Man, tonight I just want to build off of Josh's talk last week. Specifically, how many of you are here last week? That helps me. OK.
There is one portion where he talked a little bit about abiding. And I want us to drill deeper into the topic of abiding tonight. And I think we're even going to be there for a couple of weeks. And just digesting the conversation of abiding.
What actually is that? How do I do that? How do I get that out of just like spiritual language and bring that down to earth so I know how to actually abide? Because it seems so important to Jesus.
And so we're going to talk about that a little bit. There's a part of Josh's message. You may remember when he talked about abiding is like coming home. What do you come home to?
And he talked about the phone. And how sometimes our phone is the thing that we come home to. And how we kind of laid that out was coming back to our phone in the gaps throughout the day, right? Where it's like, I just get out of a meeting and I'm checking my phone.
And I'm headed to the next thing. I'm on my phone. And I'm going to bed. And I'm on my phone.
Whatever the thing is, throughout the transitions of the day, what is your home? What are you coming back to? And shifting that to be him and making him our home. And I just felt so challenged by that this week of, I don't know how many times I went from one thing to the next and I, without thinking right, because this is how it happens, just grab my phone to check in.
And I am so grateful to the Holy Spirit because I'd pull out my phone and then I'd quick set it down. And I'd say, Jesus, you're my home. It's just for the split second of connecting with him. And I just felt so grateful for that word this week.
And it's been a strength to me. And it's so simple, yet so profound to continually find your home in him. And so I just, as we're coming in tonight, I'm really thinking about those of us that are going, man, I'm in really challenging circumstances right now. Or, man, I'm feeling far from the Lord.
And maybe it's because you aren't even walking with Jesus yet. And you're like, I feel really far from him. But I'm curious to know more. Or maybe you're just in a dry season.
And you feel far. You know all the things. And you know he's closed. And you know the word.
And you know his promises. But it's like, man, I'm having a hard time feeling connected to him. Anyone that's going, I feel like I'm on the outside. Looking in, I just want to encourage you tonight.
The picture that the Lord gave me was that he was going to clear obstacles off of the path to make the path more simple for us to walk on. I felt like he said this afternoon. He said, call them home. Call them home.
And remove the obstacles for them to get home. And so I just, I feel like we have good news tonight for you. If you're like heavy laden and you've got the weights on your shoulders, whatever that looks like, I just see the Lord coming in close. And his kindness, his gentleness, and his compassion, coming in close and removing the burdens off of your shoulders and inviting you into true rest.
And that rest only comes through his finished work, what we just meditated on. So I just feel like we got teed up so well and worship unplanned. But I just feel like he set us up to build off of what he's already accomplished. How do I now enter into that rest?
How do I continue and what he's already started in me? And so we're going to, why don't you turn to John 15? We're going to start there since we're talking about abiding. This is really the guts, this passages for abiding.
John 15, we're going to be in the word a bunch. And my hope is that the word will just speak for itself. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Every time we approach the word, we thank him for the word.
And we invite him to reveal himself to us through its pages. We thank you, Father. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Living and active, we invite it to penetrate our hearts.
Would you search us in Noah's? Nothing's off limits to you, God. John 15, one, I am the true vine. And my Father is the vine dresser.
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you, let me pause.
That first chunk, that brings up some questions. We're going to talk about it in the next two weeks. What does it mean that if it doesn't bear fruit, he takes it away? And I'll give you a spoiler that that's a bad translation.
So we'll come back to it. Verse four, abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. 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. If anyone does not abide in me, he's thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, then ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this, my father is glorified, that you would bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. The proof is in the fruit. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you.
As the father has loved the son, so has he loved you. So abide in my love. If you keep my commands, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commands and abide in his love. These things I've spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.
This is my commandment, that you would love one another as I have loved you. So remember above, verse 10, he just said, if you keep my commandments, he'll abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Now we're in verse 12, this is the commandment he's talking about. So we know that under the new covenant, his commandment, the commands can be summed up in love God and love one another for a second commandment, right?
