Learning to Thrive

If we're not intentional, survival moments can become a pattern of living in full-time survival mode.

Here’s how comedian Jim Gaffigan describes having a fourth kid: “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth kid, just imagine you’re drowning, and then someone hands you a baby.” Whether or not you have four kids, you have definitely experienced what he’s describing. The feeling of barely keeping your head above water, and then more gets put onto your plate. When that happens, we automatically and desperately focus on one goal: survive. Don’t drown. Keep the kids alive. Keep the business alive. Keep the marriage alive. Keep the church alive. Keep the dream alive.

Sometimes that’s all we can do, sometimes that’s all that God requires. Stand up. Don’t quit. Take the next step. Don’t drown. But if we’re not careful, our own broken patterns of life can turn a survival moment into a pattern of full-time survival mode. We can develop a consistent habit of barely making it through, assuming that this is the best that we can do. We can amplify the types of thoughts, words, and actions that allow us to survive, and live with those as the normal rhythms of our lives. The whole environment of our lives can feel like a low-grade crisis, like we are breath away from catastrophe.

I think God designed us for a different kind of life, with him, with others, and in the world. He intends us not merely to survive but to thrive. Jesus himself said, “A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10).

You, like me, probably respond immediately in two ways to this idea, “Yes,” and “But Wait.” The “Yes” comes from the place where a thriving, full, abundant life resonates in our hearts. Something we can’t even fully explain tells us that we are designed to thrive. On the other hand, the “But Wait” quickly follows, because of how the world and some forms of prosperity teaching have abused this theme. They have defined a full, abundant, thriving life apart from God, the cross, or anything that really aligns with the Bible. To respond first to the “but wait,” I have the same catch in my spirit and I’m very concerned and cautious about misapplying the Bible for some form of worldly, prosperity theology. On the other hand, I also want to lean into the “Yes.” I want to discover what it means to move past survival mode and truly thrive.

Why Thrive?

Let me give you two moments that brought me here.

Moment One. Earlier this year, I was preparing a presentation for a leadership cohort I’m a part of. We had to present and share a leadership plan for our church for the next year. The plan included things like vision and mission. I wrote out ours: “We exist to help people find life like God intended by bringing people to God in wholehearted worship and bringing people together in authentic community through the cross of Jesus Christ.” That was simple enough, because I’ve already worked to clarify the vision and mission and do my best to communicate it to our church and our partners.

The next part of the process sort of stumped me, though. I was challenged to discern what our church’s theme would be for the next year to eighteen months. What specifically is God calling us toward in this season and the next? That was harder for me. As I wrestled with the question, I kept returning to this theme: “from survive to thrive.” I want to thrive, and I want our church to thrive, with all that means for our relationships with God, with others, and in the world.

Moment Two. On the very first day (I think) of our family’s summer retreat, sitting on the back patio on a cool California morning, I turned to the next section of my Bible reading plan, Jeremiah 17. A paragraph grabbed me and I’ve spent the last month meditating on it. I read it in Hebrew, and I think the most helpful English rendering I’ve found is the NIV.

This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
(Jeremiah 17:5–8)

I realized that this paragraph describes the difference between surviving and thriving. Look at the imagery here: a bush in the wastelands, a tiny shrub in the desert, alone. Our family has gotten into the series Alone. Each season starts as ten people are left alone in a wild place, with just a few supplies. Whoever survives the longest wins a pile of money. After months in survival mode, the remaining folks end up like a sack of bones, starving, and trying not to quit or be removed by the production team for medical safety. This is a bush in the desert. It doesn’t experience fullness of life. It barely makes it. And the Bible calls this “cursed.” A form of barely living, a human zombie-ism that has a form of life but none of its power. Like I said, we all have had survival moments, but we can easily move into full-time survival mode, with God, with others, with the world around us.

What does it mean to thrive?

What we call thriving is what the Bible calls “blessing.” Thriving is the blessed life, a God-infused life that is fully living. As we say in our church, it’s life like God intended. What is this “blessing,” biblically speaking? If we start early in the story, we see the first time God brings blessing into the world. In Genesis 1, God blesses his creation. First, he blesses the animals:

“God blessed them: ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth’” (Genesis 1:22).

