Jesus said he came to give us an abundant life (John 10:10). Isn’t that what we all want? But how do we actually live it out?
All the New Year’s Resolutions and goals and systems are good— but I wonder if they can actually give us the kind of life we all desire.
I thought it would be helpful to have a series of conversations with Rob Dayton, author of the book 100XLife. This is not just a book, but a step-by-step day-by-day manual for living the abundant life. And that’s what Rob is living and has shared with us in the book.
So we are going to talk with him several times in 2026, but in this interview, we’re going to start prepping our minds. We are going to explore what looks like to prepare our minds to follow Christ, to learn to follow him, to actually become a disciple, to enter into the process, to plant the seeds, to develop the muscles required for the abundant life.
Below is a transcript of Carmen’s conversation. Listen to the full interview (Begins at 27:00 mark):
Carmen: So, it’s one thing to survey a whole book in 15 minutes. It’s another thing to say, could we slow down and really dig in? And so thank you for agreeing to do that with us, to linger and unpack. We can’t just cover the waterfront. We got to go deep and we need someone to demonstrate what that actually looks like in real life. And so thank you in advance for not just this conversation, but what I hope will be a series of conversations about The 100XLife. So today, my hope and goal is that we could just lay the groundwork, that we might just talk about what does it mean to prepare my mind? The mindset prep part of the book. Could we just prepare ourselves for a 100XLife and then maybe get ourselves into the gym?
Rob: So good. Yeah. Mindset is so critical. Jesus is the mindset God. He’s the part of the Trinity who’s so concerned about our minds being transformed when he says repent and believe is his first instruction that he gives. And repentance, a lot of us tend to think that that means I’m sorry. And I think that that’s okay, but the real meaning is to transform the way you think. And so I see Jesus in teaching this that you’ve got to transform your mind in order to believe. And in the kingdom, believing is seen. On planet earth, we like to talk about how seeing is believing, but I feel like that’s a ploy of the enemy. You can’t get to heaven without believing it. You don’t get there and go, “Okay, I believe now I’m in. ” So all his precepts, all his words that he’s saying require a mind transformation for us to actually put them into practice.
Carmen: So do I have eyes to see? Might be a way to ask that question of myself. How do you see things? And if I’m answering that question, then I see things through the material, I see things through the financial, I see things through some kind of worldly checklist, then I am actually not even looking with eyes that see. I’m blind and don’t even know it.
And that’s part of what I think you’re helping us get to. Because the world is not cultivating within us an ability to see spiritual reality, it’s not cultivating the ability to see Jesus or to see the things of God. It’s absolutely training our eyes to see the material and only count it as valuable. So maybe talk a little bit about the process, because you lay out a process that you call the Jesus 100X process. Could you talk about what that process is?
Because the world is not cultivating within us an ability to see spiritual reality, it’s not cultivating the ability to see Jesus or to see the things of God. It’s absolutely training our eyes to see the material and only count it as valuable.
carmen
Rob: Yes, absolutely. So the process that he outlines in the Parable of the Sower. Everyone’s familiar with the farming terms, the enemy comes to steal, then he comes to destroy the Word. And then if we’re Christians and we actually abide in the Word, then he distracts us with other things. And then the last step is reproduction. That’s what we’re supposed to do. And that process reproduced the kingdom. So the process, the 100X life process that Jesus is proposing to get to a hundred times what was sown, is that we need to first retain the Word. We actually need to come away from a sermon or from what Jesus says and say, “Okay, this is important. I’ve got to hold onto this.”
It’s really interesting when Jesus in Mark says that to his disciples, “If you don’t understand this parable, how can you understand any other parable?” So it’s really important that we understand. We’ve got to retain. And then the enemy shows up on account of the Word. Actually, Jesus says that on account of the word, the enemy comes to steal it and to kill it.
And so we’ve got to understand that when we hear the Word of God, when we hear Jesus’ teaching, what’s coming next is a test to see if we can grow our faith. And the mindset prep in the book really latches onto the concept of working out physically, getting in the gym physically to get to that resistance because resistance is in the gym and then resistance is in life. Jesus is saying that resistance is important. That resistance is there for your growth. If your mindset is, when I see, consider it, pure joy, my brother, and whenever you face trials of many kinds from James one, two, if that’s our mindset, when we actually see a trial, that’s when we get excited. We’re like, “Okay, I found the gym.” So we do the resistance, so retain, resist.
And then if we’re actually developing a Jesus following muscle in one area, let’s say do not worry and we’re actually not worrying. What happens is the enemy takes us and has a different strategy and says, “Well, I’m just going to distract you with the cares of this world, with the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things.” And then we fall out of practice. We stop multiplying the kingdom, that particular word of Jesus. And then the final step is reproduction.