This is my commandment that you would love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends. He's foreshadowing what he's about to do. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
Okay, I'm gonna stop there. If you abide in me, so first of all, Jesus is walking along the road with his disciples and the way that he would teach them is based on things they would see. So it's very likely that he's walking past a vineyard where he can see vines and branches, right? Because Jesus is trying to figure out different ways to communicate who he is because we have a hard time understanding the Godhead.
So he's going, let me point out to something you do comprehend to help paint a picture of what I'm like. So it'd be like me going, do you see this power outlet over here in the wall? That is God and we are like the plug that plugs into it. And if you want power to flow through you, good luck, having power flow through you if you're not plugged into him.
Okay, so that's how Jesus teaches so that we can understand and comprehend. So he's going, if you abide in me, you will bear fruit. So you see it in this whole passage. I mean, this passage is thick.
The amount of cross-references in here and what he's pointing to and what John is alluding to. And then later Paul talks about these things like getting rooted and grounded and love. It all connects, but I wanna try to simplify for you. Maybe over simplify, but I'm gonna try to simplify for you that what you see here is that it's a cycle of if we abide in him, we will bear much fruit and we will be empowered to love people well.
Which will cause us to abide in him, which will cause us to bear much fruit, which will empower us to love people well. And as we love people well, we will be caused, or inspired or see the need, to abide in him. And when we abide, we will be empowered to actually bear fruit which will empower us to love people. So abiding is not just about your intimacy with God.
That's where it starts. But our intimacy with God does not stay just about me and God, but it goes from that first commandment, love the Lord with everything, into the second commandment flows naturally out of it, that you would love your neighbor, and that you would love each other well. So we don't just stay in intimacy, and I love God and God loves me, we don't just stay there, but we start there. That's the birthing place for all of life, that we would receive the love of God and give it back to him.
So we start with abiding in his love, and from that place because we're plugged in to the outlet, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear much fruit. What is fruit? Is it the fruit of Katie? Is it your fruit?
It's the fruit of the spirit, you did better than the three p.m. The fruit of the spirit, and who knows the fruit of the spirit? Let's stay together. If you know it, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Raise your hand if you learned that when you were a child. Thank you. Bring your children to church, teach them the word that the word would be in their heart, that they might not stand against God. I'm telling you, know the word.
It's so much harder to learn it when you're an adult. Oh my goodness, a family service, we're learning these scriptures that I didn't learn. The younger, and I'm like, Harvey's running circles around me. He just knows them so quick, and I'm like, man, I am trying so hard to memorize this.
I just, it's so much easier when you're a child. So if you have kids, get them in the word. Okay, where are we talking about? I'm fine.
Bear the fruit of the spirit. Now fruit is not just, I'm successful. I am doing really great in my classes, where I'm really rising to the top of my company. Fruit is not how good your performance is.
The fruit that he's talking about, the fruit that proves that you're a disciple, what did that say? Where is it? What verse? Eight.
By this, my father is glorified that you would bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. That's all I got for that. It's just like, Lord, that's so brain. That's the fruit that he's looking for, only by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I think so many of us look at a list, like the fruit of the spirit, and you go, okay, which one do I need to work on? And then we start to strive after. I need to be more patient, so I'm gonna be patient. But Tuesday, then, so I love that.
It's like, I will grow in patience, and we start white-knuckling that thing, and you better believe, well, I don't know, let me know if that's working for you. It's not my fruit. It's not something that I can produce. It has to be something that comes from him and flows through me.
And so we get really uncomfortable with that, because you're like, well, then what am I supposed to do? Because it's like, how do I just let it flow through? Like, what do we even mean? Because it's like that branch, right?
That's connected into the vine. It's not the nutrients of the branch that flow through it, to have the branch bear fruit. It's the nutrients from the vine that actually nourish the branches, so the branch can't go. I'm going to create nutrients so that I bear fruit.
