“Teach me to abide!”
So much frustration was wrapped up in those words. I had been confessing that I had been doing a lot of running and numbing instead of connecting and really feeling the inner Romans 7 struggle.
“Teach me to abide!”
The Spirit responded gently. “Stop using me.”
He showed me how I have treated abiding like a filling station: I connect in, fill up my tank with His resources, then I disconnect and run off to do my own thing, use up the resources as if they were mine until I feel empty again and need to go top up the tank again. I was using Him.
This in contrast to the metaphor of the vine and the branches in John 15. The branch doesn’t receive resources to then run off and produce its own fruit. The branch is a conduit of the resources of the vine. The vine pours its resources through the branch and then produces its fruit.
We often talk about how Jesus regularly retreated to be with the Father and I think this has falsely fed my “fill’er up” mentality when the truth of the matter is that every word Jesus spoke came from the Father and every thing He did was directed by the Father. Jesus didn’t go and plug in, download and then disconnect to get about his business. He remained connected. Could it be that when He got away with the Father it more about intimacy than business?
When my time spent with the Father is utilitarian I’m missing out on intimacy. When it is about scrounging for wisdom or answers or inspiration or power it can’t be about feasting at the Father’s table. Abiding as a conduit in the vine means that I can trust for all of God’s resources to flow through me as He sees fit so that my times of quiet in His presence could actually just simply be about being in His presence.
So what does it look like to view abiding more as a state of being by which God may pour His resources through us to produce HIS fruit? And how does this practically play out in the chaos of life?
I’m not entirely sure just yet, but I think it has implications for other things that have been on my mind lately: how to let God order my days, how to be a wise steward of finances in the midst of so much need, how to pray, how to not lose my temper when my sons pants “feel funny” and I am powerless to fix his whiny dilemma. I think it is a key to not burning out. I think it has the power to free me from of some of those graveclothes of striving and fear of man because if I am simply a conduit everything that comes out of me is not of me at all and the fruit belongs to the Vine.
And I think…well I think it must start with confession and surrender. God, forgive me for using You and abiding only long enough to fill myself up and move on with my plans.