I do so well at abiding and obeying…until everyone else wakes up for the day. To be real honest, people and circumstance challenge my footing.
But I desire to bear much fruit and bring glory to my God, even when life gets wild. (Jn. 15:8) That’s my ultimate longing. So I need my feet rooted deep in Him, not just resting on the surface. I need to abide.
So I’ve asked Him to teach me how to remain in Him and how to have His Word dwell in me richly. (Jn. 15:7) Because the benefits of abiding are priceless.
To think that I could experience His joy to the full even when things don’t go as I’ve planned or hoped. (Jn. 15:11) To think that His “calm delight and cheerfulness” could be “crammed” to the top of my soul, “making (me) replete” with joy.* The thought overwhelms me.
And not only that, my abiding affects my prayer life. If I abide and if His words abide in me, He will answer my prayers with a “yes.”
“Whatever I want? Are you telling me He will give me whatever I want?” Um, sort of.
It reminds me of Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” Getting what we want begins with delighting, or “remaining pliable” in Him.* It begins with abiding.
Something interesting happens when I truly delight in Him, when I faithfully remain. The desires of my heart change. They transform. What my flesh once desired now seems bitter.
Revenge on those who hurt me, or gaining more “stuff,” is now irrelevant. It’s love that tastes sweet. His selfless, sacrificial love flowing through me onto those beside me becomes my earnest desire.
And He will say “yes.”
To gain the benefits of abiding — bringing Him glory, being filled full with His joy, and having my prayers answered with “yes” — begins and ends with the abiding.
So tell me, how do we abide even when life sends us on a wild ride?
What did you glean from the “Abiding Fruit” study last week?
*See Strong’s Concordance.
I am so with you on the part that I abide well until everyone gets up. I feel like I need to spend hours on my knees asking God to forgive me and help me as I care for my 3 year old. I think if I keep God’s Word open or write out a verse that reminds me that I need to abide when I’m in one of those moments, I can take a step back and rely on God to have the right response to the situation. Here are a few things I learned if I abide in the vine: bear fruit, pruned, clean, ask for desires/shall be done, glorify Father, be a disciple, love and joy. Sounds great to me! I am loving this study and can’t wait to hear what others are learning too.
Thanks, Shonda. It is a continual choosing, isn’t it?! Only by His Spirit (thankfully!) we have been equiped to abide. Keep on, sister-friend.
Oh, yes. I get this: “To be real honest, people and circumstance challenge my footing.”
And then, thank you for this: “Getting what we want begins with delighting, or “remaining pliable” in Him.* It begins with abiding. Something interesting happens when I truly delight in Him, when I faithfully remain. The desires of my heart change. They transform.” Such truth.
These verses continued to show me how active God is our lives – in pruning, guiding, listening, answering, loving.
To me, verse 7, like you briefly mentioned, supports yet again the need to revel in God’s Word. And throughout reading these verses last week, the word “cling” kept coming into my head. Cling to Him like a branch clings with attachment to the vine.
Thanks for the post!
Oh I love that about “clinging.” Such a great image. Thanks for sharing!
Because it is used so frequently in this passage, I finally looked up the word “abide” in the dictionary. There were so many additional definitions that I had never even thought of (to me, Abide always meant to live in or dwell). When you read the passages with each of these definitions in mind, it completely opens up a new avenue of possibilities.
1. To remain, continue, stay
2. To dwell in
3. To continue in a particular relationship with
4. To wait for, await (I think this one stood out to me the most.)
5. To accept without opposition or question
6. To pay the price of
7. To act in accordance to, to submit to
8. To remain faithful to.
Great Bible study tactic! Thanks for sharing.
Lara, thank you for the post and the study! I feel exactly the same way. You wrote;
“I do so well at abiding and obeying…until everyone else wakes up for the day. To be real honest, people and circumstance challenge my footing.
But I desire to bear much fruit and bring glory to my God, even when life gets wild. (Jn. 15:8) That’s my ultimate longing. So I need my feet rooted deep in Him, not just resting on the surface. I need to abide.
So I’ve asked Him to teach me how to remain in Him and how to have His Word dwell in me richly. (Jn. 15:7) Because the benefits of abiding are priceless.”
