Irresistible Invitation by Maxie Dunham - Day 17

Irresistible Invitation:  Responding to the Extravagant Heart of God.             

Day 17: Constantly Abiding            

 

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love…I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  (John 15:9-11)

 

This day Maxie visits with us the theology in the claim that Jesus is mine, or the way her prefers to say it “I am his.”  Whichever way we choose to speak this belief the fact remains that it’s all about constantly abiding.

 

At the very core this is the message of the gospel; the life that comes to us as we allow the presence of Jesus to find expression through us.  Jesus came for but one purpose to bring himself and thereby God to us and in so doing to give us the power to do and be all those things that God calls us to be and created us to be.  By seeing Jesus as a model for our lives and seeking to follow him, putting our lives alongside his we are reminded of all that is possible for our lives.  On a very real and practical level constantly abiding in Christ means allowing both the guiding light of Christ and the creative energy of god to be active in our lives. 

 

So the Spirit of Life gives us constant guidance and it also allows us to be re-created in the image of God.  Paul reminds us in his Second letter to the Corinthians 5:17 “he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come!”  This offer of life is central to the New Testament.  John tells us in no uncertain terms that the entire purpose for which Jesus came to us was to abolish death and to bring the possibility of abundant life.  We have to remember that death does not mean non-existence and life existence.  Death is living without God and life is life with God.  The radical claim of the New Testament is that the presence of God with humanity is a reality in Jesus Christ and that reality can be experienced by each of us every day.

 

The New Testament teaches us that we begin our relationship with God by grace.  We are drawn through grace to Jesus Christ as our only and eternal hope.  It is by grace, which we are renewed, transformed, forgiven, and recreated.  In fact our entire lives are lived, according to Dunnam through grace.  We can, he states, “try struggling and straining at righteousness, mustering all our strength and putting forth all our efforts to be Christlike….but it never works.” (Irresistible Invitation pg 119) We, of course live in a do-it-yourself society and therefore one of our most difficult lessons as Christians is that we must live by the Spirit.  We are reminded by Paul that our competence in doing God’s work comes only from God.  This Dunnam refers to as “grace-full living.”  Grade full living is based on being in a personal relationship with God, not on rules and regulations we can never follow.  The more we are able to abide in Christ the more the Holy Spirit within us produces abundantly.

 

To truly abide in Christ we must enter into a healthy dependence on Christ.  It is not enough to recognize the indwelling Christ; I have to depend on Christ, and to allow Christ to work in and through me.  We must learn how to live in the now, listen to these words found in the gospel of Matthew; “therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? …See how the lilies of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin…Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry a bout itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  (Matt. 6:25-34)  Once we realize this truth, that there is nothing we can do without Christ then we also realize that there is nowhere else to go but to Christ.  And once we internalize this truth about the living God in our midst then we can rest and live in the moment, abiding in the now. 

 

And finally, once we master constantly abiding in Christ then we are freed to act boldly in the confidence of Christ’s strength.  We can faithfully pray for God’s will in our lives with the intention of following that will.  Continuing to abide then, gives us the ability to walk by faith, to rely on God and to live in the awareness of the constant presence of the Spirit in the way we live and move and have our being.  And the grace-full life begins!

 

The Heart of The Matter:

 

What does abiding in Christ mean to you?  In what ways do you practice abiding in him, and in what ways do you not?

 

Is worry a constant challenge for you?  If so, what are some steps you can take to overcome it?

 

In what ways can we tap into the recreating force of the Spirit in our lives?