Let’s pray.
Lord, we come together in Jesus’ name, and there is an abiding shelter over us. It is as if we are in the holy place and the lampstand is lit. We pray that the light that is seen in Jesus Christ may be imparted to all of us as we are gathered here tonight.
We thank You for this canopy of Your glory and love that enfolds us all together. Not only do You want each person individually to be the dwelling place of God; You want us together, as one in unity, to be the dwelling place of God.
So to that end, now we pray and preach, and pray that we will have open hearts to listen and to enter into all that You promise for us. In Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.
So last night, I tried to share on Christ and me—the life, the zoe. That is what I want you to get hold of. There is a life for you and me. It connects us to God forever: zoe life, eternal life.
Eternal life cannot be crushed. It cannot be uncreated. It cannot die. Once it gets into you, it is eternal. And it is zoe, zoe life—so much better than our regular life. Zoe life lasts forever.
Tonight I want to share on this matter of abiding in Him as the basis of love and relationship, okay? So now we have some verses to read in that regard, beginning in John 15. Let us read the whole portion—the section on the vine, the branches, and abiding—at least verses 1 through 10.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, so that it may bear more fruit.
You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.
Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
Wow, the Christ life has a lot of joy and love in it—and peace too, right?
All right, let us look at Romans 8. In the midst of this great gospel, Paul makes this wonderful statement. Verse 14: Who are the sons of God anyway?
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.
And then Matthew 11:28-30.
Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
Last time I went through something that, for some of you, may have been heard for the first time. I did not mean to defame or denigrate in any way the many people across this world who are Christians and who know the Lord. Jesus is their Savior.
Actually, I am sad because more of them do not know the secret to the Christ life. They live in the shadows, in a church experience that is somewhat boring and predictable. Their lives are the usual thing. There is no expectation to really hear from the Lord, and so we do our own thing as best we can, with the highest morals and ideals and all that kind of thing.
By the time you grow into your sixties, you are kind of losing energy and interest in the whole thing—unless it is a really good habit that you have. But what if you had the Christ life? What if Christ really dwelt in you?
I tried to go right back to Genesis and say that, right from the very beginning, you and I were meant to be the temple for the Holy Spirit.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, is talking about building the church, and he says, “I, as a wise master builder, laid a foundation; others are building upon it. Be careful how you build on it.” Then, in that context, he says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?”
The Corinthians would say, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you have taught us that already. We know that the Holy Spirit lives within us.” But now he is trying to get them to understand corporately that the Holy Spirit dwells among them as the corporate temple—as the church, as it were.
Much of this truth regarding us as human beings being the temple of the Holy Spirit has been lost. Christians have this doctrine that, when we are born again, we are born of the Spirit and the Spirit comes to dwell in us. But then it gets kind of left somewhere.
The average Christian has a sense of separation: “I am here, and there is God up there somewhere, just beyond Proxima Centauri. If I yell loud enough or talk to God, maybe He will hear. Or we have a meeting and say, ‘Dear Lord, please come down and be with us.’”
Hello? Hello? Oh yeah: “Would You please come down? Oh Lord, I have such need, and You are so far away. You are way up there. Please hear me. Come down and help me.”
When we talk about the Lord as though He is out there and I am here, we miss something. The early Christians walked around and said, “Oh yeah, I know Jesus. He lives in me. Oh yeah, He was talking to me this morning, so I was praying to Him. I felt Him say something to me.”
It did not come out of the clouds. I mean, God is all over the place. Of course, He can speak any way He wants. But the usual modus operandi for those who are living the Christ life is that the Spirit speaks within. You hear His voice, and you respond in a dialogue of obedience, questioning, asking, agreeing, and confessing.
There is nothing predictable about the Christ life. If you really get serious about it, you might end up halfway around the world serving the Lord somewhere. Or you might stay right where you are.
Probably you will have a good job, three kids, five dogs, and a garage. But your life is not going to be completely possessed by what most Christians, frankly, are possessed by. They are just like the world—completely obsessed with what they have, how comfortable they are, and whether they are following the latest show on television.
