Another aspect of living life to the full is the idea of sowing and reaping. The more we let the Lord heal us and cleanse us and bring us into a life of freedom, the less we’re sowing junk. We’re no longer sowing complaints and self-pity and

The idea of I never have enough, right? We stop thinking those things and saying those things over our lives. We start sowing positive things. We’re we’re focused on the truth, we’re focused on the promises of of the Lord in the Bible, we’re focused on the the good things that He’s done, where we have a heart of gratitude where we are thankful for all the good things in our lives instead of focusing on the bad.

The more we

grow and develop and become the person God designed us to be, then we all that stuff shluffs off. And so now we’re sowing good things into others around us and we’re going to reap those good things back. we learn how to sow differently. We learn how to plant goodness instead of things that are bad for us and bad for other people. So

Another one is the idea of blessing and provision or even abundance. There’s areas where you’re gonna experience just so much sweetness, especially like in relationships or

Like where the Lord will bless something that you don’t think he really cares about. ⁓ and let me be clear, I’m not talking prosperity gospel baloney right now. I’m talking about living a life of freedom, living the abundant life.

opens doors that can normally be closed. And so I’m not talking monetarily. I’m talking about in general your relationships will be richer. Like you won’t have as much strife going on in your home, on your job, in your relationships with your family or coworkers or friends. You just won’t have as many conflicts. Not to say that there will never be conflicts. That’s not what it’s about. There has to be conflicts in order for us to grow.

But it’s about the conflicts will be smaller less often. They’ll be more easily resolved, things of that nature. Along with that is other things like certain things won’t be so difficult.

Say you’ve got to make an appointment for the doctor, but there can be sometimes all sorts of complications with trying to get on the schedule. Maybe they don’t answer their phone, you know, you’re on hold for forever. You get an appointment that’s several months out and you don’t want to wait. Whereas

When you’re living a life that’s rich and satisfying, when you’re living life to the full, ⁓ abundant life, you’re not gonna have as many of those kinds of complications. You’re gonna call and make your own appointment and it’s gonna go really smooth. I have seen that happen so much in my life, especially over the last 10 years, where I would dread trying to make a phone call to like an insurance company or

For an oil change, because it would just you would get into arguments with people on the other line. And so now I don’t have that anymore because the the curses are out of the way, the consequences of sin are out of the way, the my my thinking is different, my heart is healed, and so

I don’t know if I’m explaining that very well, but basically, like in your interactions with people, things are not going to be as convoluted and complicated because it’s like a lot of the junk gets moved out of the way. We don’t have to climb over all of these different ⁓ brambles or or you know roadblocks. We can just get straight to the point. We can have a ⁓ healthy, enjoyable conversation and move on, you know, and get the things done. So there’s not as many problems, that.

Cause

Complications in different areas of your life. So that’s what I mean when I say blessing, provision, abundance. I also mean things like I’ve mentioned before, every time I take a trip or go on a vacation, ⁓ I hardly have ever have any issues. Like I ⁓ don’t lose my luggage. I I mean, here on this last trip, we had extra seats between us on every flight. Like the Lord cleared the way for us to have extra space on the flight. That’s a blessing, that’s provision, abundance from the Lord. Did I need an extra?

Extra

seat, I did not, but he wanted to give that to me as a a way of of ⁓ loving on me and showing me that he cares about us and he knew how much we would love to have that extra space on the flight. And so those are the kinds of things that are gonna happen to you more and more. You’re gonna find people giving you favor, you’re gonna have extra opportunities that you didn’t have because doors will be open to you. Because again,

The junk is out of the way. So blessing and provision and abundance can have easier access to getting to you. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn’t, you can email me and we can talk more ⁓ one on one. But in any case, another concept also is what a concept that I learned a few years ago called the ease anointing.

Proverbs ⁓

Three verse six says, In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. And I think that that is a extremely important part of the abundant life is the more you acknowledge the Lord in your day-to-day living, the more you include him and let him participate in your daily life, the more you face your junk and get healing from wounds, the more you work on renewing your mind. Your life starts to go just a teeny bit smoother and a teeny bit smoother and a teeny bit smoother.

And so you can look back five or 10 years later and be like, ⁓ wow, you know, if this situation would have happened to me five years ago, I would have been a wreck. But it happened to me now, and I was able to handle it with confidence, with maturity, without emotion. And so your personal growth is directly related to what the Bible talks about, making your paths straighter. And what I was saying before about things, life gets less complicated, like you don’t have as many roadblocks.

To all the little things that you’re trying to do. And so I think I have found that that is also a really beautiful benefit of living the abundant life is that the more you deal with your junk and that stuff can’t influence you anymore, then ⁓ life does get just a little bit smoother, a little bit easier. You don’t have as many complications. you’re able to access things more freely and get the help that you need in the different ways.

And that’s not to say that the goal is

Is that life would be easy. That’s that’s not the goal. We do need, you know, when we talk of the idea of becoming anti-fragile, we’ve got to have difficult circumstances happen in our lives so that we can shore up that foundation and make it make it strong and sure. But ⁓ when those things do come, they don’t throw us for a loop as badly. Like we respond so much better when we’re living a life of freedom, when we’re embracing a the abundant life, those things are not.

is difficult for us to deal with because like I said, we can handle them with maturity instead of emotion. We can handle them from a perspective of truth rather than

our perspective being skewed because of the lies and limitations that we’re believing around the different situation. When we start clearing that stuff out of the way, I liken it to walking through a really ⁓ thick forest where you’ve just got so many bushes and branches in your way that it’s really difficult to reach your destination because you’re constantly like chopping things out of your way, shoving stuff out of your way, trying to find a spot where you can put your foot.

Trees and bushes are tugging on your clothes and you’re like you really have to fight to get through to follow the path. Well, the abundant life isn’t like that. That stuff’s out of your way. So it’s not causing you trouble. It’s not holding you back. It’s not

causing you difficulty, but you’re able to put one foot in front of the other easily and smoothly ⁓ and move forward that’s what I have learned as I’ve been really leaning in my own freedom journey and trying to deal with all the things and get healing from my baggage and get free from bondage. And so that’s why it is so important to deal with your junk and get free of

strongholds and self-sabotage and striving. And that is, you know, my heart behind the podcast is I really want to help people find freedom. It’s so easy to stay stuck in your old ways, in your old habits and not understand how you are sabotaging yourself, you know.

Where those blind spots are causing us problems. So I hope that you will lean into your own healing journey, that you will do the work, that you will put forth the effort to get free of your junk, to get healed from your wounds, to renew your mind, because there really is abundant life on the other side. If you will ⁓ lean into that and partner with the Lord, He has more for you. He wants you to live a rich, satisfying life. That’s that’s why one of the

what reasons that Jesus came, not just to free us from sin, but to give us, you know, freedom in general from all sorts of different hindrances, as I’ve talked about before. So bless you, friend. I hope this episode has been encouraging. I really think like as you go about your week, I just want you to explore the idea of what does abundant life look like and specifically tangibly, what does abundant life look like for you

how you’re living in your day-to-day routine. ⁓ where can you lean into the different areas of freedom so that you can move just that one step closer to the abundant life, a life of richness, fullness, and satisfaction. So have a great week, friend. Bless you.