Survive or Thrive?

Most days I feel completely happy if I have survived it.  If I was able to weather my daily chores and errands, manage to get through my daughter's ample supply of irrationalities, and the hours of schooling my boys, it was a success.  I often give advice to new mothers "Its all about survival."  True, to a point.  But lately I have been encouraged.  I can have more that just making it through.

John 10:9-11

Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁹I am the Door; anyone who enters in through Me will be saved (will live). He will come in and he will go out [freely], and will find pasture.
    ¹⁰The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it ^[a]overflows).
    ¹¹I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd risks and lays down His [own] life for the sheep.
 

Romans 5:17

Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹⁷For if because of one man's trespass (lapse, offense) death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive [God's] overflowing grace (unmerited favor) and the free gift of righteousness [putting them into right standing with Himself] reign as kings in life through the one Man Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

So many times I settle for survival.  But here in Romans it says that when I accept the gift through Jesus I will live and reign as a king through Him.  I've seen how some  kings lived, they had abundance.  I'm not talking about "stuff."  I'm talking about life, abundant life.  Abundance is marked by an ample supply, great plenty, more than you need, a life that is so full and secure in the life that Jesus has brought you into that you ooze it all over everyone else. 

I wanted to get a clear picture of how life was determined.  I looked to the dictionary: An organismic state of characterised by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.  The quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body.  With life we are able to react, grow, and have a vital (meaning: existing as a manifestation of life, full of life and vigor, tending to renew or refresh the living) function. Its far beyond survival, but abundant life is impossible without Jesus.  We must not try to live this life out of abundance on our own, the only hope of abundance lies in our relationship with Jesus.  There is nothing more I can do to create more vigor, only through the Holy Spirit will my life thrive (grow vigorously, progress towards a goal despite my circumstances, flourish, and prosper)

Isaiah 44:3-5

New Living Translation (NLT)

 ³ For I will pour out water to quench your thirst
      and to irrigate your parched fields.
   And I will pour out my Spirit on your descendants,
      and my blessing on your children.
 ⁴ They will thrive like watered grass,
      like willows on a riverbank.
 ⁵ Some will proudly claim, ‘I belong to the Lord.’
      Others will say, ‘I am a descendant of Jacob.’
   Some will write the Lord’s name on their hands
      and will take the name of Israel as their own.”