GOD’S WORD FOR APRIL 13 ~ ~ John 15:4 ~ ~ “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
We are reading from Andrew Murray’s famous and beloved classic book from the late 1800’s ~ ~ “Abide in Christ.”
With such misunderstanding at the outset, (the misunderstanding of not knowing that full trust and submission are necessary) it is no wonder that the disciple life was not one of joy or strength that had been hoped. In some things, you were led into sin without knowing it because you had not learned how wholly Jesus wanted to rule you and how you could not keep right for a moment unless you had Him very near you. In other things, you knew what sin was but did not have the power to conquer because you did not know or believe how entirely Jesus would take charge of you to keep and to help you. Either way, it was not long before the bright joy of your first love was lost, and your path, instead of being like the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day, became like Israel’s wandering in the desert – ever on the way, never very far, yet always coming short of the promised rest. Weary soul, like the panting deer, driven back and forth, for so many years, come and learn this day the lesson that there is a spot where safety and victory, where peace and rest, are always sure, and that spot is always open to you: It is:
THE HEART OF JESUS!
But, I hear someone say, it is this abiding in Jesus, always bearing His yoke, learning of Him, that is so difficult, and the very effort to attain to this often disturbs the rest even more than sin or the world. What a mistake to speak like this! Yet, how often the words are heard! Does it weary the traveler to rest in the house or on the bed where he seeks repose from his fatigue? Or is it a labor to a little child to rest in his mother’s arms? Is it not the house that keeps the traveler within its shelter? Do not the arms of the mother sustain and keep the little one? So it is with Jesus. The soul has but to yield itself to Him – to be still and rest in the confidence that His love has undertaken – that His faithfulness will perform – the work of keeping it safe in the shelter of His arms.
OH, it is because the blessing is so great that our little hearts cannot rise to comprehend it. It is as if we cannot believe that Christ, the Almighty One, will indeed teach and keep us all the day. Yet, this is just what He has promised, for without this He cannot really give us rest. It is as our hearts take in this truth that, when He said, “Abide in Me,” “Learn of Me,” He really meant it, and that it is His own work to keep us abiding when we yield ourselves to Him, that we will venture to cast ourselves into the arms of His love and abandon ourselves to His blessed keeping.
It is not the yoke, but resistance to the yoke, that causes the difficulty; the wholehearted surrender to Jesus, as both our Master and our Keeper, finds and secures the rest.