“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.” John 15:5
We are refreshed when we abide.
What does that even mean? Simply this: tenaciously clinging to Him. In the moments you feel like giving up, you want to crawl back under the covers and wish the day away, you want to “numb out” sitting in front of the computer, fill the pain with food, or watch TV, He calls, quietly, “Abide in Me.”
It is in our own strength we fall.
Our BEST as women is when we are holding fast, holding desperately, to Him.
When we realize how poor we are, we can come before Him and ask Him to fill us, refresh us, give us something to pour out onto the precious people we love.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3
When we mess up, we shouldn’t berate ourselves for the sin we committed, the angry word spoken, the rolling of the eyes, the exhausted sigh. That’s not the root problem. The root problem is: we departed from the Source of true life, presuming we could manage on our own.
Instead of feeling bad about failure, instead of voicing our grief in this way, “Sorry Lord I messed up, I’ll do better next time“, what we must say is, “Sorry Lord I left your side. Help ME!”
The most spiritual prayer for ourselves we can pray is two words, “help me.”
The problem isn’t failure, but instead, failure to rely on the Source of refreshment.
We should be compelled to come to the Lord desperate for His power and work in our lives, to refresh our souls, begging Him to give us what we lack. Choosing moment by moment to trust in His unfailing love and resting in His power for each decision, each word spoken, each task completed. We can do it on our own for a while, but in the end we feel exhausted, stressed, and depleted.
Andrew Murray speaks to this in his book, Abide with Christ, “…unspeakable danger of our giving ourselves to work for God, and to bear fruit, with but little of the true abiding, the wholehearted losing of ourselves in Christ and His life.”
He gives to the hungry, the poured out, the poor in spirit.
He gives.
Live in the truth of your “poorness”, don’t pretend it is anything else than what it is, give up the illusion of your own strength.
Begin today, this moment, to say this, “In this moment of exhaustion, of weariness, I cleave to You. Help Me!”
I am slowly learning to do this moment by moment in my day, and it, HE, is making all the difference.
Thoughts?
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