You see, here you are. You know how I know you guys are great Christians? Because I have not seen too much iPhone withdrawal. You turn them in and say, “Okay, General, take my iPhone,” and I do not hear too many of you praying, “Dear Lord, please, I need to hear some tweets. Please give me some tweets. Just one post—that is all I need.”
Most Christians today are so outward. Frankly, they could be satisfied if the devil made a deal with them: “You will not ever hear the Lord’s voice, but I will give you two million dollars. I will set you up so you can retire happily, have a nice home and a car, and I will keep you safe.”
Too many Christians would say, “I will take that deal.”
Only people like Moses say, “No, no, no, Lord. If Your presence is not here, I do not want Your two million dollars.”
The world tempts every Christian to be outward—outward, outward. Think outward: what I need, what is for me. But the Christ life belongs to those who are very aware of a Presence within, leading them.
So whether they have two million dollars, five dollars, ten dollars, or a thousand dollars in the bank, they are seeking the kingdom of God first, and all these things are added unto them. They are rich in the treasures of Christ, whatever money they make. They have learned to walk in the Christ life. Such an adventure! You read these great missionaries, and boy, I tell you what, they had a real interesting life.
We know that man was created spirit, soul, and body. In that spirit—in that holy of holies, in the inner part of your life—the Holy Spirit was meant to dwell, just as the presence of God dwelt in the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies. That is the way it was meant to be.
But because man fell—Adam fell and Eve fell—they lost that spiritual life. The devil said, “You will not die if you disobey God.” They did not die physically, or in their soul, but they died spiritually. No more voice speaking to them.
Adam used to go into the garden in the cool of the day, and he would hear this kind of rumbling. He would say, “It is God! It is God! He is coming. He is coming to talk.”
“Oh God, I am glad You showed up. There is a new animal that has come into the garden. I do not know what to call him.”
God says, “Well, let us call him a Snuffleupagus, or something like that.”
Adam says, “Oh shoot, thanks, Lord. I did not know what to call that thing. That is weird.” And the Lord says, “Ho, ho, ho!”
Adam talked to God all the time. That was their life. They were tending the garden and protecting it, because there were enemies outside. But what a life with God they had—and they lost the whole thing.
Out of that great silence within their hearts, they started saying, “Well, I have to make decisions, so I had better get down there to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and get as smart as I can, so I can make good, smart decisions.”
The smartest people today, without Christ, are living based out of their minds. Those who are strong-willed live out of their will. Those who are emotional are always in love. But they have no spirit to direct them. There is no holy of holies anymore.
It is like when the children of Israel had the ark of the covenant snatched away from them. They had a tent, furniture, a lampstand, and everything—but where was the ark? They did not have the very core of the thing.
That is why there was a famine in the land, and nobody heard the voice of God until little Shmuel came along. You know him as Samuel, but in Hebrew it is Shmuel.
Shmuel came along and was hanging around in the tent. There was no ark, but there was still God. God said, “Shmuel, Shmuel.”
And what did Samuel say? “Duh. Must be Eli,” because there was no inner voice. God had to come back three times, and then God said, “No, no, this is Me.”
You see, God wanted to talk to His people. He had to talk through Samuel: “You can be My voice.” So God raised up various ones down through history who could hear the voice of God. Because of that, it gave the people much external help about where to go, where to camp, where to fight, and what city to build.
But still, that inner voice was only rarely heard—until Jesus came along.
Jesus walked in the voice of God. Jesus was the temple, the dwelling place of God here on earth. That is what man was meant to be—you and me, Elizabeth Ann, all of us—human beings indwelt by God, full of authority, full of love, full of God’s glory, just like Jesus.
But because we had all sinned, when Jesus came along, we thought Him a pretty strange bird. People looked at Him and said, “This guy is a lot different from us. He is supposed to be a man, and He weeps. Hmm, what kind of man is He?”
I will tell you what kind: a normal man. Normal men weep. It is just all kinds of jerky rednecks and people trying to be some macho guy who say, “I never—wait, that is my allergies.”
We are so abnormal now that if God made us normal for a second, everybody would think we were abnormal. That is the way it is.
Jesus walked around as just a normal man. They said, “Jesus, how do You do that?”
