This phrase has come across my mind time and time again since the end of March of this year. It was the theme of my cluster meeting (basically a retreat with some business meetings from time to time). It's one of those phrases that just floors me time and time again because it is so simple and should be so easy, but I have to constantly remind myself of it.
What does "abide in me" mean? Well, for me it means recognizing that no effort of my own - no attitude that I try to make myself have and no motive that I try to force on my actions - will make me any more righteous or good. It means realizing and admitting that, then just focusing on God. It means spending my time & effort on doing my part to develop my personal relationship with God. Abiding in Christ shouldn't just be a nice thought or idea - it should literally be your life if you are a follower of Christ. It's not an option, it's how you follow Christ. We aren't righteous in and of ourselves and we can't better ourselves. I know this goes way against the mainstream, but I really can't leave it to me to better myself. I can try to 'do the right thing' and go through the motions of doing something right; I can even talk myself into thinking that I'm doing something nice with a good attitude, but these aren't things that I can just do without the Spirit. The only times I have felt selflessness and true joy and true generosity and have known true goodness in my own life are times when I know that I can't take credit. They're times when I realize that the Spirit has brought understanding of some sort into my life and the Spirit has changed me. True change in my life has always come from seeking wisdom from God, or just in seeking Christ himself.
I have so much inner-dialogue taking place in my head all day long. Abiding in Him is when I'm actually thinking about life through the eyes of the Spirit because I've spent time in prayer and in His Word and meditating on Scripture. When I don't abide in Him, I'm typically struggling with keeping my thoughts pure and I have a harder time keeping my patience in check. I also tend to do 'nice' things with ulterior motives, and sometimes those motives are to make me feel better about myself instead of genuinely wanting to serve someone else -- how selfish can I be?!
"Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love." John 15:4-9
There is a whole lot to talk about in these verses, but I think they are worth talking about and need to be talked about so much more. I can't properly explain what all they mean to me, but I'll try to just give some commentary on what I've learned from this passage over the past couple of months.
'Abide in me as I abide in you.'
Christ's Spirit abides in me. Wait. Think about that. The Holy Spirit of Christ, one of the trinity, God Himself lives continually inside of me. Do we really live like that? When you're thinking to yourself about the contours of a hott guy's body and what you'd like to do with it, do you recognize that you're forcing God to listen to your lust for a man that is not your husband? When you're cussing out or thinking negative and rude things about someone that's just ticked you off - be it coworker, sibling, or random stranger - do you realize that the Spirit of Christ, the same Christ that hung before God on a cross and took the punishment for every sin ever committed, has to listen to you put down Jane Doe over there because she ruffled some feathers in your otherwise pleasant day? How petty of us. Initially I thought that problems like these were left up to me to solve. I thought I had to find the will-power and discipline to not think badly of people that offended me or made me angry. I thought I had to find the strength on my own to keep my mind out of the gutter. It's the first part of this phrase that has radically changed my life, 'Abide in me as I abide in you.'
The solution isn't doing these great things simply by my own will. The solution is to abide in Christ. How does one abide in Christ? Well, we've got an entire book that reveals the righteousness of Christ, the Father & the Spirit. In some ways, the Bible is a handbook. It holds the information that reveals what Christ taught to people while He lived on earth, and it has continued instruction from those who studied directly under Him, and those who were filled with the Spirit. You can even look in Acts 2:42 where one of the first things new
converts that had just received the Holy Spirit did was devote
themselves to the apostle's teaching. I think the Bible is a great way to start abiding in Christ.
However, you need to understand that just reading the Bible won't get you very fall at all, if anywhere. You have to actively participate in studying the Bible. Abiding in Christ also requires prayer (1 Thess 5:17). Be thankful to God for what He has given you and ask Him for help as you learn to abide in Him (Phil 4:6). You already have the Holy Spirit abiding, or living, inside you. Do you realize how fortunate you are? You have God living inside you and all you have to do is ask for wisdom as you study His Word and He promises to give it (James 1:5). This should be easy. Set aside time each day, pray for wisdom, then receive wisdom as you read His Word and meditate upon it. Of course, you should also continually thank God for your many blessings as just one way of surrendering credit and authority to Him.
We don't have to write formal letters asking permission and we don't have to study for hours and look up cross references and develop term papers or speak with the wisest beings alive to gain wisdom. We simply must ask for it. Now, please realize that wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. Knowledge can certainly enhance your life in many ways, but wisdom changes the directive of your life. Wisdom from God changes your directive to point more and more precisely toward Him. We humans, being the humans that we are, get easily distracted - especially in this American culture. We've got stuff like 50 Shades of Grey, Magic Mike, The Boondock Saints, and a plethora of media and entertainment to distract us from the whole, pure, restorative Truth of God. I'm not innocent of letting myself get distracted because I'm every bit as human as the next person. I've noticed that as I abide in Christ more and more, I get less and less distracted.
