Bonus: It Reveals God’s Plan For You
🙂 Hint: It’s Not About Success, It’s About Becoming.✨
Is Thriving What We Think It Is?
Let me introduce you to another word for thriving and help you see how it’s full of hope! When most people talk about ‘thriving’, they usually mean a season of visible success: career advancement, improved health, stable finances, peaceful relationships, and a sense of personal fulfillment. And let’s be honest, those things *do* feel good.
But is that what God means by thriving?
Early in my Christian life I maybe thought so. To me, thriving meant everything was currently going my way. I had the right spiritual routines, the right mindset or beliefs, the right people around me. No wonder I was ‘thriving’. And then life would happen. 🥴 Something would unravel, and suddenly I wasn’t ‘thriving’ anymore.
Over time, I realized something important: **thriving isn’t about what we’ve achieved or even what we’re currently experiencing—it’s about what we’re becoming**.
That shift changed everything.
When Jesus Talks About Thriving
If you want to find the real truth about something see if Jesus talked about it. That’s the best starting point. Did Jesus talk about thriving? He did. 💫 And it was actually part of His earliest conversations with His future disciples.
And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Matthew 4:18-19
Did you catch it? “I will make you. . .” That’s a promise of transformation, of becoming. And Who would accomplish it? Jesus. He used another word for thriving, one filled with hope. He promised becoming.
If you can settle that truth deep in your heart and live by it, you will slowly discover that you are thriving spiritually and in so many other ways as well. Your work, your relationships and especially your relationship with God will all blossom under the influence of Jesus’ working in you.
Becoming is the Word We’ve Been Missing
Becoming washes away so much of what hinders and hurts us as Christians, especially as Christian women. Think about the word overwhelmed. How often do you hear your friends describe themselves that way. Count up how many times have you said it about yourself?
As a Christian woman I need to be honest with myself. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m trying to be or do something beyond my current ability, beyond my current reality.
Thriving is the polar opposite of overwhelmed.
If you had to choose another word for thriving, what would it be?
The one that keeps echoing in my heart is becoming.
Not achieving. Not perfecting. Not even succeeding. Becoming.
In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes:
“We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Glory sounds a lot like thriving to me, but Jesus and then Paul talk about transformation, about becoming. That’s their other word for thriving and it’s perfect because it describes how we ultimately thrive as Christians. We do it by becoming.
Thriving is God’s Plan for You
Thriving in the Kingdom of God doesn’t look like a highlight reel. It looks like transformation. It looks like beholding Jesus—turning our gaze toward Him again and again—and being changed by what we see. 🙌
It’s a process. A grace-filled, sometimes slow, mostly hidden process. And it happens as we live in union with Him. Christ in us, the hope of glory.
Thriving is a perpetual outcome not a singular event. It’s happens as we abide in Jesus. That abiding produces the Abundant Life He talked about. Abiding in Him is the only way to experience becoming.
Becoming is Grounded in Hope
Hope is the rocket fuel of becoming. As 1 John 3:2–3 tells us:
“Beloved, now we are the children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
When we fix our eyes on Jesus with hope and expectancy, we are not only transformed over time—we are also refined in the process. This hope doesn’t lead to passivity but to a growing desire to become like Him. Beholding and becoming go hand in hand. And hope is the purifying fire that keeps us moving forward with joy. 🔥
Hope is the purifying fire that keeps us moving forward with joy.✨
Let that truth settle in your soul. It’s not striving or performance that produces growth—it’s hopeful beholding of Jesus that leads to beautiful becoming.
Your Part in the Process
How We Become: Peter’s Path to Real Growth
Allow me a little mini-exposition of 2 Peter 1:2-11 because in that passage, which you should read through each day for a week, you’ll see this pattern for becoming:
❇️Grace and peace come to us through an ever growing knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord (comprised of both understanding divine truth AND having personal experience of God)
❇️God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him
❇️We escape this world’s corruption through the exceeding great and precious promises (God’s word)
❇️AND it is through these promises that we access the transforming power to become partakers of the divine nature.
❇️We need to be diligent to keep adding to our faith. That’s our part. But how do we do that? We dare to.🙂
In his commentary on 2 Peter H.A.Ironside , who pastored Moody Bible Church for decades, tells us how we can add to our faith:
“As we lay hold of these (great and precious promises) and dare to act in accordance with them we, who have been born again by believing the gospel, manifest the divine nature in our practical lives. . .”
H.A. Ironside
I LOVE that: “dare to act in accordance with them”. Faith is all about daring to follow the leading, the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit as we are on this journey of becoming like Jesus.
If you’d like to study this passage more you can read Ironside’s notes in the link below.⬇️📘
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/isn/2-peter-1.html
Make Every Effort
I write a lot about grace, especially as opposed to ‘a performance based walk with Jesus’. But please don’t misunderstand grace. You shouldn’t assume grace means that you are a bystander in your Christian walk, just along for the ride.
2 Peter 1:5 directs us to make every effort to grow spiritually.
. . .make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
Each of these traits of Christ-likeness builds upon the one before it. It starts with faith and ends in love. Not because we personally manufacture these traits, but because the Spirit is forming them in us as we seek to stay close to Jesus, keeping our gaze on Him.
A Personal Example of Effort
How do you make every effort? Here’s an example from my own experience. Right in the middle of some of the richest teaching about how to live as a follower of Jesus (Ephesians 4-5), Paul says,
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.