He said, “I did not do that. How many times do I have to tell you disciples? Here is the formula: I do nothing unless God does it. I say nothing unless God speaks it. I judge no one unless God judges. What am I doing? I am abiding in God. He is telling Me what to do and what to say. I am doing what I am saying.”
And everybody says, “No, that cannot really be. There has to be another reason for it. You must be a special guy.”
But as He came down to earth as a man, there was nothing special about Him except that He had His spirit, was not tainted by sin, and God could live in Him.
Do you remember that last little section we read in John 15?
I abide in His love.
He abides in Me.
I do what He says.
You do what I say.
You are going to abide in My love.
There is a new cycle going on, and it starts from within. Build that holy of holies again in there. Let the Holy Spirit take over and light up your whole existence. This is the Christ life we are trying to talk about.
Man fell. Man lives in darkness, even to this day. Even the best people—I do not disparage people like Bill Gates, who gives away a lot of money to help people, or others who give generously. Thank God. God seems to impress on the hearts of many people to still do good things.
But they are still lacking something at the core, and that is the life of God, which a person can only have by being born again. If you believe in Jesus, you are born again. That life comes into you, and this whole possibility of a Christ life begins.
Most people walk in this world in darkness and live off their gut. I hear a lot of people talk about that, especially in the business world: “I have to make a decision. Should I invest in this or not invest? I have to use my gut feeling.”
And you know what their gut feeling is? It is like roulette. Your gut feeling is fifty percent right and fifty percent wrong. You have a one-in-two chance: black or red. Come on—your gut feeling.
What do you want: omniscience? There are some people who seem to have some kind of sense about things, and they are successful. I grant you that. But they are missing the vital core. They are a soul man, not a normal man. They are living out of their soul.
Jesus says some things and we go right over them—la, la, la, la. Look at John 7:7 and see what Jesus says.
The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me, because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.
Jesus said, “God is telling Me your deeds are evil.” Of course, His context was that He was among Jews. The one thing Jews wanted to do was do good.
So you tell people who are doing good, “Your deeds are evil,” and they say, “What do You mean? I have these things hanging down over my eyeballs. I cannot even see. I have so much stuff on my face. I have laws over here and laws on my fingers. Look at my hairy arms—I have to tie up laws on my hairy arms. Look how righteous I am. Dingle, jangle, jangle, jangle.”
Jesus looks at these guys and says, “You know what? You are a show-off, but your deeds are evil.” And they say, “I hate this guy.”
If you live by the Christ life, there are people who are not going to like you because you expose them, just as Jesus exposed people.
But thank God, He was a normal man, and thank God we can enter into our normal life. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. That is 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Because His life is within us, we can now produce acts of righteousness, even as our dear brother spoke about this morning—doing acts of righteousness, bearing fruit for Him.
Now we want to see this Christ in me discovered in our lives. How do we discover Christ in me in our life?
The first thing we have to make clear is this: You will not hear Christ in you unless you live somewhere. What is your address? There is an address where Christ can live in you, and what is that address?
Paul uses the same address about fifty times in his epistles. What is the address? In Christ.
You have to be in Christ for Him to be in you.
Abide in Me, and I in you.
He never says, “I abide in you; you abide in Me.” First, you have to step into Christ. That is the act of faith. That is what Jim is talking about.
“I believe that Christ died for me. I step into Christ, my salvation. I step into Christ, my wisdom. I step into Christ, my righteousness.” Now you move into it. That is your address.
So this fall, when you are signing your papers at school, do not put down, “I live on 46 Highway Drive.” Say, “I live in Christ.” That is your address.
If you abide in that address, you will begin to hear the pinging of the sonar from the submarine deep within.
Why did I just say “subway”? This is exactly what I meant to say, so let me explain it. When you are in the submarine, you send it out: beep, beep, beep, beep. You are in the sea, and you hear the pinging.
Then one day, you hear, “Ping, ping, ping—boom.”
You say, “What was that?” It is like Samuel: “What was that? Boom, boom, boom, boom.”
You say, “Christ, You are alive in me.”
And He says, “Yes.” Still, small voice.
First you have to live there, right? That is why we read Romans 8:15-16. Let us look at it again, because people rush over this, but I really believe it is our starting point.
