DAY SIXTEEN
Anytime Jesus spoke about why He came to earth, His disciples listened carefully. From Isaiah 61, we know that Jesus came to preach the good news and to set the captives free. We know He came to heal the brokenhearted and to comfort those He mourn. He came to restore the devastations of many generations and plant His followers as oaks of righteousness, never to be uprooted.
Jesus also says, in John 10:10…
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Jesus was speaking of sheep, metaphorically speaking about His followers. Specifically, He was speaking of His sheep who know His voice, hear His voice, and follow Him. His mission was to bring life to His people in way that no one had experienced since the garden of Eden.
In John 10:3, Jesus describes His followers in this way…
“…the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”
Then in John 10:4, He adds…
“…he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
Jesus, the Great Shepherd, knows His sheep, He calls them by name, and He leads them out to pastures where they can feed. They follow Jesus because they know His voice intimately.
Doesn’t this sound a lot like abiding? The Father also knows His followers better than they know themselves. He calls them by name because He formed them in the womb. He has followed them all the days of their lives. So, as the spiritual director, He guides them to exactly what they need through His rhema.
God knows His sheep and His sheep know Him. They recognize His voice. God has spoken every single day of His existence, and He continues to speak today. Everyone who believes in Jesus and follows Him, is able to hear His voice. It does not matter how much you know about the Bible, or how long you have been following Jesus. God speaks and you are able to hear Him.
It is His voice that guides us out into green pastures, out into the experience of the fullness of the kingdom of God. It is His voice that guides us to what Jesus calls abundant life. The idea of “abundance” is “overflowing.” It is extraordinary life, exceeding all our expectations, surpassing everything that we have experienced in the past and getting better all the time. Shake up a bottle of champagne, uncork it, and spray it like you just won a Formula 1 race. That is the kind of life that is ours as a result of abiding.
The abundant, overflowing, ever flowing life with Jesus is a contrast to the life offered by the thief, the enemy. He peddles his lies, making them sound like the kingdom of God, suggesting that His way is a better way. He disguises himself as an angel of light, doing everything he can to deceive us, for one purpose. Or, perhaps it is for three...
The first part of John 10:10 says…
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
The enemy has constructed an entire world system all around us to steal everything that is ours as children of the king. God wants us to have righteousness, everything as it should be in the kingdom of God. The enemy wants to convince us that His world system has far greater riches and pleasure. God wants to give us peace inside and all around. The enemy does everything in his power to pull us out of the kingdom so he can steal our peace. God wants us to fully enjoy the many blessings He provides for us.
The enemy tempts us with momentary pleasure to keep us from enjoying life as God intended. Satan, the theif, is the personification of evil. The enemy does not stop at stealing. He goes on to kill and destroy. If it smells of death in any way, it comes from the pit of hell. If it drains us of life and leaves us in despair, it stems from the lies of the enemy. It comes from the father of lies. His goal is to destroy lives, take away freedom, and prevent us from experiencing the fullness of the kingdom of God. And he will use any means to rip abundant life from our grasp.
But Jesus came that we might have life and that we might live life to the fullest. Jesus died on the cross to defeat the enemy and to expose his schemes. He rose from the dead so that we might live life with Him. Life to the fullest was not enough for Jesus. He knew what was designed for mankind from the beginning. So, He brought us resurrection life. He brought us life that overflows with more than we could possibly imagine, more than we could ever ask, far greater than our wildest dreams. This is the kingdom of God and it is ours through abiding.
So, let’s dig in and see what Jesus says about the results of abiding.
In John 15:7-11, Jesus says…
7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. 9 "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 10 "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. 11 "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
When we abide, we experience the desires of our heart.
The first result of abiding in Christ and letting His rhema words abide in us is the fulfillment of the desires of our hearts. As God’s word judges the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, He reveals the true desires of our hearts. This is a truth we can take for what it says. Do not try and explain it away as God changing our desires or put it in a little box that only includes the things you are comfortable with based on experience. Just receive it as it is.
The meaning of wish is broad. It means to desire, to purpose something. It refers to the things you take delight in doing, the things you love. I have already told the story of my wife, Michelle, and I, writing down the desires of our hearts. God has given us everything we desired for our marriage.
So, we also decided to make a list of the rest of the desires of our hearts. We held nothing back. And for the last ten years, God has been bringing us the things we put on our list. For example, I wrote down that I would love to live at the beach someday. As I write, I am writing from a house on the beach in Hawaii, where we have been living for the last month. This has been one of the desires of my heart for years. Every year God brings us more and more of the desires of our hearts.
John 15:7 means what it says…
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
When we abide, we bring glory to God.
My experience has been that once God speaks rhema and we process it through to the end, the fruit that God brings is both lasting and growing. His word does not come back void. It does the work it was supposed to do, and because of that, it lasts. It remains. We get to learn it once and we do not have to go back and learn it again. It is also growing. Once we have experienced rhema transformation, we want more. We pursue the next gift from God. We never stop going back for more.
