Abide

a·bide

[uh-bahyd] verb, a·bode or a·bid·ed, a·bid·ing.

To remain; continue; stay.

To have one’s abode; dwell; reside.

To continue in a particular condition, attitude, relationship, etc.; last.

To endure, sustain, or withstand without yielding or submitting

To remain steadfast or faithful to; keep

If there is one thing that is common for all people—regardless of race, sex, religion, class, etc.—is that we have all experienced a time when life just sucks.  We have all experienced some sort of situation in our lives that tears us down physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.  Some of us maybe went through bad break ups with significant others.  Some maybe have seen a loved one wither toward death.  Some of us have been betrayed by the people closest to us.  Some have witnessed parents go through a nasty divorce.  And still, others have seen the consequences of their actions hurt themselves or the people they love.  As you read this there is probably a past or current situation in your life that is conjuring up feelings of weakness, helplessness, anger, bitterness, or maybe even worse.  Sometimes we are lucky and only have to experience these things for a few days, and other times the events are so powerful that they haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Contrary to what some may believe Christians are not immune to the kind of life where things go completely and utterly wrong.  I feel like the stereotype is that Christians walk around with an invincible smile etched on their face, impermeable to anything that could put a hitch in our step, a tear in our eye, or hide our glaring smile behind our lips, while we worship a Savior in a pearly white robe, perfectly groomed beard, with everyone adoring Him as He grants them health, wealth, and prosperity.  Well, I have come to find out that Christians (including myself) all have sin in our lives that cause us misery and consistently feel the sinful nature of this world bearing down on them.  The Bible is full of stories just like the ones that my friends and I are currently living.  Take David, who impregnated another man’s wife, had him killed before the adultery could be exposed, and wailed and wallowed while his new born son died a week later because of the sin. 

When Jesus was walking the earth, He had twelve best friends with whom He shared life for His three year journey to the cross.  They ate together, traveled together, and talked together during the time after Jesus called them from their ordinary lives to become His disciples and later His apostles.  Jesus warned them that their journey would not be easy and knew beforehand how calling them would affect their lives, which would eventually lead to their martyrdom.  But, knowing this, Jesus gave them one very clear commandment on how to live their lives:

“As the Father has loved me, I have loved you.  Abide in my love.”  (John 15:9)

Abiding, though it means to remain, does not have a passive connotation to it.  It describes an active state of holding fast and weathering a storm that is trying to break one’s grasp.  Jesus’ calling of his disciples is not an invitation to stand apathetically by His side like a wallflower at prom.  It is a passionate—even violent—state of refusal to let go of the Lord through all circumstances.  It is through abiding that His disciples are refined to be more like Him, as well as bringing glory to God the Father.  And, through our abiding in Him, Jesus abides in us, dwelling in our hearts with the immovable force that is His Spirit, irrevocably promised to us by His Word, forever.   

I believed for a long time that Christians had problem-free lives.  I have even heard that some nonbelievers say “I don’t have my act together enough” to be a Christ-follower.  These are both lies.  I believe it to be a mark of a very mature Christian for them to say that their life is incredibly difficult and that their sin runs deeper than they can ever imagine.  But Jesus says that it is not a matter of how many problems you have or how you are struggling with sin or even how many times you fail in your struggles against sin, but it is to what orwhom you are holding.  If you are holding on to the idea of “I deserve a better life, and I am going to labor and toil until I have the pleasuring and fulfilled life I have always wanted,” then you are laboring in vain and will constantly fail yourself and fail to love your neighbor.  If you say, “Everything I do and want is causing pangs so deep in my chest that it feels like it will explode.  I’d rather kill my desire and live in cold nothingness than feel the pain of heartbreak again,” you will shrink back into that cold nothingness where you cannot feel or give love to anyone, not even God.  Or maybe you say “(Insert loved one’s name here) will hold onto me.  I am too dear to him/her to ever to be dropped or failed.”  While it is true that there are people who love us, the larger truth is that they are still weak and sinful people.  Their love never meets the standards of being completely flawless and unconditional; their love is not strong enough to purify us of our sins.

I’ve been in these places before.  There are days where I will return to these places, either wanting to create the idol of a perfect life or wanting to just quit and let this cold world consume me or wanting some tangible, visible person to come rescue me out of this hell I created.  But this is what the Lord demands of me: that I humble myself and know that I cannot make my life perfect, because He is the only perfection this world has seen, and I do not kill my spirit because that would force me to return to the death that He called me from.  Instead of trying to advance and conquer my own struggles or shrink back from them, He tells me to abide, remain, cling, and hold fast to Him as He—the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace, the Lion of Judah—abides, remains, clings, and holds fast to me.  Because in this, the Lord will be glorified, and I will be strengthened, refined, and pushed forward through the struggles of life to complete the deeds that He has set before me.