ABIDING IN OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST: (Part 5)

"To Abide"  The Greek word is "menō". Abiding means "to stay in a given place, a given state, a given relationship or a given expectancy: To abide is to continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, and tarry.

John 15:4-5 ESV  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  (5)  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

The fact is, through the wooing of the Holy Spirit, the God invited us to come to Him just as we were. He received us in Christ with all our sinful, self-seeking ways.

We were in no condition to abide in the Presence of God. We were naked and did not know it. We were poor and did not know it. We were blind and did not know it.

It was the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that has made our warm welcome before the Father possible. Jesus our Lord and Savor received our self-willed, sinful personality into His own Being as He took on our sins and our sin nature and gave us His nature. While hanging on the cross, He had received discord and rebellion and all nature of sin into Himself. He did this because He loves us, even in our sinful state.

Once we were saved it was not the work of the cross to "fix us." Our Lord did not die to repair old ADAM. He died to replace the old Adam within us with the last ADAM, which is His life. Salvation is not adding the Lord Jesus to our broken lives. Salvation is a life exchange, His life for ours. 

Once saved our Lord Jesus Christ begins to bring our personality into harmony with Himself until everything we were becomes absorbed by everything He is. Each day when we abide in Him there is a lesson in godliness presented to us. There is an evil of the heart that will be exposed and must be dealt with.

The process of not being conformed to the world but allowing ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds is taking place. This is not an easy process. Actually at times it can be quite painful because every sin and every trace of self-love and self-centeredness in us must be exposed to the fire of God. It is an internal transformation revealing an external new creation which the Father already called us.

NOTE: If this process of daily abiding in Christ was easy everyone would gladly do it.

As a believer it is more difficult as the days go by because of the increased demands. God did not ask Abraham for his son Isaac when his son was first born. Isaac was a young man and had walked with his Father many years before God asked Abraham to give him up.

​Moses did not stand before Pharaoh after just one year in the wilderness. It took 40 years in the wilderness for God to develop the type of trust and character in Moses to prepare him to stand before leaders and to lead a people. But it is true also that as the way gets harder we have increased spiritual wisdom and strength with those demands because we have learn to lean more on our Lord and draw from His strength.