As you think of what it means to thrive, what is one thing that you would change about your life that\u00a0would allow you to truly thrive? It might be something to do with relationships or finances, maybe a\u00a0change in your habits or your personality. We all have ideas of what we would change and many of us\u00a0are actively pursuing change! What if God\u2019s plan for us is that we would thrive? This may\u00a0sound a little strange at first, but let me explain.<\/p>\n
God created us (humankind) in a context where we were thriving, the Garden of Eden. That was the\u00a0beginning of the story, the end of the story is actually quite similar to the beginning in that we find\u00a0ourselves now in a city with that same garden in the middle of it. I sometimes think of this place as the\u00a0Garden of Eden version 2.0. In this city, technology will continue to advance, we\u2019ll work, go fishing,\u00a0laugh, and have meaningful conversations. We won\u2019t experience other people making us feel small with\u00a0their words or actions, we won\u2019t be anxious about the future, we\u2019ll truly belong wherever we go, and we\u00a0won\u2019t have to try to be something that we\u2019re not. It sounds a little like the best parts of life here on\u00a0earth and heaven combined doesn\u2019t it? That\u2019s exactly how the Bible describes what happens at the end.<\/p>\n
But what happens in between?<\/p>\n
Right off the back, we find the first two humans rejecting their humanity and rather than finding life in\u00a0God, they find life where there is no life. As they began searching for life on their own (and ultimately\u00a0not finding it), they turned to stuff that God created to be good and because it felt nice, began to\u00a0depend on those things for life. Though they may have been made as good things, they were never\u00a0made to bring life. Throughout the Bible, we see people becoming addicts to all sorts of things, groping\u00a0around for the life they left behind at Eden. God in his kindness mourned for mankind, he couldn\u2019t stand\u00a0to see us like this, so he put into place a plan to restore us to what we were created to be.<\/p>\n
The climax of this plan is when the Son of God makes a permanent transformation into the God-man,\u00a0being born into the world just like the rest of us. The God-man sought none of the things the rest of us\u00a0long for externally, but internally he experienced all the things we long for. One might say he was\u00a0internally thriving.<\/p>\n
It was like he was from a heavenly culture and he came down to earth, it must have been a little like\u00a0culture shock. I imagine that he looked around, saw a leper on the side of the road and was a bit\u00a0perplexed maybe even thinking to himself, \u201cthis would never happen in heaven, why is nobody helping\u00a0him?\u201d, so he reaches out and heals him. Then he goes to a wedding and they run out of wine and he\u00a0thinks to himself, \u201ca party in heaven would never run out of wine!\u201d so he turns water into wine. Then he\u00a0meets a woman that has been bleeding her whole life, she touches him in hopes that he can heal her\u00a0and she\u2019s healed. He says to her, your faith has made you well.<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 coming initiates the breaking through of heaven into earth, that the reality of the Garden of Eden\u00a0version 2.0 has started. The word that Jesus uses for \u201cwell\u201d when he tells the bleeding woman her faith\u00a0has made her well can also be translated \u201cwhole\u201d. The Greek word for this word means salvation. Jesus\u00a0in moving people towards wholeness or thriving calls this process salvation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As you think of what it means to thrive, what is one thing that you would change about your life that\u00a0would allow you to truly thrive? It might be something to do with relationships or finances, maybe a\u00a0change in your habits or your personality. We all have ideas of what we would change and many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n