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Abide in Christ – Foundations

September 12th, 2010 Comments off


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, he 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 so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

You have been friends for a long time. But something has come up and you need to leave for a long time. The time draws near and you have one last opportunity to say something. What will you say? Michael W Smith wrote a contemporary chorus some 20 plus years ago sung widely at separations – Friends are friends forever if the Lord is the Lord of them. We host funerals here at the church from Mourning Glory Funeral homes, and people share and speak from their hearts about the people they will miss in the days and years to come. Shortly before His death, Jesus had the same opportunity. It is significant what He deems important to share with His last quiet time together with His friends. We read some of that earlier, so let’s return to it

In John 15 we have this extended metaphor used describing our relationship with Jesus. While the word ABIDING is at the heart, it is a metaphor of vines, branches and fruit. God is the Divine Gardner. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. We are pruned or even cut off if we bear no fruit. The fruit is holiness, or sanctification, or love; all of which describe the character of God. There are 2 thrusts here. The first is your personal spiritual care by abiding in Jesus, drawing the sustenance of r your spiritual life from Jesus. The second is the fruit that comes with being connected to the vine: your personal spiritual ministry, which is love. The first is your vertical connection to God, the latter your horizontal connection to the people around you, the rest of humanity. Both abiding and love are your responsibilities.

Andrew Murray wrote a 31 day devotional exploring John 15 titled “Abide in Christ”. He reminds us of the call of Jesus to follow Him, that time of salvation from ourselves, from sin, from selfishness, and that the voice of God still calls us. That “follow Me” wasn’t just for a few hours so we could have a nice conversation but then return to the sadness of life. It was a “follow Me and stay with Me, Abide in Me”. We came to Jesus in faith, in understanding it is all about Him and not about us, and we live our faith in the same way. We abide IN Christ, not just with Him. It is an intimate and complete relationship we have with the Son of God, not something lived at arm’s length. How do we do that? How do we live that out?

Today I want to focus on the context of Abiding to give us a foundation of how to Abide in Christ. If we look one chapter earlier in John we see 3 distinct parameters that frame this discussion of abiding. These three things are foundational to our faith, and we are much strengthened if we focus on them in our lives. We have to be intentional in our Christian walk. Some people walk through their spiritual life as if there is no direction, that we can almost go anywhere and do anything without having to focus at all. Is that how we learned to read? No, there was a process of steps, and so it is with our growth.

John 14:1-3 Have you ever had someone travel a long distance to see you? Maybe a child who has grown up, married, and moved out of the province is coming for Christmas. You may already know what those dates are now, so what do you do? You begin to prepare. You clean and shop for groceries. You stick a turkey in the freezer. There comes a joy of expectation about being together with old friends and family. Have you ever thought that is how God looks at you? He is waiting for you to come like a long missed family member. Jesus says here “do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” Jesus is talking about His second coming. The first time He came as a baby and left in the clouds as a resurrected man. He has a date of when we shall see Him face to face, and so He is busy cleaning and preparing our place that is in His Father’s house. This truth of the 2nd Coming should encourage us, should bring us peace knowing that whatever happens today or tomorrow, nothing can take away or stop this reservation from happening. If you have hope in anything, anchor your hope to this promise of God. He loves you and is coming soon to take us all back with Him. Keith Green joked that it took Him 6 days to create the universe, so can you imagine what heaven will be like when He has been working on it for over 2,000 years?

John 14:6 Jesus then says to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” I saw this picture online a few months ago of an apartment building that tipped over. It was laying on its side with many of the footings still attached and sticking out of the bottom like sticks. It was a new building built on a slight slope. A heavy rain, loose soil, and construction of the underground garage combined to knock the thing over; like a lumberjack dropping a tree, it just laid down on its side. Compare that to these lighthouses. The storms come, the waves pound, but they stand firm. The difference is what these two buildings are built on, their foundations. The apartment building was anchored to loose soil; the lighthouse to the bedrock. What is your faith anchored to? Remember when Jesus asked His disciples who they thought He was in Caesarea? It was Peter who proclaimed “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” The foundation of your faith is this focus on Jesus. Jesus is who he said He is. Some of these people who today question the existence of God, stopped talking about Jesus a long time ago. Peter’s first sermon was the story of God enacting redemption in history through the incarnation, culminating in the life, death, and life of Jesus. Cling to this truth and it gives you the foundation to abide in Christ.