The first voice we hear is from within—not up there, not with thunder and lightning as we are running back across the field after this meeting. No, no, no. Something inside you goes, “Bing.”
What is that first ping a Christian is likely to hear? Here it is: Something in you cries out, “Abba!”
What was that that just cried, “Abba”? Was it you? Yes, of course.
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
When somebody is born again, there is a response to God: “Abba.” You have heard about God all your life; now you get saved, you sense His presence, and you are crying out to Somebody you realize is alive. You have a connection with Abba.
Abba is just Aramaic for “Daddy.” That is all it means. It is nothing fancy. But when you are saved, something comes up from within and says, “I have a Daddy.” Not just my earthly daddy—I have a Daddy. You sense it. It is intuitive.
“I have a spirit of adoption.” What does that mean? There is something in me that feels as though I have been received into a family. I do not know Him well, but the first thing I can say is, “Abba, Abba.” It is your first reflex when you are born again.
Isn’t that wonderful? The love of God sensed inside of you.
Right away you can see why so many Jews hated Jesus. The Jews would never call God “Father” like that—never, never. It was disrespectful of a holy God who lived far away, up in the heavens. If you were really, really holy, one day you might see something of a vision of God. But you could never call Him Daddy.
The disciples said, “Jesus, how do we pray?”
He said, “Say this: ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’” That is what He said: “Abba.”
Jesus was saying, “I am talking about My Abba. My whole beatitude is about My Abba.” And all the people said, “No, no, no. Are You talking about the holy Name? We cannot even say His Name—He is so holy.”
Jesus said, “Yes. Now I have revealed it all. His Name is Abba—His Name is Abba to those who have that life within.”
They cry out, and there is some kind of response in there. This is the doorway to prayer. Your first prayer should be, “Abba.” That is good enough.
Why are we saying “Abba”? Because we sense a person—a person, a person—not a thing, not a power, not merely a being. A person inside.
Look at how Paul puts it in Galatians 4:6. Same story, a little different. Notice the difference.
Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Because you are sons—thank God, you have been saved—God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Now I raise the question: Who is crying out, really? Well, it is you crying out, of course, because it is coming out of your spirit. But wait: who is crying out? Jesus is crying out to His Father in you.
The Spirit of His Son is now in you, and He is crying, “Abba, Abba.” You need to get in touch with this. This is a reality. This is the Christ life: Christ’s life saying, “Abba,” to His Father through you.
You are joined with Jesus, so His prayer is your prayer. It is just the beginning of an understanding of the union of intercessory prayer with the Spirit in you.
There is the first prayer: “Abba.” It is your prayer, but it is the Son’s prayer—Jesus’ prayer. Jesus has come back through the Holy Spirit to live in you and is now crying back to His Father. Wonderful, wonderful. Do you get it? It is relational.
Let us nail this down before we go to the next section: the importance of taking a step of faith into Christ.
Why am I saying this? So you wake up in the morning, open your Bible, and do not simply say, “Okay, I have some devotional reading. I have three chapters to read. I have to zip through this because I got up a little late.” Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. “Yeah, I did it. Okay, right.”
Rather than just doing devotions as a religious habit, come by faith and say, “Here I come, by the grace of God, into Christ. Now, as I open the Word, speak to me.”
Do not be surprised if, as you are reading Scripture, some verse, phrase, or something sticks out. It is because you are in the Christ life in your devotions, and not just doing devotions.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Sometimes people think faith is taking a step into darkness where there is nothing to support it. But that is not faith at all. Faith is when you have heard something and you respond to it.
Abraham did not one day say, “You know what? I am getting out of Babylon.” No. He heard God say, “Get out,” and so, by faith, he responded to the voice.
Moses did not say, “You know, I am going to go down and get them Egyptians.” No, sir. He was leading the flock on the backside of the wilderness, and God said, “Mo, go down.” He started a long dialogue about it, but he went.
You are allowed to dialogue with God. But listen: there is a dialogue from the inner man. He says, “You go.” You say, “I do not want to.” He says, “You go.” You say, “Okay, I am not willing to go right now, but I am willing to be made willing.” And then He says, “Now you go.” The whole dialogue gets going.
