Abide In Christ
Jesus Christ died that we might go to heaven. But that is just the end of the story.
When Jesus Christ comes into your life through the new birth you are filled with a hunger to see and experience more of Him than ever before. A hungry person never outgrows Christ. We must develop an intimate love relationship with Him and we do that as we abide in Him. Abiding means we make a decision to keep ourselves close to Jesus, letting Him teach us of himself through supernatural insight and the word of God.
Christ dwells within us for the purpose of presenting us completed to the Father. It begins the moment we put our faith in Christ and are born again. The new birth is the beginning of a process that should continue throughout our Christian walk on this earth. As we grow, we should long for more and more of Christ but we can only do this as we abide in Christ.
Authentic Christianity is a mystery to many people because they do not have an intimate personal relationship with Christ. Those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ will not and cannot be expected to understand true Christianity until they have a saving knowledge of Him. However, a true Christian should have an intimate personal relationship with the Lord that sets them apart from the world. This relationship is more than going to a certain church or doing the rituals of Christianity. It is a personal knowledge of Jesus that causes you to feel confident in His love and acceptance.
Have you drifted away from the desire to give yourself completely to Christ? God’s goal is to make us just like Christ. God is working. He is busy changing lives and the way He does it is as we abide in Christ. Come to Him now and ask Him to restore the joy of your salvation. Ask Him and He will fill you with the desire to abide in Christ and be all you were created to be.
I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
The word “abide” means we move in with Jesus and continue to live with him. We want to be fruitful and pleasing to our God. The scripture says without me you can do nothing. There are no secrets with God. He has fully revealed Himself in Christ. He did this because he wants to have an intimate, loving relationship with us. We can do nothing without him regardless of what we have been taught in the world. He never meant for us to set out on our own, turning to Him only when we have nowhere else to go. His plan is for us to abide in him the same way the disciples did. They abided with Christ until he told them what to do and then, still abiding in Him, they did it, knowing full well that the power and anointing would be there to bring forth the desired fruit.
God’s desire is that we abide in his son, Jesus Christ. Too many of us are up and down, feeling close to God one day and wondering where he went the next day. We are so bound up by our emotions that we are constantly on a spiritual roller coaster that makes us feel "in Christ" one day and "out of luck" the next. We can do all things through Christ today but tomorrow we have trouble getting out of bed!
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8)
A double-minded person is not abiding in Christ. He has faith one day (riding the crest of the wave) but doubts the next day and is driven by the sea and tossed by the waves. He is "unstable in all his ways." When we abide in Christ, we believe and are calmly assured that God will give us whatever we ask for.
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)
Does this mean we can have what ever we want if we abide in Christ? We are not abiding in Christ if we have added our own virtue or merit to his completed work. Christ’s work of atonement for sin is complete. It was completed when Christ declared from the cross, “It is finished!” We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. When we are truly abiding in Christ, we find our wants and needs changing. Our wants will no longer revolve around selfish lusts for the things of this world. Instead, we will take on the character of Jesus. We will know his mind. His thoughts and desires become ours and what we ask for will be in line with God's will. Isn't that what we really want? We want to be in God's will but we have trouble trusting him to do what's right for us. Abiding in Christ will produce a strong faith that God is doing what is right and good for us.
Abiding in Christ does not mean we will never suffer but our suffering is on a different level from that endured by Christ on the cross. We are not being punished for sin. Only the sufferings of Christ have atoning value for the sinner. Ours do not. We suffer troubles, afflictions, tribulations and persecutions because of our identification with Christ. When we are abiding in him, we have the ability and the power to overcome these things. The world can not and will not overcome the one who is constantly abiding in Him but those who have made a habit of drifting in and out of fellowship with Christ can easily be overwhelmed.
In Jesus Christ are summed up everything we can know about God and His eternal purposes. In Christ we see the riches of God’s glory, wisdom and grace. We are able to access all that is of God by abiding in Christ. We can not expect these gifts to be ours if we are not willing to give ourselves to him completely. When we are born again, we are given an unlocked door to everything God has but it is up to us whether we walk through that door or not.
The Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and reveals Jesus Christ to us individually as we abide in Him. It is really hard for him to reveal anything to us when we are off somewhere doing our own thing.
God has done so many wonderful things for us as we abide in Christ we will enter into what God has already said we have in him. That the Son of God should die as a substitute for our sins is hard to understand. He humbled Himself and became a servant, and died as our substitute on a cross. He bore our sin on the cross that we might never bear the Father’s wrath. He bore our punishment in His death. He redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. He has made everything right and safe for us with God the Father by making an end of sin and causing us to become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Jesus Christ overcame death and is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven where He reigns as the living Lord. He has overcome death. He is alive! We have been raised up together with him and made to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We should be constantly seeking the things that can only be found in him.
