In John 10:10 Jesus taught his followers that he had come that they might have life and have it abundantly (vs 10). Later in John 15, he explained HOW IT IS that Jesus imparts that spiritual life to us. He said, I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever ABIDES in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Spiritual flourishing results from ABIDING in Christ. That is not a word we use much today. This episode explains what this Greek word means and identifies four obstacles to experiencing this connectedness to Christ that causes us to be fruitful.
The Greek word, MENO, is translated, “Abide” by the ESV and NASB, and “Remain” by the NIV. It means to stay vitally connected to someone. The word, abide, has the same root as abode, i.e. a dwelling place. Hence, in the JB Phillips translation, Jesus says,
“If you LIVE IN me and I LIVE IN you, you will bear fruit.” Just four verses later Jesus repeats this word, MENO, making it clear that the kind of connection he has in mind is their love relationship with him. He says, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. ABIDE in my love (John 15:9). This text reinforces what we saw last week that the first part of our mission as Christ-followers is that we are called TO CHRIST to enjoy a love relationship with him. Since building a rich, deep, strong love relationship with Christ is the key to spiritual flourishing, it is worth giving some thought to the obstacles that must be overcome to deepen our love for Christ. Let’s look at four.
A. Believing that even though Christ died for my sins and forgives me, my continual yielding to sin fills him with disgust towards me. After all, he is holy.
If some of the secret thoughts of our minds were posted on Google Docs for everyone to see, we could never look people in the eye again, especially our kids. And others seeing what we are really like inside aren’t even holy as God is. We men often are very aware of the repulsiveness of our sins to a holy God, especially the sexual ones. We believe that when we die, we will go into God’s holy presence because we are cleansed from our sin by Jesus’ blood. But until then, some men feel like they have to live in God’s heavenly doghouse. If they took the awfulness of their sin more seriously, they would not keep on sinning.
Let’s think about this concept of God sending me to the doghouse because, despite loving me and forgiving me, I’m too dirty for him to LIKE. Do you want to hang out with people who DON’T LIKE YOU? Is that the group that you choose to be your friends? Of course not. To the contrary, your friends are those who DO LIKE YOU. In fact, as I look at my closest friendships, there is almost a direct relationship between THOSE WHO LIKE ME MOST and those I WANT to be close to! Satan, the Accuser of the Brothers, wants to poison my relationship with God by convincing me God’s current attitude towards me is to banish me to the spiritual doghouse because I can’t get “righteousness” right. Giving Satan this power means I will never achieve the most foundational part of my mission—enjoying a love relationship with Christ. Because our guilt and sin are real, we will never be able to fully ENJOY our relationship with our Lord until we know in our hearts that the death of Jesus for our sin enables us to look into our Judge’s face and see, instead, our Bridegroom who longs for us to come near to him. We must get grace from our heads to our hearts.
Maria was a mom who knew exactly what her fifteen-year-old daughter, Christiana, would have to do for a living if she ever ran away from her village to the city. That is why her heart broke when she awoke one morning to find her daughter’s bed empty. Maria knew immediately where her daughter had gone and what she must do to find her. She threw some clothes in a bag, gathered all her money, bought a bus ticket for Rio de Janeiro, and stopped by the drugstore to take as many pictures of herself as she could afford. Maria visited every hotel night-club, or bar where prostitutes hung out. At each place she left her picture—taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. On the back of each photo, she wrote a note. But before long, Maria was out of photos and money. So, broken hearted, she returned home.
A few weeks later, young Christiana descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her big brown eyes no longer danced with the laughter of youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her dream had become a nightmare. She longed to trade these countless beds for the secure pallet of her bedroom at home. But the little village was in too many ways too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christiana’s eyes blurred with tears as she crossed the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation: “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did. (Story taken from No Wonder They Call Him Savior, by Max Lucado).