The branch isn't gonna say, I'm gonna bear fruit now. It just happens through being connected to the vine. Oh, it's so uncomfortable for us, because what he seems to be alluding to is that he really is our source and that there's nothing we can do apart from him. Oh, no.
Okay, let's go to Galatians 5. Galatians 5, 16. Galatians 5, 16, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It does not say, don't gratify the desires of the flesh and then you'll be walking in the spirit, which is how a lot of us live.
We start with behavior modification. If I stop, if I could just stop doing this, if I could just start doing that, then I'd be walking according to the spirit. So I have to start in my own strength in order to get into walking according to the spirit and it's the exact opposite. Start in the spirit and you just won't.
Okay? It's a lot more about what you feast on than what you starve yourself of. Okay, start with feasting so that you are just a little too full to indulge on the lesser loves. Okay.
Oh my gosh, you're laughing at me. Okay, 17. For the desires of the flesh, getting distracted by my colleagues up here. Okay, all right.
Isn't the word so life-giving though? When the truth hits your heart, this is good news. These are not heavy burdens. When he says, take my yoke upon you, because my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
What his yoke is is his gospel, his teaching, the good news of the finished work of the cross. He's saying, take it upon you, you're gonna love it. It's easy and it's light. It's gonna give you wings instead of footweights on you.
Verse 17, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. You want him, you desire God. That is what I'm appealing to as I'm speaking to you today.
That eternity was written on your heart, a longing for him as your only source and satisfaction. The fulfillment of all of life is found in him and he's the one that you desire. Whether you're able to name it or not, it's him. And it can only be found in him.
And so in this, what verses that, 17, end of 17, oh, start the beginning. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. These desires that are according to the flesh keep you from doing the things you want to do. You want to honor God.
Now that you are a new creation, you desire him. But the flesh keeps you from what you desire. And some of you think that the desires of the flesh are what you want to do. They're not what you want to do anymore.
Once you're a new creation, it's not what you want to do. And he is appealing to your spirit, saying, that's not even what you want. But the enemy is crouching at the door and that he wants to devour you. It's aggressive.
He wants to steal, kill, destroy, and take everything that he can from you. Everything that you'll offer up, he will gladly take. But what you really desire is to walk according to the spirit. 18.
But if you are led by the spirit, you're no longer under the law. It goes into the works of the flesh are evident. We know what all of those are. We've read those lists.
22, the fruit of the spirit that we just talked about. Verse 25. So if we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Abiding is the outworking of our salvation.
Let me try to connect this for you. Because abiding is such an all encompassing topic of the Christian life of following Jesus. So we know that at the point of salvation, our spirit, we became a new creation at the spirit level. We were adopted.
We were no longer orphans. We're co-heirs. We're the righteousness of God. Our position before God does not change at the spirit level.
So we've been justified just as if we haven't sinned. But then this soul, mind, will, emotions, this is review. But I just want to keep it in front of us and connect it in. Our soul, our mind, will, emotions is being sanctified.
It's in the process of submitting to what happened at the spirit level. So our soul is in process. Abiding is the process through which sanctification happens. This is the outworking of our salvation.
So he's saying, live according to the spirit. Spirit. Now walk according to the spirit. So there's a walking out of the salvation that we experienced.
Are you tracking with that? Do you understand? So I want to look at abiding and what does that actually mean? What are we actually talking about?
According to the Greek in this passage in John 15, these are the synonyms for what we mean by abiding. To remain and dwell. To continue to be. To last, teary, endure, and stay.
So you think of like a branch weathering through a storm and taking the rain and the wind, but still staying connected, continuing to abide, to endure, to not depart, to continue to be present to, to be held and kept continually. So abiding begins at salvation. If you're following my visual here of the spirits over here. Abiding begins at salvation, but is worked out throughout our life that we would continually abide, continually be plugged in, continually making that choice over and over and over again.
In some ways it's like agreeing with what already happened. Abiding according to the saints throughout history. People have tried to figure out how can we articulate what abiding is in this lofty concept that we're attempting to abide throughout all of life. What does that even mean?