This is Christ in you, working things out and doing His will. But it must start with you taking a step of faith.
What is that step? “I believe that I am in Christ, and that Christ is in me.” That is the first step. I believe it. Do you believe it? The Word says it. Do you believe it?
I am in Christ, and Christ is in me.
Do you remember Psalm 27, where David says, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life”? We all sing that song, right?
But I like Psalm 27:7-8:
Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice,
And be gracious to me and answer me.
When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
There you go.
Brothers and sisters, I do not want to prolong this point, but I remember reading a devotional by A. B. Simpson, one of my heroes of the faith, a twentieth-century preacher in New York City. He said, “The thing that changed my life with Christ in me was when I realized that God spoke to me one day as I sat down to begin my devotion.”
He said, “Praise God, Lord, I love You, and I come to You.” And the Lord said to him, “I have been waiting for you since dawn to speak with you.”
It is like the Lord is living within, just waiting to talk to you. If you will just give Him that faith chance, step into Him. Say, “Here I come into Christ. Now, Lord, what would You say to me?”
“Oh, I have been waiting to talk to you for a long time.”
Do not forget that God loved having Adam and Eve in the garden, to talk with them and fellowship with them. This is the highest form of life. You have the privilege now, because Christ lives within you, of this highest form of life: to talk to Him and let Him talk to you.
He often talks through His Word. Sometimes we do not hear Him very clearly because we have a lot of junk in the way. That is okay. He understands that. But if we keep coming by faith and say, “I stand in You, Christ. I stand by faith. I am waiting for You to speak,” it may take Him a week or two, but He will speak. He will.
That is why the challenge to this whole matter is faith. When Jesus says, “Ask, seek, knock,” He means exactly that. I know Christians who are quitters. They pray one time, and they quit on something.
But that verse simply says, “Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.” That is a sign of faith.
“Oh Lord, I know I need an answer on this. Lord, please, I need an answer. I am still waiting, still not hearing.” That is okay. It is not like God is gone. It is not like He only lives in New Jersey and you have to get yourself into the right position.
It is kind of like the tabernacle. Maybe your furniture is in a little bit of disarray. Finally, you trim the lamp and the light turns on, and you say, “Woo-hoo, I am naked!” You need to repent of some sin that has stripped you of your life in Christ. Then suddenly, His voice comes.
Ask, seek, and knock. That is faith. He who seeks will find. He who asks shall receive.
Faith, faith. He lives within. This first response: “Abba, Abba.”
Let us go back to John 15 and look at this for a minute. It is too remarkable just to pass by without talking about it simply. Verse 4:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
Now, brothers and sisters, there was a psychologist who was popular in my school days who wrote a book. This was the basic point: There is only one thing more fearful than loving somebody. Basically, all human beings are afraid to love; it is too vulnerable. There is only one thing more fearful than loving somebody, and that is being loved.
This whole thing—“Abide in Me, and I in you”—is a love command.
How can love be a command? “Abide in Me. Please, abide in Me.” It hardly sounds like a command, but it is in the imperative in Greek, so we have to say He is commanding you: “Abide in Me.”
But notice: He does not also make a command, “I will abide in you.” If you abide in Him, the second part works. If you abide in Him, He will abide in you. You do not have to ask Him to do that. That is the guarantee. You have to get in on the first part.
This is not a command as we would think—some kind of official or doctrinal command. It is our Lover calling.
I know you guys do not know about the birds and the bees yet, and love; your parents will not allow you to consider it until you are twenty-two years old. But God is a Lover. He is an indwelling Lover, and He wants you to come in out of the rain, come in out of the world, and live with Him.
So He calls you: “Abide in Me.” That is the call of a Lover. It is like the Song of Solomon. We are not talking about the commands of a general. We are talking about a Solomon who wants to give you a good kiss on the mouth. Well, maybe not a kiss on the mouth, Lord. Sorry about that.
Why does a Lover have to command? You would think we would jump right in there. Somebody says, “I love you. Come to me,” and I say, “No, not today, Lord.” What is the matter with you? You foolish child, what is the matter with you?
Half of it is because we do not believe. We think this Word is not true. We think God does not love us. He is not really saying, “Come to Me, come to Me.”