Maria’s words, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home, remind me of the Father in Jesus’s story of the prodigal son. In Luke 15 we read, But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. If you belong to Christ and turn towards God after you have sinned, are you absolutely certain that The Father runs to you with arms wide open? He does. This knowledge of God’s grace does NOT cheapen grace causing you to sin more. To the contrary, it is the path to feasting your soul upon God’s unconditional love, filling your tank and making you less vulnerable to the pull of temptation in the future. The first obstacle to building a joyful love relationship with God is believing that God sees me as disgusting when in truth he sees me clothed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness.
B. To fail to grow beyond a childish view of God’s restrictions, “I hate his stupid rules.” Our basic sinful nature is that of a spoiled child who wants his own way. Like the four-year-old at the check-out counter of the grocery store who fusses at his Mom, “You don’t love me” because she won’t buy the candy he wants, our sinful nature texts us “God doesn’t really love you,” when we are disappointed and something we really wanted him to do, doesn’t happen. Our sinful nature has a subtle definition of what loving me looks like; it is GIVING ME MY OWN WAY. The irony is that constantly giving a child his own way is actually a form of hatred. God tells us, Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24). God’s restrictions on us, given in his moral law are FOR OUR GOOD, leading King David to sing, Oh how I love your law! It is my my meditation all the day (Ps 119:97). When God spanks us for disobedience to his laws, it is to guide us into life. Consider for example the blessing of a few of the Ten Commandments.
- You shall have no other gods before me. This command is not about God’s ego or insecurity. It is about protection for our heart. If we rely upon any other idol to fill the emptiness of our hearts, (like success, popularity, respect, money, pleasure, children who turn out okay etc.) such Gods will 1) take over our lives and 2) ultimately will fail to deliver the heart satisfaction they promised.
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Misusing God’s name is the first step down a path towards disrespecting God’s weightiness and glory. Thinking God is a lightweight leads to believing that the pleasure of sin is greater than its cost. Proverbs 16:6 says, By the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil. The fear of the Lord is not being afraid of God; it is knowing that because of who God is no one ever gets away with sin.
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Christians have not always agreed on how this part of the OT moral law comes into the NT, since Paul went to the synagogue to proclaim Christ to the Jews on Saturday, the Sabbath, and met with the Christ-followers on Sunday the first day of the work week before and after work. But the pattern of going hard for six days, then 1) resting our bodies, 2) renewing our hearts in worship, and 3) reflecting on our mission with our Commander In Chief is a pattern with enormous benefits.
- Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you. An adult is seriously handicapped in life if he has not learned in his home as a child to respect his father and mother. Every structure of society, apart from anarchy requires submission to authority. (See Romans 13.)
- You shall not commit adultery. Directing sexual desire and fulfillment into marriage alone is enormously beneficial to everyone in society. Think of the depth of rejection a spouse feels when she has been naked, fully known by her husband, but he throws her away for another woman. Think of the crippling emotional instability foisted upon our kids through their parent’s break up of their home. The self-discipline of saving sex for marriage is exactly what God intends to aid spouses to learn to keep their romantic and sexual desires from being captured by the enticement of outsiders (be they pictures or real).
- You shall not steal. The right of private ownership is foundational to maximize the economic prosperity of the culture. Paul reflects the profound link between working and prospering economically. This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat (2Thes 3:10).
We need to shout down our sinful nature that insists on having its own way. God’s restrictions are for our benefit, given to us because he loves us.
C. The third obstacle to walking closely with Christ is that my sinful nature lies about pain, “If God loved you, he wouldn’t let you hurt so much.” Such an expectation of a loving God is that he is soft—one who won’t let me hurt too much, especially since I have chosen to follow him. There are two purposes to the pain God allows in our lives. The first is a REPROOF for breaking the laws of life the way he designed it to be lived. When I touch a hot stove, I get burned. If I speed, I may get a ticket. If I answer my wife sharply, I can expect a hurtful reply. If I don’t work hard on the job, I can expect to fail. Scripture identifies the purpose of this type of pain as steering us onto the path to life. Proverbs 6:23: For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life. Our nervous system is intended to protect us. One whose nerves have been destroyed, like a lepper might destroy his hand by putting it in a pan of boiling water, because he did not feel the pain.
