I had a wonderful conversation with someone earlier today who was telling me about asking God for help during a particularly difficult event he was involved in. He went on to tell me that sometimes he waits too long to ask God for help – he figures that he can handle things pretty much himself and only goes to God when things are really tough.
The exchange with my friend reminded me of the reasons that I went to seminary. I felt called to go to school and it was apparent to me that I needed a better way to do things than the way I was used to. I figured, correctly I might add, that by getting into a closer relationship with God, I would have better options when doing things. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything – it was great! But the conversation today brought me back to the reality that there are still times that I try to do things in my own strength. And we all know that God would prefer that we rely on Him. In fact, Jesus was quite emphatic that Christians are to live a lifestyle that include a deep relationship with Christ as well as a posture of humility and obedience to God.
In all honesty, that is difficult for most of us. It is tough to admit that we should be consulting Christ about the everyday decisions of our lives. After all, does God really want to be bothered with all the small stuff we deal with? Doesn’t He have better things to do with His time than to weigh in on the choices that we make without His divine assistance? If all the Christians in the world consulted Jesus on every decision, there wouldn’t much time for God to do anything else, would there? And even He would probably get annoyed at all the trivial stuff we do…
That’s what I thought, anyway… at least until I went to seminary. Then I realized the awesome attributes of God – omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. That is, all powerful, all knowing and all present. In other words, God doesn’t have any limits. So we try to justify why we don’t consult Him when the truth of the matter is that we can’t put God in some defined human “box” that we created in our minds. He is God and we’re not – that’s all there is to it – He isn’t bound by our inability to understand how awesome He really is.
All this is a long way of saying that Jesus expects us to live a lifestyle that includes Him – all the time – every minute of every day. We call that “abiding” in Christ. That means that we will “remain” with Him and He will “remain” with us – only in theological circles it is common to use the word “abiding.” The verse for this evening is from John 15:4 “Remain in me, and I will 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.” Notice that? Nobody can bear fruit on their own – they must be connected to Christ – all the time.
My encouragement this evening is that Christ wants to be connected to you; and He certainly wants you to remain in Him. My prayer is that you will experience divine peace from knowing that the God of the universe has your back! Forever… Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…