Correction – It is Essential to an Abundant Life

Photo by Karla Hernandez on Unsplash

Jesus promised us a life that we can describe as abundant – life to the full! In order to experience that life, we must embrace a reality that is not necessarily pleasant. There is one thing that is essential.

We will get to that one thing in a minute but first, let’s understand what abundant life is.

A life that is lived in the presence of God and experiences the power of God, the glory of our hope, the love, joy and peace that are overflowing – this is the abundant life!

It is a life we all want to live. Amid all the pressures of life, with bad news, fear, anxiety and discomfort all around us, we can live free from all of that.

The Problem

The universal, endless problem we have is that we want to make our own decisions. We want to determine the course of our lives. Even as we decide to give our lives to Jesus, we are prone to continue in this attitude. When we do, we find that we have inner conflict and experience failure regularly.

It is easy to get so busy with life that we ignore – accidentally or intentionally – the way God wants us to live. If we continue on that course too long, we drift away from the path he has set for us – the path to abundant life!

The Solution

The Old Testament was written to help us understand how God works in the world and among his people. He has always desired the best for us.

God sent his messengers, the prophets, to the people to help them understand what they must do. Sometimes they listened. When Jonah preached in Nineveh, here’s what happened:

“But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

Jonah 3:8–9 (ESV)

And God accepted their repentance and saved Nineveh from disaster.

But we don’t always listen to the words from God’s messengers. In fact, the Old Testament prophets consistently faced people with hard hearts and deaf ears! Here’s what God said through his prophet at one such time:

       I said, ‘Surely you will fear me;

you will accept correction.

       Then your dwelling would not be cut off

according to all that I have appointed against you.’

       But all the more they were eager

to make all their deeds corrupt.

Zephaniah 3:7 (ESV)  

The people forfeited the protection and blessing of God because they were determined to do things their way, to join with the surrounding culture so they could fit in with the world around them. The problem of course is that the worldly culture is not living the abundant and blessed life that Jesus wants us to live.

The One Essential

It is clear that the one essential we need in order to live the abundant life is correction. Correction can be seen as negative or positive depending on how you decide to view it. I like to take a positive view. Correction is getting things correct!

Think of correction as God telling you that there is danger ahead. Correction is a warning to steer clear of discomfort and guilt. Correction is providing you with a powerful and positive alternative to making a huge mistake.

If we think of correction as somehow infringing on our rights to make our own decisions, we are guilty of being rebellious. That is not what we want as we follow Jesus.

Where do we Find this Essential?

2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that God’s word is useful for correction. As we read God’s word, we will find things that need to be changed in our lives. Change is correction.

In addition to our personal reading of the Bible, solid biblical instruction and preaching help us understand the corrective actions we need to take to be all we should be. I want to stress that this isn’t an either/or approach but a both/and approach. We need to be reading the Bible on our own but we must also augment that with good teaching and preaching.

If we only read the Bible, we may miss an important application. If we only pay attention to teaching and preaching without reading our Bible, how will we truly know what we hear is biblical?

Your Turn

What do you need to do to add correction to your spiritual life? Jesus leads, we follow and when we don’t quite follow perfectly, we must embrace correction. Have you done that? If not, I hope you will do it now!