And so I want to read a couple of quotes from different saints throughout history of how they would describe it. One was, and this may sound familiar too, the practice of the presence of God. The sacrament of the present moment. So it's kind of that every moment holy opportunity.
Habitual conscious communion. Habitual conscious communion with God. The with God life. Silent love.
Loving attention on God. Abiding is a revelation of Emmanuel. Abiding is a revelation of Emmanuel. What does Emmanuel mean?
In John 14 leading up to John 15 when he's talking about abiding, he's talking all about how the Holy Spirit, the helper is coming. In the only way for you to abide, it's gonna be possible for the first time to abide because of the involving Holy Spirit. You couldn't abide in Jesus as a man at all times, but you can abide by the Spirit. So abiding is a constant revelation of Emmanuel.
God with us, God in us, God in front of, before us, behind us, around us, empowering us to bear fruit. We want to abide because we want to bear fruit, because we want to know that we are His disciples. It's important for us to have confidence of, am I following Him and being able to look at Him? I'm bearing fruit.
That's how I know. Am I following Jesus? And the only way to get there is to abide. This is how we pray without ceasing.
That's the key. How on earth would I pray and never stop? It's a conversation of abiding. That's what we're talking about.
You see it when you start to think about what abiding is. You see it all throughout the New Testament and all of the epistles. Abiding is how we will bear fruit. Abiding is how we will walk in love.
Abiding is how we will continue in Him. Abiding is how we will walk with Him. Abiding is how we will keep in step with the Spirit. Abiding is how we will bear the fruit, how we will love well, how we will live on mission.
Abiding is how we will renew our mind. Think about how you renew your mind. Continually, it's the meditation. It's setting your mind on things above.
That's abiding. He's talking about abiding. This is how you'll have the mind of Christ. This is how you will actually live holy as He is holy.
This is how you will run a good race, stay alert, make the best use of time, all quoted throughout scripture. How do I do that? Sometimes it feels like this laundry list of things that I'm supposed to do. How will I do it?
By abiding, not by trying to do it. Remember? So we start by walking according to the Spirit. We don't start by trying to stop the desires of the flesh.
It's turned to Romans 12. We know Romans 12. We should have memorized it. So we saw that in that Galatians 5 passage, that same theme of abiding being a continual choice when he said, we live by the Spirit, but keep in step with the Spirit.
That's ongoing. Just wanting to make sure we're really connecting these thoughts. Okay. Let's look at Romans 12 verse nine.
I think sometimes this is how these things read to us. Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. I'll do one another and show an honor.
Don't be soft, I'll be forgiven in spirit. Serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient, tribulation. Don't forget to be constant and prayer. Always contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
But make sure you don't forget to bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, don't be haughty, associate with the lowly, never be wise on your own side. Repain no one evil for evil, but give me, that's what I will be honorable in the sight of everyone. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Don't offend yourself, leave it up to the wrath of God. Venge it's his, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he's thirsty, give him something to drink, for by doing something, it's like, becomes like a new law. Where we start to read it and you can see it throughout the epistles, it's like, and here's the list of all the things that if you do these, you won't inherit the kingdom of heaven and make sure you always do these things. And you're just like, you can get crushed under the weight of what you should and shouldn't do, even under the new covenant.
But it's like, wait, we've been freed from the law. So how does this exactly work when we're under a covenant of grace? Go to the beginning of 12, 12-1, listen through the lens of abiding, okay? Continual consciousness of Jesus, continual connection with him.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you a discern the will of God. Okay, so we see a couple connections here. Our bodies, all of life, we are living sacrifices.
We are not, it's not like there's a one-time sacrifice at salvation where I die now I'm in a creation, but there seems to be an ongoing perpetual sacrifice that I'm offering to the Lord with my very life. It's a living sacrifice, an ongoing sacrifice, a perpetual sacrifice unto God that I understand that all of my life continually is unto him, all of it. And it's what does it say that this is, our spiritual worship, another way to say that, is the only rational response to God, that saying, I want to put me on the altar, my life, a continual sacrifice before you. It's the only rational response to what you've offered for me.