Ephesians 4:31
One day as I was reading that passage I realized I didn’t know what a few of those words really meant. So I looked them up. When I looked up malice I was completely convicted by the Holy Spirit because I held malice in my heart towards someone. Malice means, the intention or desire to do evil; ill will. Yikes!!! Not an attractive thing to discover about myself. But I knew that the Holy Spirit didn’t convict me of it to make me feel bad, small or condemned. He did it to rescue me. To help me ‘escape’ the corruption that had seeped into my heart.
I’ve always found that one of the quickest most effective ways to conquer a lack of love toward someone is to actively begin praying for them. Calling down blessings on their life and looking for ways to be part of those blessings. So that’s where I started, in prayer. First I confessed my lack of love, the malice I had allowed to reside in my heart toward one of my fellow creatures, then I got to work—making every effort—in prayer on their behalf.
I’m not a super saint, but I have walked with Jesus for over half a century. I know a lot of the Bible and I couldn’t avoid seeing my heart clearly reflected back to me. It was breaking God’s heart 💔, it was grieving the Holy Spirit 🥲. So I dared to act in accordance with God’s word and escape the corruption that’s in the world, using those great and precious promises in His word. I actively looked for the way of escape. I turned from malice to active love. How could I be a blessing instead of someone with malice in her heart? That was my new mission.
The ING of Becoming
In English the ing ending is added to a verb to indicate an ongoing action or process. The continuous tense of a verb. So look again at 2 Peter 1:8
“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How Can You Know You’re Becoming?
Zero in on that phrase, ‘if these qualities are yours and are increasing‘.
How much faith do you need to be becoming? Jesus said if you have faith like a grain of mustard. The key is that it be increasing. Is your faith growing? Can you trust God for something today that you could not have trusted Him for last year?
How about virtue, or knowledge or self-control? Are they increasing in you? Are you a little more Christ-like, do you have a little deeper experience of God, or can you show a bit more self-restraint?
Then you my friend are Becoming! And if you’re Becoming, then you are Thriving!
What Becoming Reveals About God’s Plan for You
God’s plan for your life is not about reaching milestones or fixing every flaw. It’s about shaping your heart, your mind, and your character to reflect Jesus Christ. It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
That’s why we behold. To see Jesus, to get a clear picture of what the Holy Spirit wants to shape in us.
We don’t behold to escape real life—we behold so we can be transformed in the middle of it.
When you’re in a hard season, you’re not disqualified from becoming, from thriving. You may, in fact, be right in the middle of it. 🙂
If another word for thriving is becoming, then realize that becoming sometimes looks like endurance. Becoming often looks like surrender. Becoming usually looks like choosing love when it would be easier to retreat into selfishness.
So How Do We Behold and Keep Becoming
The process is simple, but not easy:
❇️ Spend time in God’s Word, not just to check a box, but to see Him.
❇️Talk to Him honestly in prayer.
❇️ Worship Him when things make sense, and when they don’t.
❇️ Reflect on what He’s forming in you—even when you can’t yet see the fruit.
When we behold Jesus, we remember who He is and who we are becoming. We remember that He’s faithful to finish what He began in us (Philippians 1:6). And our hope in Him doesn’t just bring comfort—it cleanses, clarifies, and compels us toward Christlikeness.
If you want to thrive, start with beholding. Let the Spirit handle the becoming.
Let’s Walk This Out Together
If you’ve ever felt like you’re behind, like you should be further along by now, I want to whisper some truth to your heart:
You’re not behind. You’re becoming. ✨
Want to start a new kind of thriving? One that’s rooted in grace, not hustle? Begin by praying through 2 Peter 1:5–11 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 this week. Ask God what He’s forming in you.
Turn to the Gospels and gaze on Jesus as He ministers and shares God’s love and truth. The Bible tells us that He had compassion on the people because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He longed to guide them and provide for their spiritual needs. He feels the same about you. 🫶
Whatever might be lacking in your spiritual life that’s preventing you from thriving, you won’t fix it by self effort. When Peter tells us to add to our faith virtue, he knows that will require us walking by the Spirit. The Christian life is about receiving spiritual life from our union with Jesus, not generating it ourselves through performance. Another word for thriving is becoming and it starts where you are right now.👍
Fix your eyes on Jesus \~ not your performance, not your progress. Just Him. Seek inspiration and grace. And slowly, beautifully, He will transform you. 🙌✨
And if you’re ready to stop striving and start becoming, drop a 🌿 in the comments. I’d love to pray for you.
Next Steps for Becoming
If this has stirred something in your heart, don’t let it end here. Let me share a few more resources to help you keep beholding and becoming.
Read More On the Blog📖
First up are three blog posts to help you behold Jesus and explore how God ministers to you so you continue becoming. 🙂
🎧Listen to the Podcast
You’ll find a link to my podcast episode #7 How To Quit Any Sin.👍🙌🔥I dive deeper into how to overcome spiritual struggles like bitterness and move forward in grace.
📝And last you’ll see a Reflection Guide for Becoming.
Use it to sit this week with the truth from 2 Peter 1:5-11 and 2 Corinthians 3:18. Ask God what He’s forming in you and write it down so you can see your growth over time.
Blog Posts
https://kellyjgrace.com/i-must-not-be-doing-christian-right/
Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/divine-connections/id1585866507?i=1000540504422
Downloadable PDF
Don’t forget to drop your prayer request in the comments, or anything else you’d like to say. Share this post with a friend, and come find and follow me on Instagram @kellygrace
May He do in you ‘exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think’ for His glory.🙌🙌🙌
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