John 14:16 I read an article this past week from Christianity today. It was a youth pastor at the Saddleback Church and the question posed to him was what the biggest issue Junior High youth face today. His answer was abandonment. People today seem to have so many ways to be abandoned. It could be parental divorce or death or financial issues causing separation; but I don’t think the issue of abandonment is just felt by the young. In all stages of life we can experience a sense of being left out or lost. God knew that, and so in the incarnation He did not just give His Son as a sacrifice for our sins, but gave the Holy Spirit to each of His followers as a seal of His promise of redemption (Ephesians 1). He is our Helper, our Counsellor. It is the Spirit’s work in us that makes us more like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3). He goes to the Father on our behalf even when we don’t know how to express our needs or how much we hurt (Romans 8). Francis Chan’s second book, The Forgotten God, is an excellent study on the Holy Spirit and we would all do well to have a read.

So, here’s the thing. You want to feel close to God, start with a good foundation. The 2nd Coming, a foundation of Jesus as the Messiah, and the reality of the Holy Spirit are all necessary for this foundation. If I came up and asked, “Tell me all you know about the 2nd Coming of Jesus, and where you would find it in the Bible” how long would you need? Would you be done quicker than to takes to hard boil an egg, or would you be going on long after the time it takes to cook ribs that fall of the bone? And yes, it is not just about how much you know, but how that knowledge changes you. One theme that runs through John 14 is how we will be doing His commandments if this is all part of who we are (verses 12, 15, 21, 23). And if we are keep His word, He promises He and His Father will come and make His house in us.

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A Harvest of Hope

February 22nd, 2009 2 comments

John 4:31-38 “Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.” nasb

Alan Hirsch – A working definition of a missional church is that it is a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the Church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true Church. The Church itself is not only a product of that mission, but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus.
Dan Kimball in “The Emerging Church” (Zondervan, 2003) describes the missional church “as a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week.“
“Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.” —Rick Meigs
Being missional is about the individual and how he or she lives out their faith. The building itself is just a structure and the community is an infrastructure. The programs we have are just tools in the hands of the people. This church is missional, then, only in the limits that we as individuals are missional. The Great Commission is to go and make Disciples. Disciples are not made by programs and buildings, they are made by one person imparting what they have to the next.
In this passage in John 4 we have Jesus sharing a couple thoughts about “this mission we are on” with His disciples.

Perseverance (verse 32-34)
Jesus connects His missional pursuit on the same level as eating. Food is pretty basic. Most of us eat 3 x a day plus snacks. We are well fed. We know there are many people who do struggle to make ends meet, and at the heart of all of us is the need for regular nutrition. One thing Jesus was emphasizing is that living out our faith in our everyday life is as necessary as eating. His meat, His nutrition was to do the will of the Father. His pursuing of all that God had made Him for was so vitally important.
We’ve talked before about the fact that Jesus wants all of us; following Jesus is largely a decision to surrender all of what and who we are to Jesus. What does this mean?
This is not about abandoning people. Following Jesus actually enhances our relationships with people because of our increased ability to love. Before we met Jesus we may have been pretty good people, but I would say that until we came to understand what Jesus did for us at the cross, that led to our salvation, our capability to love selflessly was hindered. It is hindered by sin, by fallibility. John says that we love because God first loved us. Because God showed us the pattern of love, of while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us, we can understand what agape love is. That is what God calls us to – Perfect Love. Another term people use for entire sanctification is perfect love. The ability to be so full of God because we are so empty of ourselves is not about beating ourselves because we are worthless, because we are worth more than anything – that is why God died for us. It is about recognizing that for us to be all God created us to be we have to let the Creator who made us and understands us be in control of our direction. Take the relationship between a mother or father and a little girl or boy. The child can fight all they want about bedtime and eating habits and school attendance – all aspects of life. If that parent allows the child to control things, they will grow up spoiled, thinking life owes them everything, wanting to get everything for nothing. The parent, as hard as it is, directs the child’s life, gives information, disciplines when necessary so that the child will mature and be able to be a part of a community. We surrender to God because He knows all and we are but like little children. Know that your daddy God loves you more than you could ever realize.
And so we persevere. We persevere in following Him even if all else around us fall away. We persevere in living our faith in front of everyone because it is who we are. Just as we eat day in day out, so we strive to stay close to Jesus day in day out.

