If you abide in Me, and My words abide
in you,
you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
John 15:7
In John 15, Jesus is talking with His
disciples for the last time knowing that in the next few hours He is going to
be betrayed, arrested, condemned and crucified. At this point, the disciples have been through a lot of puzzling
situations. In the last few hours Jesus,
their rabbi, had just gotten on the floor and washed their feet. Peter, their fearless leader was just told
that he was going to deny Jesus by morning and Jesus had just told them, “I’m
leaving and where I’m going you can’t go with me now but you will follow me
later.” By now, the disciples are very confused
and you can bet they are listening to Jesus intently trying to figure all this out.
Jesus
says 4 times in John 15:1-6, “Abide in Me and I will abide in you.” The disciples have to be thinking, “Okay, I
hear what you are saying, but how do we do that?” In verse 7 Jesus starts unpacking this truth
for them. He starts off the same way, “Abide in Me,” but then He pulls a
switcheroo on the word and He says. “Abide in Me and My words abide in you.” He is telling them “Just like the vine and the
branch are connected at some point, My word is going to be that place of
connection for you.”
In the
same way that a vine sustains a
branch and a vine strengthens a branch and a vine stabilizes a branch so the
word of God does those three things for us. Jesus is saying to us, “Do you want to be
alive spiritually? Do you want to be
vitally connected to Me? Than in the same way that you have to eat physically to
be sustained, strengthened and stabilized so too do you have to eat
spiritually. You’ve got to be connected to My word.”
The word of God does nourish us and it strengthens
us and causes us to grow but it takes work.
God fills us slowly and daily as we work to read study and apply His
word to our lives. It is through His
word that we are going to be vitally connected to the source of life. When we allow the word of God to sustains us, strengthens us and stabilizes
us then the winds and waves of life will not toss us around no
matter which way the winds blow or how strong the force because we will be
vitally connect to God.
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