Tag Archives: Abiding in Christ

How to Abide

Leave a reply

Maybe this teaching of Jesus has frightened you:

6 If you do not remain [some translations read, abide] in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  (John 15:6)

Jesus told His followers to abide or remain in Him or else.  Yikes!  If that is the case, we had better understand how we can abide in Him.  What do we have to do?

Let me ask a question:  When you were growing up, what did you have to do to make sure you lived in your home?  Nothing?  What gave you the right to simply walk in without knocking, go up to your room and flop down on the bed?  That right came with the fact that you were in the family.  You lived in that home because, as a child of your parents, it was your home.  They gave you the right.  If you continually questioned whether you lived there they would have taken you for a professional check up.

Same thing with Jesus.  When we receive Him by faith, He gives us the right to be born into God’s family.  The Spirit of God is born into our souls and we become children of God.  As members of His family, we live, or abide, or remain in Him.  Forever.  In His teaching on this, Jesus said,

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  (John 15:1)

In his classic work, Abide in Christ,  Andrew Murray points out that it is up to the gardener to keep a grafted branch secure in the vine.  God is the One who draws us to Jesus and secures us in Him.

So why does Jesus tell us to abide in Him?  It’s a matter of recognizing and remembering where our home is as we go through life.  In a criminology class in college, I  once visited a maximum security prison.  It was a grim and sometimes frightening experience.  From time to time I deliberately reminded myself, “I don’t live here; I get to leave in a couple hours.”  In the same way, we who have come to abide in Christ, are taught we don’t live here.  We are strangers sent as ambassadors of Jesus.  Sojourners.  As we hang on to that reality, it transforms our attitudes and actions.

There’s No App for That

Leave a reply

Did you know there is an app that checks if a watermelon is ripe? And one that checks if you are brushing your teeth long enough?  I have an app that tunes my guitar and one that checks if my RV is level.  You may have apps to time your eggs and keep track of your exercise or just about anything else you can think of.  But there is one thing for which there is no app: abiding or remaining in Jesus.  Jesus said,

4 Remain in me [some translations say abide], as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  (John 15:4)

Apps are temporary temporary tasks.  But to abide, or to remain, means to make your home permanently in a place – in this case in Jesus.  Abiding is not an app; it’s an operating system.  The operating system in your smartphone is always on when the power is on.  It under-girds and controls everything the phone does, including the apps.  Abiding or remaining in Jesus is like that.

Jesus told us,  “remain in Me, as I also remain in you.”  How does He abide in us?  He promised He would never leave us or forsake us.  He doesn’t come and go for a visit or for a service call.  He lives in us.  He instructs us to make our home in Him like that, as a steady and permanent condition that controls everything else we do.  When we pray, “Jesus, come help me bear fruit in this situation,” we are treating Him as an app instead of an operating system.  Better yet to adopt Paul’s attitude, he expressed like this:

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:20-21)