But Carmen, the concept of Jesus is that there’s a process we’re going through. There’s this process that’s actually like being in a gym where we’re going to work out with every word of Jesus. And so if we understand the growth process and our mind is attuned to that, and that’s the way we think when we see a trial we will not recoil, we will dive in and say, “Okay, I’m growing a faith muscle here. Let’s go.”
Carmen: Well, I think we sometimes ask the question, Rob, we have learned this definition of a disciple is only really a disciple if they have reproduced. If you can point to another disciple that’s been made, disciple making is the test of being a disciple. And then you’re like, “I don’t even know if I’ve been made a disciple in that way.” Would I even be reproducing the right things if I sought to disciple someone else? I think we don’t know. And there are a lot of people in positions of what I would call Christian leadership, and they’re not making disciples because they were never made a disciple. And you can’t make a disciple if you’ve never been discipled.
And so what you’re really talking about is like, this is how Jesus did it with his guys, and this is how Jesus wants to do it with us, and we can’t be doing it with others until it’s done to us. You can’t reproduce in someone else, in your family, in your community, what has not been produced by God in you.
And so I feel like that’s what you’re inviting us into in the 100XLife. First of all, you’re helping us see and understand what an abundant life really is– by Jesus’ definition of it. And then the daily practice that is required to retain the word of God, resist the enemy, focus and avoid distraction and then reproduce. So we want to allow you to continue to unpack this a little bit with us because I don’t want people to miss this. So you’ve talked a little bit about the process. I want to get into actually this conversation about the seed, the 100XWord seeds, because this is then part of the mindset.
Rob: So good. Yeah. A lot of us, including me, when I grew up, I looked at the parable of the soar and I was taught that the seed was kind of the gospel of salvation. And then so the process of the parable of sower was actually just becoming saved. And then if you were third soil and fourth soil, then you’re saved. And if you’re first and second, you weren’t. And I think that that’s true for that particular seed. But then what I was really opened up to when I was taught by the Father on this, is that how many words of God have been spoken for us and that’s an endless universe of words. And then Jesus comes along and he says, and I love what you said, you’ve got to be a disciple to make a disciple. And he says, disciple nations teaching them all I have taught you.
So we’re narrowing it down, the words of God to 55 things that are the foundation of truth and how we shape our mindsets. Another way to look at it is the seed is each word of Jesus or each word of God that you receive. It’s like a seed. And in a seed, in nature, a seed contains miraculously all the instructions for reproduction. It includes the whole tree if it’s a tree. It includes the way to make fruit, like the seed contains everything that’s needed. All you need is cultivation and the parable of soul or the heart is us. We’re the ones who prepare the soil. The soil is our heart. And so the seed is beautiful. Every word of Jesus is a hundred times, it’s got a hundred time production available. We need to put that word of Jesus into our hearts and cultivate it and actually go through the process of resist, go through, retain, resist, refocus so that we can reproduce.
And we’re actually growing that seed in us. And here’s the cool thing, that the way other people get seed from us, because we’re his kids, and we’re involved in the rise of his kingdom and the growth of his kingdom, we take a seed, let’s just say, let’s go back to worry. And I’ve taken the word seed of do not worry, I’ve planted it in my heart, I’ve cultivated, I’ve developed a mindset that is not, that responds in love to all of life circumstances that are negative. And then people see that. They actually see, they’re like, wow, you’re responding to this very bad circumstance with joy. How could that be? And I want that. I want that.
So you’re demonstrating a kingdom principle in your life and then that becomes the fruit or let’s say the testimony and inside that fruit that you produced, let’s say that from the tree of do not worry, is more seed that you’re giving to other people and it’s just, it’s a contagion.It’s how vegetation populates the earth and it’s how the kingdom populates the earth by the kingdom growing in us with every word seed of God.
Carmen: It’s a powerful image and it’s more than an image. It’s reality. It’s this living demonstration of the kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this world. And I’m enthralled by it. I’m encouraged by it. And so when we come back from a very brief break, I want you to demonstrate it because today here at Faith Media, our growing your faith verse of the day happens to be one of the Word seeds. And it’s number 27, love your enemies. So when we come back, Rob, would you just take us into the word of Jesus number 27, love your enemies?
Rob: Let’s go. That would be great.
Carmen: Ok, Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said, love your enemies and love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, that you might be children of your father in heaven. Our growing your faith verse of the day here at Faith Radio is the compliment to that Matthew passage. Our growing your faith verses of the day come from Luke chapter six, where Jesus says, “Love your enemies. Do good to them, lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great. You’ll be truly acting as children of the most high, for he is kind to those who are thankful, unthankful and wicked. You must be compassionate just as your father is compassionate.” Rob Dayton is here with us today. We are talking about the 100XLife. It is a methodology.
