March 15th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

If you have followed this Abide series, I hope you have heard glimmers of my own story throughout each post.

I want to love God, and I often don’t.

I want to abide in Him, and I often fail.

I want to run hard after Him, and I often lose my focus on Him, start thinking about myself, and trip on my own feet.

Can you relate?

I hope you have also heard echoes of what God has been teaching me – I can’t love Him in my own strength. I can’t will myself to abide in Him. If I try to serve Him in my own efforts, my priorities and perspective will mess it all up.

We need to stop trying in our own strength and ask Him to cause us to love Him, pursue Him, abide in Him. Reading these quotes this weekend in Crazy Love resonated deeply with me [can you tell I'm enjoying this book?] :)

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.

-A.W. Tozer

Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love You and walk with You on my own. I can’t do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, that You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. And when I don’t, I want to want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way in me.

-Francis Chan

When I don’t, I want to want Him.

My friend, I challenge you to consider how to still the frantic pace of your life to enter into His presence regularly and richly during this Lenten season. Hear me: I am not saying try harder, do more, pray longer. I am saying this: we need to create time and space in our lives to commune with God, to ask HIM to pursue US.

He wants you to abide in Him. He wants you to love Him. He knows that you are “but dust” (Psalm 103:14). Stop trying – and come to Him today in your weakness, in your failure, in your brokenness, and ask Him to cause you to love Him, cause you to want Him, cause you to abide in Him.

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:8-14

All of the posts in the Abide series are indexed here.

March 10th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image via Wikipedia

On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain.  The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.

Joshua 5:10-12

There’s a funny thing about growing stronger in your walk with Jesus. I have talked to so many young believers who begin to flounder as they grow – God somehow seems less… obvious as they mature in their faith.

There are seasons in our Christian lives when getting to know Jesus feels like a new romance – all fireworks and “aha” moments and times with teary eyes. There are also seasons when we learn to abide in faith, just as we learned to accept salvation in faith. He is no less there, no less active, no less wanting for us to hear from Him and delight in Him. His voice does not always come thundering and shaking our lives – sometimes we must learn to be still and listen to His quiet whisperings.

I wonder if it was a strange transition for the Israelites when they entered the land. This was the promised land they had spent their entire lives wandering in the wilderness for. This second generation of people to come out of Egypt had eaten manna for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day of their lives. Six days a week they woke in faith that when they moved that tent flap, manna would be there. And every single morning, it was! They had to depend on God for His very obvious provision constantly.

And now, as they entered the land, the manna stopped.

God was still providing for them, but it was less obvious that it was directly from His hand. Now they had to plant, grow, harvest the grain in order to provide food for their families. It was tempting for them to begin thinking that now they were on their own, fending for themselves – rather than continuing to lean on God as the giver of all good gifts. It makes sense that the book of Deuteronomy, Moses’ last address to the people before entering the land, is full of the refrain “do not forget.”

As you grow in your walk, you might be tempted to think that God is less active in your life. He is still there, friend. He is still moving and whispering and orchestrating every detail. His voice is often quiet – you must be still and listen. His ways are often difficult to understand, but you must daily choose to trust.

Faith is not a one-time occurrence. Live a life of faith, and ask God to teach you each and every day to see Him in the shadows, hear Him in the quiet, obey Him when it’s hard to understand.

He is still feeding you. Choose to abide in Him and trust that He will continue to meet you in new ways, quieter ways, deeper ways.

Abide. in. Him.

You can find all of the posts in the abide series listed here.

March 3rd, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Be sure to join me over at Scripture Dig today – all through the month of March we’ll be digging into the book of Ruth! Today I’m walking us through a quick overview of Judges so we can better understand the time period!

Image via Wikipedia

“…it is not only by faith that we first come to Christ and are united to Him but also by faith that we are to be rooted and established in our union with Christ. Faith is essential not only for the commencement, but also for the progress of the spiritual life. Abiding in Jesus can only be by faith.

There are sincere Christians who do not understand this; or , if they admit it in theory, they fail to realize its application in practice. They are very zealous of a free gospel in which our first acceptance of Christ and justification is by faith alone. But after this they think everything depends on our diligence and faithfulness. While most firmly grasp the truth ‘the sinner is justified by faith’ (Galatians 2:16), they rarely find a place for the larger truth, ‘The just shall live by faith’ (Romans 1:17). They have not understood what a perfect Savior Jesus is, and how He will each day do for the sinner just as much as He did the first day he came to Him. They do not know that the life of grace is always and only a life of faith, and that in the relationship to Jesus the one daily and unceasing duty of the disciple is to believe, because believing is the one channel through which divine grace and strength flow out into the heart of His people.

The old nature of the believer remains evil and sinful to the last; it is only as he daily comes, empty and helpless, to his Savior to receive His life and strength, that he can bring forth fruits of righteousness to the glory of God. Therefore it is: ‘As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” As you came to Jesus, so abide in Him, by faith.”

-Andrew Murray, Abiding in Christ

You can find all of the posts in the abide series listed here.

February 28th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Apparently I am a slow learner who needs many different forms of stimuli and repetition to get something into my thick head. It seems that often when I am learning something in my walk with Christ, I have to learn it, forget it, relearn it, hear it from at least five different sources, forget it, learn it again…

That’s how I feel with this concept of abiding.

This week I’ve been hearing it from Andrew Murray.

And my own children.

And Francis Chan.

And C.H. Spurgeon.

And from what I read in the Scripture as I sit in our ABF.

The thought is slowly sinking in. How often do I settle for abiding with Christ, when I am invited to abide in Him? How often do I settle for having Jesus be my companion, when what He wants to do is consume me?

I think of the words I read as I sat in church.

…clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ… Romans 13:14

Clothe myself.

How ridiculous if I considered clothing to be something I just put on for a certain amount of time in the morning… and perhaps I would skip it now and then if I didn’t have time!

Clothe myself in Jesus.

To put Him on each day, wrap Him around my arms – everything I do, my heart – everything I feel, my feet – everywhere I go, my mind – everything I think. What if, instead of setting time with Him within boundaries and leaving it at the table each day, my whole life was consumed by Jesus. Wrapped up in Him. Inextricably bound. Hidden in Him.

To not abide with Him… but abide in Him.

What if I put on Christ?

You can find all of the posts in the abide series listed here.