Then he blesses humanity:

“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth’” (Genesis 1:28).

Specifically here, blessing means multiplying, having little baby animals and baby humans. The general principle, though, is deeper. Again, as a part of God’s design at creation, he blesses the seventh day of creation:

“God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation” (Genesis 2:3).

The seventh or Sabbath-rest day is the opposite of fruitful and multiplying, yet it is called “blessed.” So blessing doesn’t merely mean abundance. Blessing means aligning with God and his purpose, standing in right relationship to God and his design. In some cases it means material abundance, but not always or primarily. It means that God is at work and we are in the right position in relation to him and what he’s doing. As the central blessing of the Old Testament shows us:

The LORD spoke to Moses:“Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. You should say to them,
“May the LORD bless you and protect you;
may the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
may the LORD look with favor on you and give you peace.” 
In this way they will pronounce my name over the Israelites, and I will bless them.”(Numbers 6:22–27, CSB)

Blessing or thriving means that God’s face shines on us, favors us, protects us, provides for us, empowers us. It can mean that God feeds us when we’re hungry: “I will abundantly bless its food; I will satisfy its needy with bread” (Psalm 132:15). It can ease the burden of the curse of sin on our work: “The LORD’s blessing enriches, and he adds no painful effort to it” (Proverbs 10:22). Most importantly, the blessing of God restores us to his presence and favor by offering forgiveness and his Spirit.

Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven
and whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the person
the Lord will never charge with sin.
(Romans 4:7–8/Psalm 32:1-2)

I will pour out my Spirit on your descendants
and my blessing on your offspring.
(Isaiah 44:3)

Moving past survival mode means that your life, your heart, your family, your work, your world stands in the sunshine of God and his power, love, grace, holiness, and hope.

Think of characters in the Bible who moved past survival mode and started to thrive. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, wrongly accused and convicted before he rose to power in Egypt to save God’s people. Moses was sent away from power in Egypt, wandered the desert as a shepherd before returning as the means of God’s redemption of his people. But in both cases, and others beside, moving past survival mode happened before the external circumstances seemed to show a life of thriving. Joseph learned to trust God in prison. Moses met God in the burning bush in the wild places. Thriving means that we are tapped into the source of life, even and especially in the midst of the junk of life in a world broken by sin. As Jeremiah says, those planted by God endure heat and drought, but still flush green and grow fruit (17:7-8):

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

Notice that unlike the cursed bush, the thriving life is like a tree planted by the water. It has a Caretaker, a Gardener. It isn’t alone in the salt land where no one else lives. The heat and drought of the hard things of the world are not its source of life. It has roots underneath the visible surface that pull life from a never-ending source. So it thrives with green leaves and apple blossoms. But how? How does the tree thrive? How did Joseph and Moses learn to thrive? How do we learn to move past mere survival mode and to thrive with God?

How can we thrive?

Jeremiah tells us: “blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” We don’t seek to thrive or seek to be blessed. We trust God and blessing and thriving flow from him. God is the soil of our faith. The roots of the thriving tree are faith into the soil of God’s name and God’s work, who God is and what God has done. We are blessed through the blessing of Abraham and the seed of Abraham, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as we trust in him: “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).

Trust is the second side of the coin. To trust God, we need also to turn away from our selves, our sins, and our stuff. “God raised up his servant and sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways” (Acts 3:26). Turn and trust. The biblical wording for this is: repent and believe. This is the way of thriving and moving beyond survival mode. It’s starting to kick your feet and pull your arms in the water, so that you’re swimming rather than drowning.

If we look back at our paragraph from Jeremiah 17, we see that the opposite of trusting the Lord is trusting in man, who rests his confidence in mere flesh. This implies any sort of natural basis for confidence, anything that would be a normal sort of security. For example, a healthy bank account, or compliant children, or natural talent in your field of vocation. Instead, a life that thrives will be a life that is only explained by the supernatural power and presence and provision of God. Is your life a witness to what only God can do?

That is the starting point for thriving.