“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” --John 15: 7Abide in me. The three words with which Jesus invited his disciples to place their faith in His love as they walked to
Garden of Gethsemane that last fateful night. He wasn’t just talking to disciples though. No, He was talking to us, too. And these three simple words, if understood and acted upon, can make all difference in a Christian’s life. The problem is that many of us have never really even noticed they were spoken—much less taken their message to heart.
What does “abide” mean anyway? According to Webster’s Dictionary, “abide” means to remain. That makes sense, remain with Me, stay with Me, stay by My side. Ah, but Jesus doesn’t say “with,” He says “in.” Simply put Jesus is not saying He wants us to walk with him, or be with Him. He is saying He wants us to remain in Him—as close as we could ever get to actually to Him without being Him.
This is just semantics, you say. A play on words. What possible significance could such a tiny distinction make? I can tell you that in my life, it has made all difference.
I must confess first that until recently I didn’t put words to this phenomenon. I knew it was in my life, but explaining it wasn’t easy to do. At time I called it “faith.” As a writer, I put great faith in belief that God would light my path, that if I surrendered project to His care, I would have right words at right time.
The opportunities to use this faith were boundless. For example, when my two year old deleted five pages of new manuscript I was working on, I distinctly remember saying, “Well, I guess God didn’t want it said that way.” Or when my publicist threw a major curve into my plans by saying cover for my second book (which I had chosen) would never work, and we had no choice but to change it. True it took me awhile of being furious with her before I realized that it was God, not she, that had a better idea. Once I surrendered to that understanding, new cover came into focus, and it was far and away better than original.
For several years these were types of ways I tried to “abide in Him” although “faith” was probably better term because I was still relying on some outside entity—not a spirit that permeated me.
Recently, however, I came into contact with Bruce Wilkinson’s Secrets of Vine, and my understanding took a giant leap forward. In Secrets, Wilkinson talks about phrase “abide in me” and what Jesus really meant when he spoke those words. After reading that book, I was having a discussion with a friend about my writing. For first time ever this friend is getting to experience writing process with me as she is reading book I am working on as I am writing it.