But that is only one kind of pain. There is much pain and suffering in this world that cannot be explained this way. How can we tell a child God is all loving in the midst of the heart wrenching-pain she feels when her parents divorce when she prayed to God with all her heart that God would make her parents love each other again. How do we explain God’s love to a spouse whose mate God allowed to be killed by a drunk driver? What do we say to a couple whose child dies of cancer? Of course, it is best not to try to give any explanation at the time, just compassion But how do we keep these thoughts from eroding our confidence in God’s loving nature? In chapter 2 of Reason for God, entitled, “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?” Time Keller wrestles with this question. He writes,
Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture and imprisonment. On the cross he went even beyond the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceed ours…He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us. If we again ask the question: “Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?” and we look to the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we do know what the answer ISN’T. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us.
God has proved his love for us at the cross. But, I believe the most powerful answer to the doubts about God that flood into our hearts when we hurt is an understanding of resurrection. The resurrected body of Christ shows the renewal and restoration of the physical body. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus indicated that his second coming will bring the regeneration of the earth. The Greek word is PALIN = again + GENESIS = birth. Jesus insisted that his return will be with such power that the very material world and universe will be purged of all decay and brokenness. Keller observes,
This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater…Just after the climax of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandolf is not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead. But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?” The answer of Christianity to that question is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater, for having once been broken and lost (Ibid).
The broken heart of the single woman, never having been cherished by a husband will cause her to enjoy Jesus as her bridegroom eternally in a deeper way than she would have, had she been married. Parents whose hearts have been crushed by losing a child, will have more eternal joy in a restored relationship with their child than they ever could have, had they never known the devastating grief of losing him. In other words, What if Jesus knows that every ounce of pain he takes us through in this life to test our faith and persevere in godly trust in him WILL BRING GREATER JOY TO US THROUGHOUT ETERNITY THAN HAD WE NEVER SUFFERED? C.S. Lewis wrote: “They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” This is the ultimate defeat of evil and suffering; our God is so good that he will turn the suffering brought about by our race’s sin into something that makes our future life and joy infinitely greater. This is our God!
D. The fourth obstacle to walking closely with Christ is the poor management of our time. Deepening any relationship requires an investment of time. I believe that our time management and money management should be practical expressions of our commitment to the first commandment: God holding first place in our lives. We give the first ten percent (at least) of our earnings to God, and he promises to more than meet our needs with the remaining ninety percent. Similarly, we want to give the Lord the first portion of time—some each day in his Word, some on the Lord’s Day to delight in the Lord and reflect on our mission. Someone has defined TIME as:
- a limited resource extended only by giving the first part back to God. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine (Prov 3:9-10).
- a daily treasure which attracts many robbers. Make the most of your time, because the days are evil (Eph 5:16).
- an earthly trust which, if invested wisely, will produce eternal treasures. So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Ps 90:12)
- your most precious asset, which is easily squandered by directionless living. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt 6:33).
Nearly every marriage counselor I know tries to teach couples that their relationship cannot grow unless they make TIME TOGETHER a TIME MANAGEMENT PRIORITY for their lives. Listening to Christ’s call to deepen and enjoy a love relationship with him has tremendous potential to fill us with joy and spiritual power because that is what it means to abide in Christ. But being poor stewards of our time may leave us with little time left to give God. So, he often gets the leftovers.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- What has most helped you know that when you to turn towards God after giving in to sin, God is like the father of the prodigal, running to you with open arms?
- What has helped you the most to see God’s moral loss as the pathway to blessing, instead of a restriction to your fulfillment?
- What is the toughest part about knowing in your head that God intends suffering for our ultimate good and still feeling totally loved by God when we hurt?
- How can you do a better job of managing your use of time so that your personal walk with God get’s the firstfruits and not the leftovers.