The entire, repetitive, ongoing process of abiding has one purpose in mind. We abide and we bear much fruit in the process so that God gets the glory. He speaks the rhema words. He does the transformation. He does the healing. He gives the abundant life. And He gets all the glory. He will not share His glory with another. This is His kingdom. It is His power. And it is His glory.
In John 15:8, Jesus says…
“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
When we abide, we experience the perfect love of God.
Whatever God is doing through his rhema words, and whatever He is speaks to you, it always flows from the love in His heart. Even the things God reveals in your heart through this process are meant to free you to experience more of His love. And we know there is no end to this love because it is the same love that the Father demonstrated toward His own Son, Jesus. That is the love we get to experience.
John 15:9 says…
“…Just as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you: abide in my love.”
Remember, it is in the overall context of abiding that Jesus commands us to remain in His love. It is connected to our abiding. When we stay in relationship with Jesus and let His rhema words remain in us, we will continually be in a place where we experience the love of God. We will experience love as His word does its work in us and transforms us; and we will experience even more love out of our pure relationship with Him.
Jesus goes on to say, in John 15:10…
"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love."
Doesn’t this sound familiar? Keeping the commandments of Jesus is the equivalent of processing rhema through to the end. As you hold on to the things God is speaking to you, you experience more of the Father’s love. As you stick with God’s rhema and come to believe it, receive it, and walk in it, you keep His commandments, or literally, His commands. When He speaks it to us, He commands it, and it is so! It is done. We just follow it through to the end. It is at the end, when we are healed and transformed that we will fully understand the extent of His love for us. And we get to experience that over and over again in our abiding.
When we abide, we experience deep-seated, abundant joy.
One of the ways you will know if you are abiding is through your experience of joy, your ability to enjoy the blessings that God gives you. When we hit our stride in abiding, the joy is fantastic. It is no longer a task to be completed or a box to check. Abiding is life. It is enjoyable. When we experience God speaking to us and breathing life into His word every morning, we cannot wait for the next morning to come. We long for more of God, more of His word, more of His Spirit, more of His rhema.
Jesus explained this in John 15:11…
"These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full."
What makes our joy full? It is the fact that it is the same joy that Jesus experienced throughout His life. Can you imagine the joy He must have felt when even one of His followers understood the kingdom of God? He would have been so excited to see them building the kingdom of God alongside of Him. How thrilled was Jesus to see the faithfulness of His followers after the coming of the Holy Spirit? Every person who repented brought deep joy to His heart. And this is exactly what you and we get to experience, the same exact joy.
In fact, our joy gets filled up, because we get to live, love, and lead in exactly the same way Jesus did. We abide and learn to hear the voice of God. We get our assignments from the Father and carry them out with His authority. We see the kingdom of heaven come to earth right before our very eyes. This is full joy, joy overflosing. This is the kingdom of God.
When we abide, we experience amazing freedom.
Finally, when we abide, we get to experience amazing freedom.
Jesus proclaims this in John 8:31-32 and 8:36…
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
Go back and read the verses one more time, but this time realize that the word “continue” is the same word that is translated as “abide” in John 15. Jesus was teaching about abiding before He taught about the secret of the vine.
He begins with a condition, “If you abide in my word,…” then He describes the results. First, when we stick with God’s word, it proves that we are truly disciples of Jesus. The true test of discipleship is not how much we know or how much time we spend reading the Bible. The true test of a disciple is the fact that they receive rhema, process it, and remain with it until it does its work. It always results in supernatural transformation and a changed lives as proof of discipleship.
Second, as we process rhema, we will come to know truth. We will see the truth about God, the truth about God’s word, and the truth about ourselves. Experiencing truth, or being on the receiving end of truth telling, can be very difficult. In fact, it can be downright scary. But what makes it worthwhile is the final outcome. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Rhema always leads to freedom, freedom from something and freedom to something.
The freedom we experience in rhema is remarkable, it is amazing. If the Son sets you free, what do we know to be true? You will be free indeed. There is no question. There is no doubt. The freedom that comes from abiding is real. It is lasting. It is powerful. And it is ours, today. When you understand the abundance that is ours from abiding, how could you not want to enter in?
WORSHIP: Take some time to worship Jesus today. Think about the path He has set before you: a path of life, a path of love, a path of joy, a path of freedom. Worship Him as the Almighty God who saved you so He could bring heaven to your life today.
PRACTICE: Pick one of the results of abiding and write out your thoughts on that one topic. Tuck this one away to motivate you to stay committed to a life of abiding in Christ. Pull out your thoughts each morning.
MEDITATION: Meditate on the results of abiding. What are the desires of your heart? What would it feel like to know that you were pleasing God and bringing Him glory? Where in your life do you want to experience freedom? What would it feel like to always be experiencing more of God’s love and joy?
ABIDING: Go back and read through this teaching one more time. Ask the Father if there is anything in these passages specifically for you. Write down anything you hear from Him. Spend some extra time listening to see if He has anything more to say to you or if there is a deeper teaching for you today. Write down whatever you hear. Ask the Father if there is someone, He wants you to share this with and follow through with His assignment.