It demands everything. It costs everything. So you see that same theme of a continual, this is abiding, a continual sacrifice. And don't be conformed by the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
How do we renew our mind? By abiding, my girl. By abiding, okay, let's look at Psalm 73. Psalm 73, we're gonna go to verse 21.
When we have difficult circumstances happen in life, whether it's you get bad news, you hear of a diagnosis, or you lose your job, it's like any type of crisis, in that moment you find out if you have been abiding. It's hard to see the fruit of abiding before moments like that when you realize if I've been abiding, what is going to come out of me in this moment of experiencing difficulty or loss? My first thought will be him because I have been training my mind and my heart to go back to him constantly. So then when the bad news comes, with a difficult situation happens, your heart goes straight to him.
It doesn't fix the problem, it doesn't solve it, but you see in that moment, if you've known him, if you've been connected to him, if you've been with him, right? It's kind of like if you get squeezed, does the fruit of the spirit come out of you? In the same way, if you get squeezed, is he the first on your mind? Psalm 73, 21, this is someone, this is like a dark night of the soul moment.
When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant, I was like a beast toward God. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I and heaven but you?
There's nothing on earth that I desire besides you. In the midst of the most painful circumstances, to go, I know that this hurts, but even still, but no matter what, I am continually with you, and you hold my hand. Where else would I go? It's that history of knowing him.
Whom have I and heaven but you? Where else could I go when you hold the words of life? I've already experienced you and built history with you that you are not just the source of life, you are life itself to me. That only comes through the history that we build in the place of abiding.
When things hit the fan, you can't all of a sudden try to plug yourself into the vine. And that's what we try to do. It's like we try to microwave this thing and go, oh, now I need them, plug it in. And it's like, oh, when it's dark, it's pretty hard to find the plug.
It's hard to begin to abide when you can't see anything, and you're already disoriented because life just slapped you in the face. We have to choose now before the fire is turned out, before it gets darker and you can't see and you don't have your bearings, choose now a lifestyle of abiding in him. Psalm 16, Psalm 16, we'll start with verse five. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.
The Lord is the portion that I choose. It's personal to me and he's my cup. It doesn't impact your life that he's the cup that doesn't run dry unless he is your cup. It has to be personal for you.
All of these things can be true about God, but if we don't plug into him as the source, you don't experience or reap the benefit or the joys and the pleasures of knowing him. It won't happen. He has to be your cup. He has to be the portion that you choose.
He has to be your home. Instead of these other things that we go to, the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot in life. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. Some of us need to bless our circumstances that feel like they're hedging us in. Maybe you're in a situation that you can't get out of and you feel like you've been hedged in with thorns. And everywhere you look, there's no way out.
Josh talked about this last week and some of us need to surrender. What if things never change? Am I okay? If I never see the miracle, if I never saw the breakthrough, and I get God at the end, some of us need to look at our circumstances and go those boundary lines that have fallen for me, I say it's a pleasant place.
Because in the midst, I have an inheritance and it's him. And my circumstances aren't what I want, but I get God. My inheritance is beautiful in Jesus. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.
Even in the night, he instructs me through my heart. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad.
And my whole being rejoices in my flesh dwells secure. Verse 11, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
I think some of us are looking for those pleasures, yes, in all the wrong places. That goes without saying. But I also think that something we can get tripped up on is that if we, as we connect with the Lord, and we're talking like intimacy with the Lord, we think that it has to just be, I have to be able to sit down with my Bible and spend extended time with him. And I wanna say this with enough nuance.
I, we care so much and can trumpet the message of long hours before God. I would say if we could point to anything, long hours alone with God in the word is what set a trajectory for our life. So I will preach that message until the day that I die. Get away with him, long hours in the word, cultivate relationship and intimacy with him.
