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CHAPTER 1
Day 1
YOU WHO HAVE COME TO HIM
"Come to me." MATTHEW 11:28
"Abide in me." JOHN 15:4
TWO MESSAGES COME from the same loving Savior. First, a call: "Come to me." Then, to those who have heard and accepted the call, a new invitation: "Abide in me."
If you have accepted His call, you have doubtless never regretted it. His Word is truth, His promises He fulfills, His love and blessings are yours to enjoy — you have experienced these things for yourself. His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love sweet and precious. You have, more than once since your first coming to Him, had ample reason to say, "This is more than I ever expected!"
And yet perhaps you have also experienced disappointment: You had expectations that over time were not realized. Blessings you once enjoyed were lost. The love and joy of your early life with your Savior didn't deepen over time; it became faint, feeble. You may have wondered why, with such a Savior — so mighty and so loving — your experience of salvation has not been fuller.
The answer is very simple: You wandered from Him.
The blessings Christ bestows are all connected with His command, "Come to me." They are only to be enjoyed in close fellowship with Him. You either did not fully understand or have not rightly remembered that implicit in the call was "Come to me to stay with me." To stay with Him was indeed the purpose of His call to come to Him. It was not to refresh you for a few short hours after your conversion, to encourage you with the joy of His love and deliverance only to send you forth to wander in sadness and sin. He destined you to something better than a short-lived blessedness to be enjoyed only in times of special earnestness and prayer — a passing moment in the larger context of your life obligations. No, He prepared a place for you, an abiding dwelling with Himself, where your whole life — every moment of it! — might be spent. The work of your daily life was meant to be done from this place of abiding, all the while enjoying unbroken communion with your Savior.
What was implicit in that first invitation, "Come to me," was made explicit in the second: "Abide in me." As earnest and faithful, as loving and tender, as the compassion that breathed through that blessed command to come to Jesus was the grace infused in the blessed invitation to abide. The call to come was mighty and elicited in you a mighty attraction; just as mighty was the invitation to abide, the bonds with which it would hold you. The blessings you were met with as you came to Christ were many and great; more and greater blessings are there for those who take the further invitation to abide in Him.
Note especially that Jesus did not say, "Abide with me"; rather He said, "Abide in me." His intent was an intimate, unbroken, complete relationship. He opened His arm to draw you close; He opened His heart to welcome you there. All His divine fullness of life and love were offered to you — you would be wholly one with Him! Such was the depth of meaning in his invitation to abide in Him, a depth of meaning that is easily missed.
We think of these invitations as commands, but it's equally fair to say that they are pleas. Each is equal to the other: The same motivations that caused you to respond to His first appeal may motivate you toward His second. Was it the fear of sin and its curse that first drew you to Christ? His pardon at your first coming, and all the blessings that flowed from it, would be fully confirmed and fully enjoyed if only you would abide in Him. Had you felt a longing to know and enjoy the infinite love you heard in His call to come? That first experience was only a taste of the satisfaction you would enjoy by abiding in Him, where you would drink your fill from the rivers of pleasure at His right hand. Did the invitation to come to Christ speak to the longing you felt to be made free of the wearying bondage of sin, your longing to experience purity and holiness, your longing for rest for your soul? Such rest and relief is experienced fully only as you abide in Him. Maybe you were motivated to come to Christ by the hope of a divine inheritance, an everlasting home in the glorious presence of the infinite God. One must prepare for such a future, and our preparation for our glorious future happens as we abide in Christ now. Not only that, but we get a foretaste of that future life in our present life — if we abide in Him.
It's a fundamental truth: There is nothing that would have moved you to come to Christ that is not satisfied a thousandfold more in our experience of abiding in Him. You did well to come; you do better to abide. After all, who would be content, after seeking the King's palace, to stand in the door? You've been invited in! You have the opportunity to dwell in the King's presence, sharing with Him all the glory of His royal life! Let us enter in, abiding in His wondrous love and enjoying to the full all that He has prepared for us!
And yet I fear that there are many who have come to Jesus and yet will acknowledge, with regret, that they have no experience of this blessed abiding in Him. Some will say that they have never fully understood that Christ's call to come included this invitation to abide. Others may acknowledge the call to abide in Christ but considered it an experience beyond their reach. Still others will say that they have tried to abide in Christ but haven't discovered the secret to it. And finally there are those who, in all honesty, will confess that they have known but not sought the blessing of abiding in Christ. They were not prepared to give up everything in order to abide fully and forever in Jesus, and so while their Savior would have gladly abided with them, they were not prepared to stay.
To any of these people I come in the name of Jesus, their Redeemer and mine, with His blessed message: "Abide in me." In His name I invite all of us to come and, for a season, meditate daily on its meaning, its lessons, its claims, and its promises. I know how many and, particularly to the young believer, how difficult the questions are that come up when we consider the invitation to abide in Christ. There is especially the multifaceted question how one keeps up (or is kept in) an abiding communion with Christ in the midst of wearying work and continual distraction. I do not expect in this undertaking to remove all difficulties; only Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit could do that. But there is power in the mere repetition, the daily invocation of the Master's blessed command to "abide in me," until it settles into your heart, no more to be forgotten or neglected. We would do well to meditate on the meaning we find in the Scriptures, so that our understanding — the gateway to the heart — grows to apprehend what abiding in Christ offers and expects. We will thus discover how one comes to abide in Christ, learn what keeps us from resting in God, and discern what will help us in our quest. We will become increasingly conscious of Christ's claim upon us and come to trust that abiding in Christ, as with all of Christ's commands, is inherent to our full allegiance to our King. Our heartfelt acceptance of this command will be rewarded as we experience its blessings, and we will find ourselves compelled by desire to continually abide in Him.
Come, let us day by day set ourselves at the feet of Christ and meditate on this word of His, with an eye fixed on Him alone. Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice — the still small voice that is mightier than the storms that surround us. Abide in Me. Jesus Himself speaks the word. Our souls hear His voice, and the message quickens our spirits, giving us the power to accept its claim on us and receive its blessing on us.
Speak to us, blessed Savior, and let each of us hear Your voice. May the feeling of our deep need, and the faith of Your wondrous love, combined with the sight of the wonderfully blessed life You are waiting to bestow on us, hold us tight and cause us to listen and obey as often as You extend the invitation: Abide in Me. Let the answer from our hearts become clearer and fuller day by day: "Yes, blessed Savior, I do abide in You."
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Excerpted from "Abide In Christ"
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