Abiding in Yeshua

What does it mean to abide in Yeshua?  "Abide", according to Merriam Webster online, means to wait for, to endure without yielding, to bear patiently, to accept without objection, to remain stable or in a fixed state, to continue in a place, to conform to, to acquiesce in.

In other words, you live where Yeshua lives.  You follow in His footsteps, you do what He does.  You love the world as He loved.  Abiding is not giving the Lord lip service, nor is it visiting Him every now and again like you would a mere acquaintance.  It's not praying only when you need something or claiming to be a Christian yet having no evidence of His teachings in your life.

So what does abiding look like?  Christ gave us an illustration of abiding in the Gospel of John, through the Vine and the branches.

 

Think for a moment about the Vine and the branch.  The branch doesn't get sustenance from the soil.  The branch is not the entire plant.  The branch only lives because it is grafted onto the Vine.  Where does the branch's food and water come from?  Where does it's energy come from?  Upon what does it depend?

The Vine.

And Christ goes even farther than this, saying it is only by our dependence on the Vine that we can bear fruit.  The fruit of the Spirit can be found in Galatians 5:22-23, which says: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

These are the markings of a true Christian.  Showing these fruits to the world when you're not a believer is a daunting task indeed.  Pride and self-righteousness will always get in the way at some point.  But when a believer abides in Yeshua, they begin to become like Him.  They learn of His humility and what once was a hindrance now becomes a joy.  There is no more selfishness in service, only the joy of giving.  When your focus is off yourself and onto Him, when you realize you are just the branch but HE is the VINE, your worldview shifts to what is truly important.  Your happiness stems, not in your circumstance, but in your security in Him.

  

You become thankful for all that Christ has given you.  You realize that apart from Him, there is nothing.  As the mere branch, you know if you were cut off from the Vine, you would wither and die.  There is no hope of growing roots and becoming a vine yourself.

When you see yourself as a branch abiding in the Vine, you begin to realize you are LIKE the Vine!  Only a grape branch can grow from a grapevine.  You cannot have a tomato branch on a grapevine.  Therefore, the whole point of abiding in the Vine is to become like the Vine.  And the only way to become like the Vine is to experience His goodness, mercy, and peace for yourself, which is found in communing regularly with the Vine.

But abiding isn't easy.  The Vine-dresser might come along and prune you every now and again.  When you stray too far away from the Vine or when you start to grow weird leaves that aren't of the Vine.  Sometimes, however, pruning is necessary in conforming you into His image.  Humans are a fickle folk.  We don't learn many lessons unless we've lived though them.  It's the lessons that we have hands-on experience with that we remember the most.

Therefore, we must know what it's like to be lonely before we can truly pant after God as our only friend.  We must know what it's like to stumble and fall so that He can lift us up.  We must know when we are weak so we can lean upon His strength.  We must become dependent so that He can provide our needs.  We must go through the desert alone to perfect our faith that God never leaves us.

Perhaps this is why there is pain and suffering in the world -- to teach us greater Truths God couldn't otherwise teach us in a perfect Heaven where there is no suffering.  I think that is why the angels long to look, because they literally cannot learn the things we learn through experience. Christ knew this life is hard, sometimes overwhelmingly so.  But if we abide in the Vine, we can overcome.  The Vine protects the branch and gives it all it needs to survive.

So even if the sun burns your leaves or a drought has left you wilted, your branch is still rooted in the Vine, which can never die.  And if HE can never die, therefore neither can you.  He is your Life, He is your Love, He is your Everything.

~~Becka