No one can take it from you. But right now, I wanna talk about the practice of abiding, which is all of life. It is a continual thing. I can't sit, I'm not gonna hermit away in a room with my Bible in Jesus and spend the rest of my life alone just with him.
I'm going to live among people and figure out how to be fruitful in my life as I walk with him. And so this practice of abiding is us continually walking with him and bearing fruit from that place. The process of abiding is our entire life orbiting around him, that he is not this thing that I save for Sundays or even this moment that I save for in the mornings when I sit down and read my Bible or in the afternoon when I do, whenever you do that. No, he is all of life for me.
He's in my waking, he's in my sleeping, he's in my transitions, he's when I'm driving, he's in the meeting, he's as I'm changing diapers and doing dishes, he's everything, he's part of all of it. And I've access to connection through abiding at all times. Okay, so we've set the Lord always before us. What verse is that?
Eight, I've set the Lord always before me. The Lord is always there, he's a manual, he doesn't leave us or forsake us, that's a promise. So he's always there. But abiding is me setting him before me, being conscious of his presence.
Does that make sense? And in this place is the joy that Jesus talks about at the end of that John 15 passage and he said, I want you to have the same joy I've had of being connected to the Father continually and then expressing his love to other people. This is the pleasures forevermore at his right hand. This is what we're searching for and it's found in him through abiding, okay?
I wanna get practical, time is it? Okay, I want you to think, I'd love for you to take notes on this part because it's gonna help you. So if you wanna write or if you wanna get your phone, open your notes up, I'm gonna have you do a couple of practices so you will want to write during this. Okay, I want you to look at your everyday life and I want you to make a list of the things that hinder you from abiding.
This could be anything from work is really full right now. It could be relational tensions, it could be health, it could be habits, it could be a cluttered house, it could be anything, anything. It could be too much media intake, anything. For you personally, I want you to name what the hindrinsons are for you to abide.
We're just gonna take a minute, you're gonna play a little music for them. Take a minute and make a list. If you don't feel inspired now you will. Should've had you played this under my whole message, this is great.
Okay, now I want you to do, are you good? Don't have time? Okay, now I want you to take the things that you just listed out and I want you to make a note somehow in there. One of those things, can you change?
Are there any things on that list that you're like, I have control over that, I can adjust that, I can change that. And then I want you to mark the things that you cannot change, they're outside of your control. You can't adjust them or fix them, something like that. Go ahead and mark those.
Okay, was that enough time for that? Okay, now I wanna, that music was better, that's great. I want you to take a couple of minutes and I wanna give you time to do this here because I know that when we leave it's so easy for it to just get snatched up and it's like, man, I was gonna take time to do that this week and it just didn't happen. I wanna give you a little bit of time to look at those and make some game plans with the Lord.
And so first it will be looking at the ones that you're like, I can change this, this can be adjusted. And I want you to make choices on what you're gonna do to make those adjustments and actually just like writing in the note, here's what I'm gonna do, here's what I'm gonna do. I give the example of the last service. If you're going, man, it's media for me, it's such a distraction, I keep going home to my phone.
I'm a big fan of just deleting apps before I think too much more about it and just deleting the thing that's calling you to it instead of him, if that's the thing. So example like that of any areas you're like, I can bring adjustment to this. I wanna encourage you to write down or begin activating if that applies on those things that you can make adjustments. What do you need to unplug from?
But then I want you to look at the ones where you're going, I can't adjust this one. And we kinda talked about this with the Psalm 16 passage of the lines falling for me in pleasant places. I wanna encourage you to begin the process of the Lord of renewing the way that you think about that circumstance that you're like, I can't change it. So going, man, right now, work is requiring so much from me and I can't do anything about that.
That's just the pace that it is right now. And you go, okay, instead of seeing that as a hindrance to connection, what does it look like to shift that and change the way you're thinking about it? And go, that's an on-ramp to connection. That is a gateway right into connection with him.