There was a time when we were alienated from God and we were dead in trespasses and sin. We lived each day without any serious thought about God and His will for our lives. He was not important to us. We were hostile toward God. But something happened in our lives. Now we are reconciled to God. Now He is our most valued person. Something happened within us. Something changed in our attitude toward Jesus Christ. In the moment we believed on Jesus Christ our whole life changed. God is in the business of changing lives and He does it when we believe on Christ as our Savior. What happens? We are born again. A spiritual birth takes place and Christ comes within you and the Holy Spirit makes you His temple. If you need your life changed this is where you must begin. Open your heart to Christ and receive Him as Lord.
Every believer has stamped on him, “Made in Christ.” That means there are no cheap imitations of Christians. The greatest miracle is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Christ in me creates the “hope of glory.” How can we not desire to be close to him when he has done so much for us. He dwells in us and our life is in him.
Whatever Christ is, His people are in Him. We are crucified in Him, we died in Him, we were buried in Him, we were risen in Him; in Him we live eternally, in Him we sit at the right hand of God, In Him we are accepted in the beloved, both now and forever.
Jesus gives us Himself. To have Christ is to have eternal life. He does not merely give us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption etc., but He is made of God all these things to us. He is our life. Therefore, we cannot do without Him. We have to abide in Christ, even as He is abiding in us and nothing short of this will produce fruit.
As a Christian, every talent and ability we have is enlarged as we abide in Him. As Christ begins to possess us, we do not cease to be ourselves. We do not become robots. In Christ we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit to cause us to be successful in everything we set our hand to do. “Christ in me” means He is the power that carries me, giving my whole life a sense of God’s presence. It gives me an endless song in my heart.
Christ in you, accepted by faith alone, means you are Christ possessed. When Christ is in you the law has nothing more to say to you. It can no longer condemn you because God has declared you free. You have been justified by faith in Christ.
Abiding in Christ fills your life with His holy presence and power. That which the law can never do, Christ does by being in you and your being in Him.
Abiding in Christ proclaims His rule in your life, over every facet of your personality. Abiding in Christ means you have brought every thought into captivity to Him. We find our freedom by submitting to His rule over our lives. We willingly open the door and step into Christ and the Holy Spirit gives us the power to stay put.
Abiding in Christ means he is filling you with His wonderful presence to transforms your person until you become like Christ. It activates the power of God on your behalf so that you can experience all that is in him. If you do not understand the importance of abiding in Christ you will keep bouncing up and down, never coming to the complete realization of all that is in you in him.
When Christ enters into our lives and we abide in his presence he transforms and molds us to His likeness. Paul declared, “I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me.” When Christ enters in He sets us apart for His glory. As we abide in Him we truly become vessels of honor, ready to do the work of the Lord.
Abiding in Christ means we acknowledge his presence in our lives and His power is able to work in us. We were without spiritual strength until Christ came into our lives. We were dead in trespasses and sins. Now, as we abide in Him, our spiritual victory is guaranteed.
If Christ comes into your heart he brings everything he has! You have Him in all his fullness. People who value and love Him enough to abide in him cannot be happy without Him.
When we abide in Jesus Christ, he is able to focus our minds and desires on the things of God. He brings eternity into the picture and is able to get our minds off our past and into the present where He lives within us.
The apostle Paul prayed that this truth would become a reality for the believers in the church at Ephesus. He prayed, “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; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19). That should take your breath away! When Christ in you offers all of those glorious benefits why do people turn to new age movements, secret religions, occults and cults seeking the most recent religious fad? Sadly, even those who are born again can be caught up in these deceptions if they do not abide in Christ.
Does He feel comfortable in your heart or are there two masters trying to rule in your life? Do you give Christ the free reign of your life by abiding in him?
As we abide in him and his word abide in us, we will ask for the best that God has for us in full confidence that it will be done. When we do not abide in Christ we do not have the confidence necessary to expect God to answer our prayers. We still have all that power in Him but we have no ability to use it. Abiding is the switch that turns on the power in our lives.
Now that we know all that is possible through abiding in Christ, it is important that we know exactly how to get into that position of abiding. There is only one way to learn how to abide in Christ and that is by asking the Father to teach you how to do it. That is always the answer to every need in your life. There are no "ten steps" to abiding. Jesus said, "whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you." So just ask and he will tell you what to do.
You might say, "I asked but he didn't tell me anything." Did you think about reading your Bible? That was God. Did you do it? Did you think about praying? That was God. Did you do it? Did you think about bowing in reverence to Him? That was God. Did you do it? These things may seem small to you but listening to and obey our Father are the baby steps to moving mountains, raising the dead and walking on water.
He is such a wonderful God and he loves us so much. Step into the shallow water of abiding in Christ and before you know it, you will be abiding in our God so deeply that you will forget you ever did things differently.
Christ in me is a king who requires all my loyalty and as I abide in Him as my Lord and Master He will reveal to me everything He is.