How to Abide in Every Moment
Christians are so accustomed to look upon sinning daily as something absolutely inevitable, that they regard it as a matter of course that no one can keep up abiding fellowship with the Saviour: we must sometimes be unfaithful and fail.
As if it was not just because we have a nature which is naught but a very fountain of sin, that the abiding in Christ has been ordained for us as our only but our sufficient deliverance! As if it were not the Heavenly Vine, the living, loving Christ, in whom we have to abide, and whose almighty power to hold us fast is to be the measure of our expectations! As if He would give us the command, “Abide in me,” without securing the grace and the power to enable us to perform it! As if, above all, we had not the Father as the Husbandman to keep us from falling, and that not in a large and general sense, but according to His own precious promise: “Night and day, every moment!” Oh, if we will but look to our God as the Keeper of Israel, of whom it is said, “Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil; He shall keep thy soul,” we shall learn to believe that conscious abiding in Christ every moment, night and day, is indeed what God has prepared for them that love Him.
My beloved fellow Christians, let nothing less than this be your aim. I know well that you may not find it easy of attainment; that there may come more than one hour of weary struggle and bitter failure. Were the Church of Christ what it should be—were older believers to younger converts what they should be, witnesses to God’s faithfulness, like Caleb and Joshua, encouraging their brethren to go up and possess the land with their, “We are well able to overcome; if the Lord delight in us, then HE WILL BRING us into this land”—were the atmosphere which the young believer breathes as he enters the fellowship of the saints that of a healthy, trustful, joyful consecration, abiding in Christ would come as the natural outgrowth of being in Him. But in the sickly state in which such a great part of the body is, souls that are pressing after this blessing are sorely hindered by the depressing influence of the thought and the life around them. It is not to discourage that I say this, but to warn, and to urge to a more entire casting of ourselves upon the word of God Himself. There may come more than our hour in which you are ready to yield to despair; but be of good courage. Only believe. He who has put the blessing within your reach will assuredly lead to its possession.
The way in which souls enter into the possession may differ. To some it may come as the gift of a moment. In times of revival, in the fellowship with other believers in whom the Spirit is working effectually, under the leading of some servant of God who can guide, and sometimes in solitude too, it is as if all at once a new revelation comes upon the soul. It sees, as in the light of heaven, the strong Vine holding and bearing the feeble branches so securely, that doubt becomes impossible. It can only wonder how it ever could have understood the words to mean aught else than this: To abide unceasingly in Christ is the portion of every believer. It sees it; and to believe, and rejoice, and love, come as of itself.
To others it comes by a slower and more difficult path. Day by day, amid discouragement and difficulty, the soul has to press forward. Be of good cheer; this way too leads to the rest. Seek but to keep your heart set upon the promise: “I THE LORD DO KEEP IT, night and day.” Take from His own lips the watchword: “Every moment.” In that you have the law of His love, and the law of your hope. Be content with nothing less. Think no longer that the duties and the cares, that the sorrows and the sins of this life must succeed in hindering the abiding life of fellowship. Take rather for the rule of your daily experience the language of faith: I am persuaded that neither death with its fears, nor life with its cares, nor things present with their pressing claims, nor things to come with their dark shadows, nor height of joy, nor depth of sorrow, nor any other creature, shall be able, for one single moment, to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and in which He is teaching me to abide. If things look dark and faith would fail, sing again the song of the vineyard: “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” And be assured that, if Jehovah keep the branch night and day, and water it every moment, a life of continuous and unbroken fellowship with Christ is indeed our privilege.
– Andrew Murray
Abide in Christ
Abide in Christ | Andrew Murray
South African pastor, teacher, and writer, Andrew Murray, (1828-1917) believed that abiding was the highest call for every Christian; the key to pressing beyond the mere threshold of salvation into the fullness of all that Jesus’s death & resurrection secured.
Arguably the finest of Murray’s extensive works, Abide in Christ is a 31-day devotional suffused with glory; a direct invitation to learn and walk in the power of abiding.
