Are you abounding?

A Christian should never fall out of the habit of evaluating their work in the Lord: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Corinthians 13:5). But we need to be exhorted to look deeply at the nature of our service, not just at the question of whether we serve the Lord or not. Another way to put this is to consider if we are abounding.

God doesn’t just want Christians who haven’t hurt the Lord’s work; He wants them to grow and do more. The Bible calls that principle “abounding”. Paul wrote, “But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing” (1 Thessalonians 4:9-12).

True abounding means that you are going to be diligent (2 Timothy 2:15). The one talent man learned what happens when someone isn’t diligent in abounding (Matthew 25:25-30). Another useful warning is for a Christian never to go beyond the truth and pretend to do more, like Ananias and Sapphira, and therefore sin against God (Acts 5:1-10). Everyone in Christ should be righteously working up the ladder to do more and more.

Kyle Campbell