Shonda I was given insight when you wrote, “I can take a step back and rely on God to have the right response to the situation.”
Caroline, I was blessed by your word, “Cling”. This branch will continually cling and abide to the true vine(:
Vicki, I too, looked up the definition of “abide”; and each definition said to me, “Fruit of the Spirit”.
Thank you ladies, I was truly blessed today!!!
Thank you for those kind words. I pray you continue to be blessed as you dig into this study — bearing much fruit. :)
One thing I learned anew is that we’re going to be cut no matter what. We can either be cut totally off by not staying in Christ—and thus be totally miserable.
Or we can be pruned (which may still hurt temporarily) by sticking with Jesus—and end up finding complete joy.
I’d rather end up with the latter! So I need to keep my mind on Jesus and train my heart to love others as I love him. Then he’ll produce the fruit in my life that will bring glory to the Father.
I also picked up on the whole “we’re going to be cut no matter what.” I’ve also heard someone say that we are “pruned if we do and pruned if we don’t”!!
“But I desire to bear much fruit and bring glory to my God, even when life gets wild.”
I think I’m just going to keep repeating this over and over today . . .
Agree with everything said here! It is so challenging to be up and ready with my kiddos every morning. I am a stay at home mama, and sometimes I feel like I can’t even get away to use the bathroom, let alone reading God’s word. I need to really concentrate on listening to God, and leaning on him more. I think that when I am concentrating on God’s word, I am better able to handle the stresses of being home with a 3 and 1 year old. Thank you for these encouraging words!
wow, this is just what I need to be reading right now—of course God works it out that way right? I found it interesting that Jesus opens up speaking about himself (unless I am wrong,please tell me) and how many times through out this passage he reiterates the remaining–what 5x? So this HAS to be important! I learned that cleansing comes from Christ and his word, and this in turn results in us bearing fruit, which then brings glory to the Father! If I don’t have his word in me, in my mind, then how can I bear fruit? If I am not abiding, “clinging” (as someone above mentioned–love it) to Christ my vine, my source of “nutrition”, he will not remain in me. And all of this is 1-for God’s glory and 2-for Christ’s joy to overflow in us.
Great post, Lara!
Big picture I saw in this passage:
Abiding —> Fruit/Answered prayers —-> The Father is glorified!
It’s all about Him being glorified through us!
Lara,
I LOVE the fact that to delight means to remain pliable! I have not heard that before. I had heard it said that when I delight myself in the Lord, His desires for me become mine, that fits right in with remaining pliable and moldable to my Father’s shaping of me.
I am delighting in the Lord right now as He reminds me that He is my God and wherever he takes my family from here (even back to Fairbanks, AK) is the place where the desires of my heart will be fulfilled. If I abide in Him…plant my feet deeply.
Thank you Lara for this word that I needed today!
This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. There was a point in my life about a year ago or so, in which I read this passage almost daily. It is so beautiful and LOVE all the promises God makes to us if we abide in Him. But what always sticks out to me is this part in vs. 5: “. . .for without Me you can do nothing.”
Those words always stand out to me, letting me know that without God, I am not productive, I have no peace, that I cannot accomplish anyting worthy of His glory. Without Him I can do nothing! Therefore, my choice, the best choice, is to abide in Him, to take root in Him, so that I can bear fruit like Him.
Thanks again for this Bible study. . .it has be a GREAT blessing.
What is SO amazing about this week’s study is the definition of ABIDE:
1. to remain; continue; stay
2. to have one’s abode; dwell; reside
3. to continue in a particular condition, attitude, relationship; last
4. to put up with; tolerate; stand
5. to endure; sustain; or withstand without yielding or submitting
6. to wait for; await
7. to accept without opposition or question
8. to pay the price or penalty of; suffer for
WOW! That sums up everything – relationship, intimacy, suffering, waiting, anticipating, accepting without question… this is what we are to be, and how many times I can fall short and want to try to do things on my own accord.
This definition alone spoke volumes to me!
Something that stood out for me in Day 5’s Apply: I need to remember that abiding in Christ means abiding in His Word. Christian books (nonfiction and fiction) are great but I need to make sure they aren’t replacing my time in the Bible.