Dana Bell

Abundant Life. What does it mean?

Most people live in survival mode.
They have a lifestyle that controls them in so much that their decisions in life are made to preserve their lifestyle. They will do all kinds of things to insure that their life is undisturbed.
Drug users do what they have to in order to insure that they get their drugs.
Gamblers do the same.
Just the average person will make their image central to what they must preserve in order to survive in whatever circle they are in. They will compromise everything in order to insure their social or economic status.
Assurance of survival is the highpoint of their life. When circumstances don't allow them to continue living as they want or previously did, they suffer various consequences, both physical and mental. That's a bummer. (That's death, dying, as the scripture might put it.)

Biblical Christians live in sacrificial mode.
They have a lifestyle that controls them, in so much that their decisions are made based on their lifestyle. They will do all kinds of things in spite of how it may disturb their life.
Compromise is not an option, just as survival is not an essential.
The highpoint of their life is something that isn't controlled by circumstances or anything in this world. That highpoint isn't even in this life.

One of the ironies of this is that Christians are often better able to survive life, even though they do very little to insure survival. They entrust their lives to God and He does all kinds of things to insure that their life is preserved.

This is what it means to be a stranger, alien. This is what it means to be peculiar, or weird.