June 25

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the brunch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me.” John 15:4

To abide means to stay where I am. It does not mean to get in or get out. I could not be asked to stay in if I were not already there. Christ never commanded me to get myself into him. That is not my work, but God’s. I cannot do it, however hard I try. He has placed me there. What he does command me to do is to take care that I do not get out.

The difficulty is that we are always prone to let ourselves be uprooted, and Satan is working unceasingly to shake us from our position in Christ. If we yield to some sense of failure, we imagine that we are out of Christ, and we tend to treat ourselves as though somehow we were displaced from him. Yet even though we feel acutely that it is so, we must never allow ourselves to disbelieve God. He assures us that we are in Christ: all he asks us is that, in attitude and action as well as faith, we stay there.