ABIDING
IN CHRIST
"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye
shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." (John 15:7)
The whole secret of prayer is found in these words of our Lord. Here
is prayer that has unbounded power: "Ask WHAT YE WILL, and it shall
be done unto you."
There is a way then of asking and getting precisely what we ask and
getting all we ask. Christ gives two conditions of this all-
prevailing prayer:
- 1. The first condition is, "If ye abide in Me."
- What is it to abide in Christ?
Some explanations that have been given of this are so mystical or
so profound that to many simple-minded children of God they mean
practically nothing at all; but what Jesus meant was really very
simple.
He had been comparing Himself to a vine, His disciples to the
branches in the vine. Some branches continued in the vine, that
is, remained in living union with the vine, so that the sap or
life of the vine constantly flowed into these branches. They had
no independent life of their own. Everything in them was simply
the outcome of the life of the vine flowing into them. Their
buds, their leaves, their blossoms, their fruit, were really not
theirs, but the buds, leaves, blossoms and fruit of the vine.
Other branches were completely severed from the vine, or else
the flow of the sap or life of the vine into them was in some
way hindered. Now for us to abide in Christ is for us to bear
the same relation to Him that the first sort of branches bear to
the vine; that is to say, to abide in Christ is to renounce any
independent life of our own, to give up trying to think our
thoughts, or form our resolutions, or cultivate our feelings,
and simply and constantly look to Christ to think His thoughts
in us, to form His purposes in us, to feel His emotions and
affections in us. It is to renounce all life independent of
Christ, and constantly to look to Him for the inflow of His life
into us, and the outworking of His life through us. When we do
this, and in so far as we do this, our prayers will obtain that
which we seek from God.
This must necessarily be so, for our desires will not be our own
desires, but Christ's, and our prayers will not in reality be
our own prayers, but Christ praying in us. Such prayers will
always be in harmony with God's will, and the Father heareth Him
always. When our prayers fail it is because they are indeed our
prayers. We have conceived the desire and framed the petition of
ourselves, instead of looking to Christ to pray through us.
To say that one should be abiding in Christ in all his prayers,
looking to Christ to pray through Him rather than praying
himself, is simply saying in another way that one should pray
"in the Spirit." When we thus abide in Christ, our thoughts are
not our own thoughts, but His, our joys are not our own joys,
but His, our fruit is not our own fruit, but His; just as the
buds, leaves, blossoms and fruit of the branch that abides in
the vine are not the buds, leaves, blossoms and fruit of the
branch, but of the vine itself whose life is flowing into the
branch and manifests itself in these buds, leaves, blossoms and
fruit.
To abide in Christ, one must of course already be in Christ
through the acceptance of Christ as an atoning Savior from the
guilt of sin, a risen Savior from the power of sin, and a Lord
and Master over all his life. Being in Christ, all that we have
to do to abide (or continue) in Christ is simply to renounce our
self-life--utterly renouncing every thought, every purpose,
every desire, every affection of our own, and just looking day
by day and hour by hour for Jesus Christ to form His thoughts,
His purposes, His affections, His desires in us. Abiding in
Christ is really a very simple matter, though it is a wonderful
life of privilege and of power.
- 2. But there is another condition stated in
this verse, though it is really involved in the first: "And My
words abide in you."
- If we are to obtain from God all that we ask
from Him, Christ's words must abide or continue in us. We must
study His words, fairly devour His words, let them sink into our
thought and into our heart, keep them in our memory, obey them
constantly in our life, let them shape and mold our daily life
and our every act.
This is really the method of abiding in Christ. It is through His
words that Jesus imparts Himself to us. The words He speaks unto
us, they are spirit and they are life. (John 6:33) It is vain to
expect power in prayer unless we meditate much upon the words of
Christ, and let them sink deep and find a permanent abode in our
hearts. There are many who wonder why they are so powerless in
prayer, but the very simple explanation of it all is found in
their neglect of the words of Christ. They have not hidden His
words in their hearts; His words do not abide in them. It is not
by seasons of mystical meditation and rapturous experiences that
we learn to abide in Christ; it is by feeding upon His word, His
written word as found in the Bible, and looking to the Holy
Spirit to implant these words in our hearts and to make them a
living thing in our hearts. If we thus let the words of Christ
abide in us, they will stir us up in prayer. They will be the
mold in which our prayers are shaped, and our prayers will be
necessarily along the line of God's will, and will prevail with
Him. Prevailing prayer is almost an impossibility where there is
neglect of the study of the Word of God.
Mere intellectual study of the Word of God is not enough; there
must be meditation upon it. The Word of God must be revolved
over and over and over in the mind, with a constant looking to
God by His Spirit to make that Word a living thing in the heart.
The prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is
the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ear.
George Muller, one of the mightiest men of prayer of the present
generation, when the hour for prayer came would begin by reading
and meditating upon God's Word until out of the study of the
Word a prayer began to form itself in his heart. Thus God
Himself was a real author of the prayer, and God answered the
prayers which He Himself had inspired.
The Word of God is the instrument through which the Holy Spirit
works, it is the sword of the Spirit in more senses than one;
and the one who would know the work of the Holy Spirit in any
direction must feed upon the Word. The one who would pray in the
Spirit must meditate much upon the Word, that the Holy Spirit
may have something through which He can work. The Holy Spirit
works His prayers in us through the Word, and neglect of the
Word makes praying in the Holy Spirit an impossibility. If we
would feed the fire of our prayers with the fuel of God's Word,
all our difficulties in prayer would disappear.
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