How can I shift the way that I'm looking at this and go, oh, I felt so overwhelmed by how full my work schedule is. But oh, and you start to shift and sometimes I'll make myself smile just so that my body, even at my soul, can catch up with what's true. Oh, I see Lord that in my weakness, you're strong and that there's opportunity for me, even in the smallest moments, I might not have five minutes but I have five seconds to give you a glance. Thank you for reminding me in the little moments that I can connect with you.
And there you are at the board table where when you're walking from one meeting to the next meeting or whatever it is and you're going, I can connect with him, can abide right here in the midst of this thing that I thought was a hindrance. I thought this was an obstacle but actually it's an invitation to connection with him, to abide. So why don't you just take a couple minutes any game plan for things you're unplugging from or changing and then beginning to write the truth about those areas that you can't change. So that tomorrow when you wake up and you've forgotten everything about tonight, it's written down.
You're thinking about ways to give them a glance throughout your day. This is your act of abiding where you're going, what are the moments throughout the day where I can just put my mind on him, fix my eyes on him even for a second, to tell him you're my home, to say you're the one I really desire. I love you Lord, thank you that you're with me. Even when I'm not thinking about you, thank you that you're with me.
These are the opportunities you're looking for. You're thinking about the morning and him being the first one on your mind, before you've even opened your eyes. There he is, you're thinking about him being the last thing on your mind when you go to sleep at night. Maybe you were even just scrolling, you finally set your phone down to go to sleep and keep for today.
All of the mundane moments of life took a connection with him, abiding, and out of season, you and him. For some of us, there's a turning, away from doing things in our own strength. And it's like a process of lying down. God, I've been working really hard.
I've been trying to stay free. I've been trying to bear these fruits of the spirit. I've really been trying to grow in loving you. And there's a process of lying down.
And it's not giving up, but it's changing your approach. And it looks like abiding. And abiding is not a quick fix. Don't come to me next Sunday and go, I tried to abide this week.
Work for me. Talk to me in a year. Talk to me in five, in 50. The journey of abiding, being locked into him as the source.
Letting at bear fruit. Letting him bear fruit through you. Over seasons and years and decades. He's not, some of you just need to hear this.
He's not trying to fix you. He's not looking at you and thinking about all the things that need to be better and get figured out. He's, he just delights on you. And when he looks at you, he sees his son.
You're covered. He loves you the same right now that he will love you with if you overcame that addiction in a couple years. His love is the exact same. The pressure is off for you to fix yourself.
Yet the commitment and the cost is high. I can't tell you that all it is is to abide. You know, on one side, all it is is just abide. Stay connected to him continually throughout your day.
But that costs you everything. As you reorient your life or constantly. Why don't you stand up? I wanna sing a little.
I'm not gonna sing. We're all gonna sing. Stand for me. I have a song.
Kidding. Okay? Get some space. Space where you can actually connect to him.
You're not distracted because you're too close to someone. You can't even come down wherever you want. Just get some space. We're gonna give a little bit of time.
Lord, I thank you that you have given us the grace, that you have empowered us through your grace to change our appetite. What our appetite needs to be changed. Thank you that you've given us the ability to position ourselves, to set you always before us. God, I asked it, buy your spirit.
You would help us before us continually, to connect with you without ceasing. Thank you, Lord. We're gonna be intentional, give abiding. So I wanna call us to not just have this be like, oh, that was a week where I did that, but like we are going to work this out together.
And I wanna give ourselves as a whole community. So you're not alone in doing this. I want us to give ourselves to intentionally be abiding. We're gonna continue to talk about that.
And so I'm gonna commission us out and just pray you out of here as sons and daughters that are abiding and not trying to fix your behavior, but just abiding in him, plugging into him. And then it just kind of is the overflow that happens. So Lord, I thank you that we don't have to try to change ourselves. We don't have to figure it out ourselves, but that you are with us.
You are a man, you are God with us. And so Lord, I send out these little Christ followers that get to have you ever before them and with them. In Jesus name and everybody send him in.