But He is just as insistent as Solomon was in his song. He had to run out on horseback and find that Shunammite woman. She could not believe that a king could love her. He had to jump off the horse, give her a big kiss on the mouth, and then she said, “Oh, I have fallen in love with the kisses of my lover.”
He had to do it because you and I are such chickens. He has to get us in the door, grab us in, and give us a big kiss.
A lot of times we do not believe. Sometimes we do not trust. Sometimes we have been hurt in our lives by somebody we love. Because of sin, we do not trust God. Let us be honest about it: we do not really trust God.
We think God is going to lure us into the holy of holies, and then it turns out He is Edward Scissorhands. In two seconds, He makes a Christian topiary out of you. He got you in through the door just so He could chew you up.
What is wrong with us? We are so sinful that we do not trust Him.
He says, “Come to Me, and your joy will be full.” Jesus says, “I love the Father. My joy is full. You come to Me; your joy will be full.” We say, “Uh-uh, not going there. I do not want joy. I do not want love.”
I have to give you five arguments for why you should come to Him. Here are five arguments for why you should come to your Lover, who is calling you, wooing you, and telling you to come in and abide.
It is reasonable because to abide in Him, and He in you, is the very created necessity of your life. You have body and soul, and you are in bad need of the Holy Spirit. That is the very reason you were created.
He is calling you to come in and find fulfillment. You are still a creature, like an animal living out of your soul life, until you come into Him and find His Spirit in you.
Christ is offering Himself to you without reserve—without reserve. Do you see any other condition there? “Abide in Me.” It does not say, “If you only wear dresses. If you are wearing jeans, women, you are out.” No, it does not say that.
It says, “Come to Me. Come, come, come.” You say, “On my block, I am the worst sinner of them all. I throw pebbles at night at my mother’s window just to cause her grief.” He says, “Come, come, come, come.”
Unconditionally, He is calling you. He is offering Himself to you.
Can I tell you a secret about God? He has a need, and that need is that He loves you. He needs to love. He needs to love. God is love.
Now, that is not to take away from His aseity—that is, that He is completely self-contained and delighted within Himself. But because He loves, He is reaching out to you. He wants to expend His limitless love on you.
The very reason Christ went to Calvary was to prepare you as an abiding place in which He could dwell. Jesus did the worst, most terrible thing a man could endure in order to gain you this abiding place and prepare a place for you.
He says, “Now I have prepared the place for you. Will you not come? I have no higher price I can pay. I gave My life for you so that you could come into Me. Now will you not come?”
Am I going too fast? Why do I hear the mighty wind of the Spirit? The air conditioning turned on, huh? About time. Some of you were sweating just on number three; you were getting writer’s cramp.
Because abiding is the greatest long-term blessing of the Christ life.
Praise God, you bring some people to the Lord. Praise God, you preach some glorious message. Praise God, you go and work at a mission in Taiwan and help build something. Praise God, you are faithful in your church and you are a worshiper.
But the greatest blessing of the Christ life is the blessing that comes out of abiding in Him, and He in you. It beats everything else.
That is why Paul, after doing so many great works, when he finally got thrown into prison for years, did not rot away. He had found his abiding place. You could not take him out of Christ, and Christ dwelt in him whether he was in prison or not. He had found his rest.
You should come into Him and abide in Him because you meet the one qualification for abiding: your absolute need, absolute weakness, absolute emptiness, and absolute dependence.
That is your one qualification. Not, “Okay, Lord, I can come and abide in You now because I have gotten pretty good. I stopped smoking. I still chew tobacco, but I am getting better.”
No, no, no. Your one qualification to respond to His call, “Abide in Me,” is this: You have to recognize that you need Him. You are dependent upon Him.
Do you think Adam walked around the garden saying, “Hey, Adam and Eve, we have got it together. It is just us. We do not need anybody. We are living in the garden. Look, I am making kumquats”?
Adam and Eve were very dependent upon God. God had to explain things to them. That was the comfort of God—to explain why anybody would want to eat some of that stuff.
Sorry, brothers and sisters. My mind has gone beyond expansion.
Listen. Let me put it to you as strongly as I can, as an exhortation that comes straight from heaven and the Word of God: Will you let God love you?
