Abide in Me
“Abide in me.” John 15:4
The word abide is a great word. It means to remain, to stay, or to make your home. Of all the things Jesus could demand, he asks only that we abide with him, to make our home with him. Who among us can’t do that?
It’s not easy to do, of course. You know those charging stations you see in airports and other public places? They’re great, right? It’s a great amenity when your iPhone is dying, and you need a quick recharge. But we treat Jesus like a charging station. We’re thankful to have him when we need him, but he’s a stop along the way. We don’t stay connected to him. He’s merely an amenity. And as a result, our spiritual life doesn’t really work.
Abiding with Jesus is treating him as more than a charging station. He’s offering a life of full power at all times. He’s offering all of himself for all of our needs. And he’s offering it on terms of grace, without any prerequisite, without us bringing anything to the table. He’s offering a constant flow of his everlasting, empowering grace, moment by moment, throughout our lives. We plug into that life source by abiding with him—not for a quick recharge but for a constant flow of divine energy.
Abiding in Jesus is the home we’ve been looking for all our lives, and this wonderful place of endless fruitfulness is ours by grace. In fact, it’s the only true home at all. Everything else is only a mirage, a fake, a con. Even the greatest this world can offer apart from Christ is only a puddle on the shore of God’s great ocean. One wave, and it amounts to nothing. Why not instead dive into the deep places of abiding with Christ?
Our problem all too often is that we think we can get the same peace and assurance by other means. Abiding with Christ doesn’t sound like enough. It sounds too easy. So we get busy, and we end up busy but barren. In John 15:4, Jesus says, “The branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” And in John 15:5, he says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
We are not self-made Christians. We are grace-made Christians, Christ-made Christians. We are not planted nor grown by ourselves, and we don’t bear fruit on our own. We don’t have to.
Amen!