It is a practice. In fact, it’s a daily practice that leads to the abundant life. And so, all right, Rob, let’s take this word seed number 27, and what do we do with it?
Rob: So glad we’re talking about this with one of my favorite words. And this is probably one of those words where some people might go, “What? You want me to love my enemies? That’s what you want. ” And it’s important at this outset, whenever we want to implant a word seed of Jesus into our hearts, is that we know this is absolutely true and this will lead to the abundant life. So Jesus is not asking us to sacrifice. He’s asking us, he’s inviting us to move into the abundant life and loving your enemies is freedom because it’s truth and where the truth is there’s freedom. So when we look at this first, we just have to look to say, “Well, this is going to be really rich.” And then we go through this process of transforming our minds. And that’s why in the beginning of the book, we talk about mindset prep because we have to know how to transform our minds to love our enemies.
And it can take a long time. It can take a long time to change your mind. You have to become aware of what you’re thinking about. One of the things we put in the book is we put in these 100X life style, here’s how it would look if you were actually living that Word. So just looking at those, to love your enemies, you would see your enemy as sons and daughters of a loving father. So we’d have to transform the way we actually see people. We’d have to actually see people like Jesus. He came not to judge, but to save. And he sees everyone, even the people who are nailing Tim to the cross as people that are worth saving.
The Bible says, “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. We are the joy that hit the prize that he was going for to actually endure a torture.” And so we can see it the same way, is that the person that is perceivably our enemy that we’re coming against, whether that’s on the road and our cars, whether that’s in a Starbucks, whether that’s at a park, walking down the street in our business, place of business, even in our church, we can start to see people, instead of seeing them as enemies, see them as image bearers of God that Jesus paid a price for and then he invites us into actually transforming our mind once we’ve done that to start demonstrating love.
And how I’ve put this one into practice in my life is just based on the stories I’m telling myself. This is how mindset works for all of us. We’re telling ourselves stories all the time. God’s in our unconscious mind, our conscious mind, we’re talking in our conscious mind, we’re thinking about others, we’re telling ourselves stories about others, we’re telling ourselves stories about ourselves. And if you watch that dialogue that’s happening and then you say, “Okay, well, if I’m going to love my enemies, then I have to have a different story about that person.” So the person who’s maybe upset on the road and you’re not even going to meet them and they’re upset and they pass you, maybe they cut you off, what is the story you’re going to tell yourself? To love your enemies, you have to tell yourself a story that the reason that they’re doing that is they’ve had a bad morning or they’ve got a sick child, they’re rushing to the hospital in the back of the car.
It doesn’t really matter what story you come up with if you’re never going to meet them. And then if you meet them, you’ve got to really start asking, if you can’t come up with a story, ask the Holy Spirit, what is it that’s going on? Where are they in need? Where are they in hurt? Because all negative actions are born out of fear and all positive actions are born out of love. So if I see the person who perceives as an enemy, as someone who’s just to be loved, I have a different perspective and I can actually do it.
Carmen: Yeah. I want to tell myself a story that is gracious and generous and demonstrates concern and empathy versus a story that is centered on whatever way I feel like I was just wronged or slowed down or cut off or whatever. I mean, if I’m just using the driving on the interstate analogy, right? Yes. So what’s the story I’m telling myself about that person and even then the language that I use, even in my own car, where the only person who hears me is God, right? But God does hear me. And so God hears me refer to that person in a way that is contrary to the way God thinks about that person and God sees that person. And so even just in that, I need to literally change my mind. And changing my mind then changes the way that I talk about people and respond to people and on and on and on.And that is fruit-producing.
Okay. I feel like we’ve only just begun and so I’m hoping that this is a conversation that has just begun. Will you come back and we need you to plant and cultivate and help us because as you know, this is a process.
Rob: It is a process and it takes work. We have responsibility to work to get the words of Jesus into our lifestyle. That’s our part of the equation.
Carmen: It’s so good. It’s so good. If you want a different life, like by the end of this year, today’s a good day to start. So a 100XLife, a daily practice, a manual for living the abundant life.
What is your plan? What is your plan for becoming more like Jesus in this year? What is your discipleship plan and how are you going to work that plan? What’s the process going to look like? How are you going to allow the word of God to be deeply planted within you, the one who is the word, the Living Word, that he might live his life through you. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. What does that look like? What does that produce? What’s the evidence of his presence and his power?