Me personally, I get distracted by guys. I was developing crushes on like every boy I met because I just wanted to be in love that bad. I was surrounding myself with things that encouraged this way of thinking. I loved Nicholas Sparks books and chick flicks and was consuming a steady diet of Twilight, Nora Ephron movies, and even music like "Love Story." It's not that Taylor Swift's song has a bad message. It's that girls are bombarded with the idea that life is all about falling in love. I fell for it. I fell for it bad. I constantly thought about whoever my current crush was, or I'd internally being obsessing over the relationship I was sucked into via book or movie. I tried to make myself think of Jesus as my lover and I tried to make myself enjoy being single, but the truth is that I hated it. Singleness couldn't be a gift, because I wanted a relationship with someone more than anything else. Relationships are what made life worth living for and being in love with someone was what everyone else knew was the best thing ever. I didn't spend the time that I should of with the God that loves me so much more than any guy could. Sure, a guy could sacrifice his life for me and that would be a huge example of a great love. Yet, a guy, whether he's my husband or not, could never truly see my heart with all of my sin covering it. My husband couldn't forgive every wrong I've ever committed because he has no way to see all of my sin. That is why I say no guy could ever love me as much as God does. God knows. He knows it all, but He still has decided to forgive me.
Now my solution is this: I still love a good chick flick now and then, but I space them out. I won't let myself watch too many in a row (specifically I won't watch more than 2 girly movies in a row). I also have cut my Nicholas Sparks books out of my system. Not only were they unhealthy for my love-craving heart, but now I realize that they're just honestly not that well-written and the plots are actually pretty boring (it's AMAZING how stepping back to a different perspective can change your opinions). I also won't listen to lots of music about love and relationships. Sure, I've got songs here and there, but I choose to listen to other music instead. Now, I tried this stuff at first to no avail because I simply gave this stuff up. The step that runs parallel to the sacrifice thing is that I spend more time with God. When my imagination took over when my diet was cut short, I knew I still had a problem. I sure can imagine up a good romance. Now I needed to spend time in the Word and praying with God. I started mostly with prayer because I was exhausting myself thinking about boys. In my life I've now had 2 boys express a genuine desire to date me and in my mind something had to be wrong with me. Only two boys? What the heck was wrong with me? Instead of dwelling on why I wasn't good enough, I just started to ask God that question: "What is wrong with me?" At first I didn't hear anything back. I personally think God was testing me to see how long I'd stick with it so He could see how much I truly desired His opinion. I did stick with it. I asked many times and I asked about specific boys I had been thinking about and I asked what I was doing wrong. Finally I heard an answer that didn't really make sense at first. God's answer was, "these men are not yours." I started really digging into scripture and reading more and more about God's love and how the Spirit should be changing me. I learned more and more of my own depravity and how I needed to take the Spirit's role in my life more seriously. My attitudes and opinions started to change and I found myself caring more for others and desiring to serve them and I also found myself wanting to respect men more. Finally God revealed Himself more clearly to me - He never answered with anything like, 'you're perfect just the way you are' or 'nothing is wrong with you.' He answered with, "Sarah; I created this specific guy you're praying about right now. He is mine. Not only did I create him, but he has chosen me as his Lord & Savior and I am the one guiding him. I desire him to follow my will and he is simply not yours to take from me."
Wow.
Talk about being humbled.
The God of the universe called dibs on his own creation that I, in my pride & selfishness, wanted for myself. Lord, please keep me from making that dumb mistake again.
Our culture teaches us that there are plenty of men for the choosing. Like Bella, we get to make the choice of whether we want Edward or Jacob, and we're taught that being in love with two people at the same time is no biggie. We act like we deserve love and that it's not something that should be denied to us. We allow it to affect how we view ourselves - if people love us, we drink it in. If people don't love us, we wonder what's wrong with us. Sometimes we wonder what's wrong when people do love us - here's the answer: it's not about other people's love. It's about God's love. It's not about falling in love, it's about God's love consuming & transforming you.
This is why we need to abide in Christ. Our culture teaches us so many falsehoods that will not bring you freedom or true joy or real peace. We need to abide in Christ so that the Spirit can teach us truths in a way that we can really grasp and understand them. We need our perspectives changed so we will pursue purer, greater things and so the Spirit can work within us to make distracting things less distracting and appealing. We need to abide in Him so that we can be truly worthy of the Kingdom of God, like the Thessalonians in 2 Thess 1. We need to abide in Him so that we can be transformed into Heavenly creatures set apart from the world (Romans 12:2).
Sometimes I talk about life as a Christian being a struggle, and sometimes it is. Fortunately the greatest solution I have found to any problem or hurt or trial is to abide in Christ and strive toward being closer to Him and forming a better relationship with Him. When my effort is put there, He takes care of the rest. When my effort goes toward that, the Spirit makes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22) an automatic and genuine reaction to the stresses of life. (This is also a reference to the part of John 15 that says, 'Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the
vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the
branches'). I am incapable on my own. I need God in order for me to grow (1 Corinth 3:7).
More to come on the dissecting this verse. God bless!