Abiding.

At the start of each year, we take time to really start the year by considering: Lord, what is it that you're doing? What is it that you're speaking to us?

Oftentimes we start by fasting. This year, we're going to start fasting in the middle of February. We're going to go through a church-wide fast, so we'll have more time to teach on that. But we're going to spend the next couple weeks talking about what does it look like for us to be deeply formed. What does it look like for us to be formed into the likeness of Jesus, be formed into who he created us to be?

Part of that is this time of year, it is a time of, right, new year, new me, new goals, new life, all of everything in between. I feel like this time of year is usually two types of people. There's those that are like, okay, here's my daily plan. I have all these goals, all these things I'm going to accomplish. Maybe you're like me and I'm kind of like, I like to avoid the gym these first couple weeks because everybody tends to be packed and full. Everybody's trying to start these new things and these new changes.

Or maybe you're the other type of person and you're just like, yeah, I'm so over it. Like, I don't want to hear about your goals. I don't want to hear about your plans. Like, I just want to see you do it, right? You're like, don't even tell me, just show me.

But wherever you're at today, I want to invite you, as we start this year, to consider what does it look like for us to be people that are deeply formed in who Jesus is and who he's created us to be. We come back from the holidays and Christmas, and hopefully we're able to have some of that restful time. But I just believe that the Lord has a word for us today.

And so we're going to dive right in to John chapter 15.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that does not produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine. And you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings glory to my Father. I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love just as the Father. I told you these things so you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow. This is my commandment. Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn't confide in slaves. Now you are my friends since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. This is my command: love each other.

John 15:1-17

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. God, we thank you that we do get to enter into this space, that we get to be with each other, we get to be with you, we get to experience your presence. God, that we get to hear from you through your word today. So Lord, I just pray right now for any distractions, anything that's weighing heavy on us, would we just be able to surrender that to you?

We open up our hearts to receive whatever it is that you are trying to say because we are desperate for you, Jesus. We recognize that apart from you, we can do nothing. So would you come, would you speak, would you meet us here in this place? We ask this in your name. Amen.

Abiding With Jesus

For Christmas, I spent some time with my family, and one of my brothers gave me perfume for Christmas. And as I opened it, he's like, "Sorry, is that kind of rude to get someone more perfume? Like, I don't know, etiquette. Like, do you get, like, is that, like, saying you don't smell good or whatever?" And I was like, "No, and actually you owe me."

Because this specific brother, there was something that he used to do when we were growing up, and he's two years younger than me, where any time that we were, like, in a store that there was cologne nearby, specifically Axe Body Spray, if anybody has heard of that before, or smelled it. And specifically Axe body spray, he would spray me with it. Because then, for the rest of the day, I would smell like a man. And he thought it was fun. I don't know if he thought it was fun. Now it's funny to think about.

But there was something about that scent where it's like you're near it for 30 seconds, now all of a sudden you smell like this for the rest of your life and you cannot unsmell it.

This idea of remaining with Jesus, abiding with Jesus. My hope for us, that as we go into this new year, is that we would be people that because of our nearness to Jesus, all of a sudden, we smell like him, we talk like him, we live like him, we act like him. That there's something about our lives, there's something about the way that we live, the way that we speak, the way that we talk, that people know they have been with Jesus. They know Jesus. They know his presence. In the same way that that Axe body spray would stay on my body, you could tell they were near Jesus.

I want to talk about this word abiding today. In the translation I read out of the NIV, it uses the word "remain," but that word remain or abide, depending on which translation of the Bible you're reading, it takes us back to this word "meno."

I want to define what does it mean for us to abide? What is this word we're talking about? I think a lot of times when we hear this word initially, we might think just remain, depending on the church tradition you grew up on, or if you grew up in church, maybe you're like, abiding is reading my Bible. Abiding is praying.

I was talking to a friend this week, and she says, "I think of abiding as serving, as doing things in the community." It can mean a lot of things. Let me read this definition to you. As I do, I want you to pay attention. I want you to pay attention to how you feel with these different words. What causes tension? What puts you at ease?

