Yesterday on the blog, we talked about the five-letter word that helps us flourish with God: Abide. The Bible gives us such beautiful guidance in how to stay in Christ. To abide. When we abide, we bloom! Planted in God’s kingdom, we can grow and thrive as we take in His sustenance — His word, Himself (he is the bread of life and living water) and the fruit of His Spirit. And a beautiful thing to remember is that we are planted in a garden. Have you ever seen a garden that contained only one plant? No, that is just a plant. A truly thriving garden is filled with many plants, some young and some more mature. We have found that the garden is a beautiful picture of discipleship.
As God’s Garden, we all have the same opportunities. We can reach back to those behind us, sharing with them the rich spiritual food that God has planted in us, and passing along the lessons He’s taught us to help shade others from life’s scorches. When we do, we find that our own faith roots grow all the deeper and we bloom brighter.
Grand Canyon University recently released a statement on flourishing, and one of the key points of that statement was this: “As complex and wonderfully diverse creatures we are to respond to reverence to God through our unique volitional, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical capacities… true flourishing depends on living in right relationship with God, which enables us to relate rightly to others.”
While writing our book, The Sublime Soiree: God’s Invitation to the Party of
your Life, we realized that God invites us to take our seat at His glorious table, to feast and pass the plate of invitation by hosting others in intimate and grand ways. Flourishing is really the same thing said differently. A flourishing individual takes in the seed of God’s invitation, abides and becomes planted in His garden where we take in His sustenance and bloom with the fruit of His Spirit. Our blooms spread the essence of Christ that invites more to take in His seed and become planted, too!
So how about you? Are you abiding in Him today? Are you letting Him fill you so that you can flourish? Are you allowing others to spur you on, while you spur others on? To abide is to live a joyous life. As members of God’s family, we are His glorious garden, and when we are truly abiding in Him we flourish and spread the beauty and fragrance in a way that can fill the world with joy and life too! Join us in praying this prayer:
Dear Father, You created me to bloom uniquely in your glorious garden. I ask you today to help me abide in you, to remain in you, and to fill me with more of you. The struggles of this world are large and many but as I seek you, I know you will abide in me, and your truth will guide and direct my steps moment by moment. Lord, help me to bloom brightly, flourishing in you. And may I remain faithful until the day you call me home. Lord help me to bloom brightly so that others will want to know you. And may I share this news with others, so that we may spur one another on to flourish. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.
— The Sublime Soiree © August 2024
