BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

You can talk to Jesus all week long, whenever you want, while you’re driving your car, on the job, at home or wherever. You can stay in living contact with Him all the time! In fact, that’s exactly what Jesus has instructed us to do. He said in in John 15:4-8: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." The word abide means “to remain, to live, to dwell.” It doesn’t refer to coming in and going out, or to being in a place temporarily. It speaks of your permanent residence. For example, you might check into a hotel and spend some time there, but you wouldn’t say you live (or abide) there. Your abiding place is your home. The same is true spiritually. Abiding in Jesus means making Him your permanent dwelling place. It doesn’t mean living for Him one day and for the devil the next. It’s living for Him every day. Being stable in your relationship with Him. Staying vitally connected to Him by walking in union and communion with Him all the time. Don’t Become the World’s Firewood According to Jesus, abiding in Him is the secret to living a peaceful, productive Christian life. It allows us to stop struggling and straining in our own strength to do all the right things, and instead rest in His strength. When we do that, we become like the branch on an apple tree. As long as the branch remains connected to the tree it bears apples automatically, because the life of the tree is flowing through it. That’s how it is with us. As we stay in living contact with Jesus, His life flows through us and we just naturally bear supernatural fruit. We do the works of Jesus, our prayers get answered, and God is glorified in our lives. On the other hand, when we don’t stay in living contact with Jesus the opposite happens. We cease bearing fruit and begin to shrivel up. We lose our spiritual energy, force and freshness. We become like the broken-off branches Jesus talked about that men gathered up and threw in the fire. Jesus didn’t say God burned up those branches. He said men (or in other words, the world) did. God is our heavenly Father. He loves us. He’s never going to throw us away or destroy us. But He can’t do much to help us if we don’t stay in living contact with Jesus. It’s through our contact with Him that we access God’s abundant life and delivering, overcoming power. It’s our abiding in Him that enables us to be victors in this world rather than victims of it. When we get out of our abiding place, we not only cease to bear fruit, we fall prey to the world and the devil and experience defeat. That’s not what we want! It’s not what Jesus wants for us either, which is why in John 15:7, He gave us this major key to abiding in Him: “[Let] my words abide in you,” He said. What we do with God’s Word has everything to do with keeping us from becoming a dried-up, barren branch. The more we esteem and give attention to God’s Word, the more we grow in our union with Him. The more we feed on what He said in the Bible and live in the light of it, the more His life can flow through us. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). He also said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). So, really, God’s Word is spirit food! When we feed our hearts on it, God’s Word does for our spirits much the same thing eating good food does for our bodies. It becomes part of us. It builds us up and makes us spiritually strong. It produces faith in us, and when combined with that faith it releases the power of the Word into our lives. 6 : BVOV

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