Will you? Will you trust Him? Let Him love you. Talk to Him. Let Him talk to you.
We sing that wonderful song, “In the Garden”:
He walks with me and talks with me,
And tells me I am His own.
Live that life—the Christ life. The person who wrote that song knew what that was really like. Walk in that garden. Have it be a reality for you.
I do not care if people think you are mumbling to yourself. They might think you are half crazy because you are always talking to Somebody nobody can see. Just put earbuds in your ears and pretend you are on the phone. Walk down the street talking to God; nobody will know.
Except they may say, “That is a pretty strange person. That person’s dog keeps saying, ‘Hallelujah!’ What is all that?”
That is the only point I wanted to make about that. But let us look at John 15:9-12 once again so you can breathe the love here, because this “abide in Me, and I in you” is a love thing. It is a love thing.
Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
It is a circular thing: abide in Him, abide in His love, keep His commandments, love others, and keep in that abiding place. This is it. This is it. It is a whole love story.
I know you kind of back away a little bit because you are afraid of the pruning shears. Edward Scissorhands is going to show up, right? “Oh, oh, He is going to snip, snip, snip, snip—cut!”
That is right. He is. And you know why? It is because you need pruning.
Did you see there are three levels of fruit there? Did you catch it?
Fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and finally fruit that abides—that remains. Not somebody you bring to the Lord and, a year later, you cannot find them. When you do something and God does something through you, the fruit remains. It is abiding fruit.
Think about that: fruit, more fruit, much fruit, abiding fruit. Oh, out of this wonderful zoe with the Lord and with you—it is so wonderful.
The Lord is trying to do something, is He not? What is really going on here? Does He just want fruit? No.
It is not as though the Son of God and the Holy Spirit said, “You know what? I need a gardener. I have this little plot of land between the Tigris and Euphrates down here. I just need a gardener. Let us create man and make him work for Me.”
No, no, no. It is a love story. Actually, He is doing something in you.
Let us look at Ephesians 3, at Paul’s prayer for the Christians there.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
That is talking about Christ and the Holy Spirit at the same time inside your life. The Holy Spirit is in there, and His function is to strengthen you—strengthen your inner man, strengthen your spirit—so your spirit can rule over your soul and your body.
Strengthen your spirit so that Christ can dwell in your hearts by faith. If the Holy Spirit can do enough work inside you, Christ begins to be seen out of your life.
It is wonderful what God is doing. He is transforming your life. He is making you Christlike by that building work of the indwelling Spirit, until Christ can come and dwell there—in other words, until Christ is recognizable.
When He says, “I am the true vine,” He is making reference to the fact that a lot of religion comes from another vine. It is another source, another life. It is a soul life.
But His life is eternal life. If you abide in that vine, you have the flow in the xylem and the phloem of that vine, which is going to last forever and bear precious fruit.
Oh, dear saint of God, it is a love story. Abide in Him.
The last thing I wanted to mention is this other factor, which I guess I can do without speaking too much about because Jim has already touched on it.
Remember Matthew 11, where Jesus says:
Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
That is coming into Christ. Come into Christ by faith. Come unto Him, all you who are weary.
Even if you are a Christian, you can be a weary Christian because you have been trying to do everything out of your own strength. You have been trying so hard to be faithful. You take one step forward and two steps back.
Come to Him if you are weary. Those Jews were so weary. They were so good. They were trying to keep so many tiny laws. They were wearing cheesecloth so they would not swallow gnats and things like that. They were so sincere, but they were so weary.
Jesus says, “Come to Me if you are weary. I will give you spirit rest.”
You have to come into Christ first. Then, taking His yoke upon you and learning from Him is where He starts to come up in you.
You say, “Okay, I am sticking my head in the yoke.” Then Babe the Blue Ox sticks His head in the yoke—that is Jesus. Now you begin to learn how to serve.
You learn a lot about Jesus when you are serving, whether it is setting up folding chairs, preaching, teaching a Sunday school class, or whatever it is. If you do it with Jesus and say, “Now, Jesus, I have never taught the fourth graders before, but I hear that they are part of the terrible tens. I know I cannot do it by myself, and I want to yoke up with You. Teach me how to teach these kids.”
You will begin to learn. He will start to tug you this way and that. You will learn, “Why are you teaching the five doctrines of Calvinism to the fourth grade?” You learn all kinds of lessons. You make a lot of mistakes. That is the whole thing of wearing a yoke.
The key point is that He says, “You will learn of Me.” He does not even say, “You will learn how to do your job.” That is just a by-product.
The real thing is this: You want to get to know Babe the Blue Ox? Stick your head in the yoke. Let us go.
You will see when you should rest. You will see when you should plow. You will see when you should plant seed. You will see when it is time to harvest, because Jesus is the discernment of God.
Stick your head in the yoke. You know why? Because it is another love story. You learn of Him.
What does He say about Himself? Here is what you have wrong: You are afraid to abide in Jesus because you think He is Edward Scissorhands. But here is what you are going to find out:
I am meek and lowly in heart.
Any servant of God who sticks his neck in the yoke of Jesus discovers something: You will never find a more patient Master. You will never find a more forgiving Friend.
He knows all about you. He knows that you are lame in your left foot, and He takes that into account as He teaches you how to plow. He is so gentle.
The only time He gets fierce with you is when you get your neck out of the yoke. Sometimes He gets so jealous for you because you keep backing away from Him. Why are you backing away? It is unbelief again. It is fear that He is going to do something to you.
But here is the thing about the vinedresser, the dear Father who loves you so much: He clips you so that you can bear more fruit.
If you let Him clip you every day, then there is nothing serious going to happen. It is just when you hide from the Lord for two months that He says, “Oh, oh, there goes a wild vine.”
Now the vine has grown this big, and you have to get out a saw—a chainsaw—and yank it off. Why? Two months ago it was just a little wild thing. He could have just gone, “Pick.” That is it.
You say, “Oh Lord, forgive me. I did not mean to go that way.” That is all. Daily pruning is easy.
Yearly pruning—if you wait to come to this conference to get the pruning—no wonder you hear Jim speaking. This is the Toronto Chainsaw Massacre.
It is your choice. Your choice.
But if you have your neck in the yoke, you learn. You learn how patient He is, how loving He is. He will take steps over again. He will have you plow that same area again, and you will find out why. There are a million lessons to be learned by doing that.
The other lesson, I guess, will have to be talked about next time, perhaps, is that inevitably, if you are going to remain in Him and He in you, you are going to have to take up your cross. That involves denial of self.
I would never preach a full gospel to you without telling you that, if you are going to live the Christ life, you are going to sacrifice for it.
But let me tell you: If you live the Christ life, you will never know it is a sacrifice.
He expects you to deny yourself because every time yourself gets in the way, the flow of the Spirit stops within you. Now you have taken things into your own hands.
Jesus is not static. It is not like He is a house and now you are abiding there: “Oh, this is great. Jesus, could we just have cable?” No, He is always on the move.
This abiding place is on the move, according to the cloud and according to the fire. It is moving, and you are going to have to move with it. In order to keep following Him, there are going to be times when you have to deny yourself and take up your cross.
If you try to keep your soul life—remember, He says, if you try to keep your life, you will lose your life. If you are willing to lose your soul life for His sake, you are going to find zoe.
Let the Lord deal with your soulish life, and you will have zoe. Do not let self gum it up. But inevitably it always does, which is why I have one more thing to speak on.
This is the way of life. This is the way of love. And Christ in me is also the way to liberty. But that is tomorrow night, Lord willing.
Lord, we just thank You. What a tender love would call us to Yourself, so unworthy as we are. We know better. Yet something has done such a work in us, so cleansed us by Your precious blood, that You can freely and unapologetically call every one of Your children in—deeper into love, into the hugs, into the voice, and into the Teacher.
How wonderful.
Oh Lord, let everybody here in this place be an absolute lover of Jesus. You love us, so help us to return the favor.
May it begin in the lives of some who have never heard Your voice before, as they deep within hear a voice saying, “Abba. Abba.”
And from there, may that voice—that still, small voice—keep on speaking, as we learn to live the Christ life with Christ within us.
Teach us these lessons, Lord, in our daily life and even as we fellowship together here on this campus. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.