Listen to the words of Rudyard Kipling, and think about what he says and how it relates to you and I and the integrity of our faith in God:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Immediacy (verse 35 – Now is the day of salvation)
The field is white (ready for harvest) – look around now. God has called you to be here, so here is where your field is. Look for it, it is right here. Imagine Jesus sitting there talking with His disciples and pointing to the people coming from the city (verse 30). Sometimes we think that tomorrow is the day of ministry, that we have to be better prepared, more studied, more healed from the baggage we carry around with us. There is a place for taking time for healing. There is a time for study and preparing. But even in the midst of those seemingly self-oriented pursuits, there is and should be room for ministry. Our faith is not compartmentalizable. You can’t walk through your week with a back pack and put your faith on and off like a shirt when you choose. Your faith is more like your skin. It is part of the very fabric of your being. And because it is right there, there is an immediacy to faith. One small word you say today, goes much further than a sermon you might say four months down the road. In Proverbs we read “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances (25:11)”. How do we do this. This “live in the present” with our faith. First, we need to keep short accounts with God. Don’t let sin linger – deal with it right away. Second, Do whatever it takes to get to know God as best as you can. This includes prayer and Bible reading and fellowship and worship. Thirdly, focus on loving your neighbour, in thought and word and deed. Love them from the inside out. Live today as if it were the one day that counted in your life, for indeed it is all you have right now. Jesus said to let the problems of tomorrow stay in tomorrow – focus on today.

Abiding in Christ (verses 36-38)
Finally, this whole reaping and sowing metaphor is about God working in and through us. We don’t save people – God does. We can never argue someone into heaven. A person is only saved as they see their need for Jesus to deal with the sin problem in their life. We can and are used of God to be a conduit of His love and grace. It is a privilege, and one we tap into by staying close to Jesus, by abiding in Jesus, in the vine. God calls us into the world to show His love, to reveal Himself to the people around us. My twin brother Dan has been called to do that in Cameroon. He went because God asked him and his wife to go. He went, expecting much trouble both physically and spiritually because of the nature of their work. I wasn’t directed there, but have been called to the pulpit, to the ministry of overseer. Bonnie’s call is different, and her work with words is a fulfillment of that calling she has. Dan translates Scripture. I preach sermons. Bonnie writes books. All three of us talk with neighbours about Jesus. All 3 of us pray for people. All three of us study the Bible even though we have been Christians for decades because we know the need to stay connected to Jesus. All 3 of us rely on the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us everyday. We aren’t perfect, but we strive to be all we can be in all that God has supplied for us.

I was at an Alcoholics Anonymous information luncheon of Friday. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Staying sober is the constant mission for each member. It is a day by day, moment by moment thing. As the speakers explained what the program was about I was struck by the fact how applicable it was for us as Christians. The speakers got up and each started by saying, “My name is such and such. I’m an alcoholic.” They went on and mentioned the day of their sobriety. What if we had a Sinners Anonymous program? Our mission moment to moment is holiness. Here are AA’s 12 steps with the word sin and sinner replacing alcohol and alcoholic and put in the first person, but otherwise verbatim of what their creed is.

My name is Steve, and I am a sinner.
1. I admit that I was powerless over sin – that my life had become unmanageable.
2. I came to believe that a Power greater than me could restore me to sanity.
3. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.
4. I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.
6. I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. I humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I made a list of all persons I had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. I made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong I promptly admitted it.
11. I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I tried to carry this message to sinners, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Categories: abiding in Christ, John 4, missional, perseverance Tags: