Abide.
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
John 15:4 • ESV
Most People Have a Life Verse. I Need a Whole Chapter.
JOHN XV speaks to me—every word—and my life works so much better when I follow the instructions and ABIDE. Once you know more about me, you’ll easily see why.
By the winter of 2012, my life was a complete mess. I’d been raped, lost my friends, and was trying to get out of another abusive relationship. My business was on the rocks and I was drinking too much. Everything I thought I could keep together wasn’t working. It had always worked before, but this time, nothing I seemed to do pulled this vast mess into shape.
I had nowhere else to go so I went to church. After all, don’t we usually turn to GOD when the chips are down? I felt like a hypocrite though—an interloper. I’d told GOD years earlier, about 2005, that I didn’t need such things. In fact, on one drunken night, sitting in my dining room, I’d yelled at GOD. Yes, I put out a challenge, “If You are there…if You really can help me, then talk to me. Just say or do something.”
Nothing, of course. Thinking back now, I imagine GOD in heaven, looking down at angry little me and thinking, “Dear one, this will not end well, but I love you enough to let you go.”
When I consider my ultimatum, I know I turned from GOD because I wanted to do it my way. I’ve always felt a strong Spiritual connection and I’d felt guilt when doing the “wrong” thing. I simply could not stay committed to GOD, or even really acknowledge a Spirit-led life, and then do the things I knew The Creator would not want me to do. This is the heart of John 15 and ABIDE, so I left GOD that day in my dining room.
Of course, GOD didn’t leave me.
Coming back in 2012 was a big deal. No matter the stage in my life, I always held integrity and I am not a half-measure person. I was either “IN” or “OUT.” That February day, I picked “IN” and my life has been a stunning gift ever since. There’s so much change, so much adventure, so many blessings—new rewards and perspective. It’s simply been amazing. It’s been a beautiful little miracle. I’ve created these writings to share some of it with you and to maybe make your journey a little brighter.
I now believe, without any doubt or reservation, that GOD brought me through all that craziness to bless me with greater compassion and understanding. I see now I was plucked out of that self-created mess so I could ABIDE in the utmost confidence that this is where I belong, and if you are reading this, at this exact moment, then this is where you belong too.
One of my first prayers when I committed myself to Christ was: MAKE ME LIKE YOU.
ABIDE Is The Point.
I didn’t make this decision because I wanted a new set of rules, a secret formula for a better life, or some guarantee that everything would suddenly go my way. I wanted a better life so I leaned into faith. One of my first prayers was simply, “MAKE ME LIKE YOU.”
It is the point of ABIDE.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”—John 15:1-2
It’s not easy to let go of self and ideas I thought worked. It’s tough to let the gardener prune away things that were comfortable, to find they might have been more burdensome than I knew. To challenge old thinking, and allow things I thought I loved to be pruned away. But this is about becoming what GOD intended for me, and for you too. This is about living into our authentic selves. I share my journey so we can move through this process together.
This is not about becoming some ideal of what we ‘think’ is valuable, or following some formula I invented, but discovering who GOD intended us to be and having the faith to live that life. More than a decade later, my thoughts about how to live the life GOD destined for us have evolved.
Once I stepped into the River, I found the Flow
As this journey continued, and I leaned into greater reliance on GOD, a pattern emerged. I began to recognize a process in my own life—one that repeated itself often enough that I could no longer dismiss it as coincidence. I would ABIDE, connecting to a Higher Source, seeking wisdom and strength beyond my own understanding, and I would sense a change. A door would open. An idea would emerge. The right person would appear. I would have surprising energy for a task or project I didn’t know I wanted. Sometimes the direction made immediate sense and sometimes it didn’t, but I began learning to recognize movement instead of trying to manufacture it.
Over time, I found there were eight principles I could use to help guide my direction in life and make decisions. I share these more fully in my latest book, The Morality of Money. They are part of what I call GOD’s Economy—a way of looking at our lives that asks us to move beyond fear, pay attention to what we are being shown, recognize the resources and opportunities already around us, and make choices that move us toward the life we are meant to live.
And somewhere in all of this, I began calling what I was experiencing the Flow. For me, the Flow is Spirit—the goodness in the Universe that moves through us and around us and can guide us toward a Greater Good. It is what we find when we ABIDE. Christians would likely call the Flow the Holy Spirit. Judaism speaks of Ruach HaKodesh, Islam of Ruh, while Hindu and Buddhist traditions use concepts such as Dharma to describe the order, truth, or path by which we live.
Across cultures and religions, people have tried to put words around the sense that there is something greater than ourselves at work in the Universe. In Taoism, the Tao literally means “the Way,” and wu wei describes acting without constantly forcing—learning to move in harmony with the Way rather than trying to control everything ourselves.
And the irony is, Tao circles us back to John 15 and ABIDE:
Jesus and His early followers called those teachings The Way.
There Is Always Hope. There Is Always a Way.
I was recently walking through one of my favorite neighborhoods in Saint Paul, doing a video for my YouTube channel about my plans to travel the world. I was talking about fear—the fear, concern and worry that can stop us from doing the things that bring us joy. I know we can’t always make everything happen. Life gets in the way. Circumstances get in the way. Money gets in the way. But if there is one thing I want people to take from my videos, my writing and my life experience, it is this: there is always hope and there is always a way.
And then I heard what I had just said: There is always a Way. My mind immediately went to Jesus. His earliest followers were known as followers of the Way. Jesus taught the Way—the way to live, the way to be. I think there is something beautiful and hopeful about that. I want to live the Way.
That goes all the way back to one of my first prayers after I committed myself to Christ: MAKE ME LIKE YOU. I wanted to understand what Jesus taught, how He lived, how He treated people and what He valued—and then try to live that Way myself. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” — John 14:6
Reliance on the Flow has changed how I understand that prayer. It has changed what I want, what I think I need and how I look at the resources available to me. In that same video, I was walking past these huge, gorgeous houses in Saint Paul. I love those houses. But I realized that even if I could afford one, I probably wouldn’t buy one because, for me, that’s not living the Way. I don’t need that much house.
Living the Way, for me, means trying to live on what I need. That’s harder than it sounds because the line between what we need and what we want can get awfully blurry. I still want things. I like beautiful things. But I don’t want to take more of the world’s resources simply because I can. If I have enough, I want there to be enough for somebody else too. I’m not telling anyone else how to live. This is how reliance on the Flow has changed me.
And it reaches beyond money and possessions. The Way changes how I look at my time, my energy and the passions GOD puts in my heart. I believe those GOD-given things can enrich our own lives and the lives of others—and that when GOD puts something like that in our hearts, GOD can make a way.
I certainly don’t live the Way perfectly. There’s a reason my screen name is WrongWayLizzie. But I keep coming back to the same prayer: MAKE ME LIKE YOU.
It is John 15. It changed me. It can change you. And even when I can’t see the whole road ahead, I believe what I was trying to tell the people on that YouTube recording that day :
There is always hope and there is always a Way.
My Journey Became Something to Share.
Years later, these ideas found their way into The Morality of Money. It wasn’t something I intended. I started my first book decades ago. A fictional work about the pressures of being a working mom in a difficult marriage, and the tough choices we all must make. I started the first draft to this book when my now 34-year-old son was a baby.
I still have the written outline of that book and I hope someday to publish it, but life happens, paying work calls, and distractions abound so my hopeful writing career took a back seat. Then in 2022, as the income for my business started a downward creep, I started to look at other financial solutions. This decision-making process is the 8 Steps that are in The Morality of Money.
However, that isn’t the real story here. I didn’t ‘really’ want to write that book. I have spent a career talking about money. I’m good at it and I know a lot about it, but that is not my passion. Never really was. I started out my career path looking at becoming a psychologist. People, how we think, how we heal, and what binds us together versus tears us apart, is more my true passion.
The gurus in publishing, however, told me, “Go with what you know. What people know you for as your first step.” This too is part of the decision-making process to find GOD’s will for our lives. GOD speaks through others. So, I began with the title of the book I knew should be written because it was also helpful to people, “What Dave Ramsey Got Wrong.” And he got a lot wrong. I could have written a three-volume set.
But here’s where the magic happens–where it pays to abide and enter the Flow–the book morphed into something else. It was as if GOD stepped in and said, “This is the message they need.” Yes, it offers practical financial ideas and solid money education, but it also brings you through the life choices and divine destiny that I’ve been blessed to witness. It’s about hope and inspiration. It discusses money and everything that makes life rich.
If you’ve read this far, I know the book will intrigue and benefit you. It is more than money–it’s about all the things that make life rich and we wrestle with valuable questions for our financial future: What is enough? What are we afraid of? What do we really value? And how can we use the resources we’ve been given to create lives with greater freedom, purpose and joy? Money is part of that journey because it touches nearly every choice we make, but the bigger question has always been about the life we’re creating—and who we’re becoming along the way.
You can read more about The Morality of Money here .
What Does Abide Mean?
For me, it is to write.
It is so much more than writing, of course. To ABIDE is to be in relationship with GOD—to listen, to trust, and to remain open to what GOD might have me do and to be.
For me, writing is the number one way I do that.
When I write, I become quiet enough to listen. I step into the Flow and rely on the still small voice inside. I look away from the computer, at the world around me. I see the wonder of creation and the beauty of all GOD’s creatures, then ponder, “What would GOD have me share?” I don’t always know where the words are going when I begin. Sometimes I think I do—and then GOD takes them somewhere entirely different.
The Morality of Money showed me that. There were two chapters I decided to remove that will become another book, Tapping the Wellspring. The ideas and concepts are centered on clearing the clutter from our lives and deepening our relationship with GOD. The very lessons I learned on a journey to ABIDE.
How do I know any of this interests anyone? The final chapter of The Morality of Money, “You Are Rich,” is a reflection of Tapping The Wellspring, and has become a nugget for a bright future for you and for me. Numerous readers have told me it is their favorite chapter, and they couldn’t wait for this follow-up book.
There are other titles and stories GOD has put on my heart. They are mentioned in various pages on this site. I encourage you to explore and to stay connected via one of the resources below.
We are in this together, and we’ll do better when we journey together.
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” — John 15:12 (NIV)
