Abiding: the Main Thing

Published on May 01, 2008 by Paul Keim

Recently I had a hard time reading my bible. In fact it was hard for me to spend time with God in general. Nothing was particularly wrong, I just went through a busy streak, and began to lose consistency spending time with my Savior. At the same time I was still thinking of how I could be effective in serving Him, and how I could continue to “be a light”. It didn’t take long before I got burnt out, became frustrated with the smallest things, and my character began to suffer. I became irritable, critical, and began thinking that I actually deserved this or that. Suddenly my passion for Jesus began to waiver and in its place: pride. I couldn’t understand how I got there. I was serving, excited about ministry nights, but THE main thing was missing from my life. 

The main thing Christ tells us to do is the one thing that will cause all the good to flow out of us: abiding in Him. So often God has given me a passion for something good, but I have taken off with it, leaving God in the dust. I’ve tried to do things on my own strength, and felt like I needed to do more and more to be a better Christian. But at the same time I could not find consistency in praying about the passion God had given me, or the time to open His word and remind myself what an awesome plan He has, and what He has saved me from. I was trying to do all these “good” things, without relying on the Giver of good things. 

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He prepared in advance for us to do.” As we abide in Him, he gives us opportunities to share, to love, to care. However our goal is to abide. It’s not trying to do as many good things as possible, it’s not always defending your faith against Atheists or other religions, and it’s not to always make every conversation about God. It’s abiding in Christ and allowing Him to do the work through you. 

If you remember the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians, “If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Although abiding in Christ may cause you to give all you posses to the poor, and one day have to make a life or death decision concerning our relationship with Jesus, those are not the ultimate goals of our faith. The ultimate goal of our faith is to worship God. And how do we do that? Abiding in Him, telling Him that He is most important to us, worthy of our best, our time, our praise, our service. The more we abide, the more the Holy Spirit develops us to be people of good character, and the more opportunities He gives us to share the Gospel and bring glory to the name of Jesus Christ.  

God continually teaches me that being in Him, living with Him, is the most important thing we can be doing in our lives.