When I say abiding, this word "meno" means: to dwell, to abide, to remain, to stay, to continue to be present, to continue in relationship, to tolerate, to endure, to wait, to accept, to suffer for, to submit to, to act in accordance with, to be faithful to.

What word, when I read it, causes any stress, tension? What makes you feel uneasy? What gives you peace?

You see, to abide is so much more than to just sit or wait. But it is that. It is also to continue with, to tolerate, to endure, to suffer. And there's some of those things that if I'm being honest today, I hear and I'm like, oh, I don't know about that. When we think staying connected to Jesus, that it means sometimes the hard things too. There's a lot to this word.

And how I want to talk about it today is because it is used 63 times in the book of John. Sixty-three times, which tells us this is something we should pay attention to. That Jesus is saying, listen to this, pay attention to what this means. Abiding is so much more than we can comprehend.

Presence and Practice

The first thing I want to talk about today is that abiding is about presence and practice. That abiding is about both presence and practice. I want you to notice that in the scripture, when it talks about remaining, that there is some presence required to that. To sit with someone, to continue with. There's presence that is required.

This is where, as a church, we often talk about spiritual disciplines, but we typically use the word spiritual practices. And we talk about this so much because we want to be intentional that as we enter into our new years that we're not just setting goals, but that we are setting ourselves up to follow the ways of Jesus so that we can be formed into his likeness and live the life that he's created us to live.

One of the things that we have developed as a church, and next week I'm going to talk more about it, is something called a rule of life, which is a set of spiritual practices. And we have them at our welcome table if you haven't seen this card, or if you go on our website, there's a whole workbook about it. But essentially asking: how are we setting ourselves up? How are we paying attention to the things that we do every day? Listening and being aware of the things that they do to us and who we're becoming as we do them.

Because every day you are practicing different things, right? And sometimes we hear in church things like spiritual disciplines. We can maybe cringe and it's like, oh, that sounds a little legalistic. Like, I don't know what that means to have these practices and disciplines in my life. Like, shouldn't I just let the Holy Spirit be? And yes, we are letting the Holy Spirit be.

But every single day, we are following rules. But not every day are we feeling the weight of what we're doing.

For instance, hopefully, every single person here wears a seatbelt every day. Hopefully. And hopefully every day you are not feeling the value of that seatbelt. Some of you are giving me looks that tell me that maybe you don't wear seatbelts. You probably should.

But hopefully every day you're not meeting in a car accident where you feel the necessity of having that seatbelt guarding you and protecting you. But every day you do it. You're following it. So for the moment when you may or may not need it to keep you in place and keep you near to the seat and near to the car and protect you and keep you safe, it's there.

In the same way as we develop these spiritual disciplines and practices in our lives, we may not feel the weight of it every day. You might not open your Bible every day and feel this incredible revelation. But you're doing it every day and continue to form yourself into someone that knows the voice of God, can hear his voice and respond to it. So that in moments where all of a sudden life is jolted and you're feeling cool and something's taking you away from God, it's taking you right back to where you need to be because you know his word. You know what he's saying to you. It's guarding you. It's protecting you.

Do you have practices in your life that are forming you into the likeness of Jesus? Are you intentionally setting up your life to live the way he created you to live? Or are you just getting in that car, no seatbelt, just hoping that everybody else stops for the red lights and speeding right on through?

Spiritual practices and being present with Jesus, practices that help us be present with Jesus, is a way of abiding.

Pruning and Surrender

The next thing I want to talk about is that abiding requires from me. I want to read again some of the scriptures in John 15 where it's talking about this. Where it's saying that if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything. I want will be granted. You'll produce all of that fruit. But then if you continue, it says, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Apart from me, you can do nothing.

We need to stay connected and we need to prune sometimes in order to do that.

As I was thinking about everything this week, I was thinking about all the dead plants we have around this church. Here's the vulnerability, right. I'm looking at this plant and I'm looking right now. I'm like, okay, there's a lot going on here, right. And to be honest, I've done this with other plants in my home or here in the church. Where if I'm tempted to, I'm looking at all these things, I'm like, this is dead, right. This needs to go.

But I'm afraid that if I start pulling it, if I start taking it away, all of a sudden it's going to be there, and it's going to be empty, and it's going to be exposed. And so I don't want to do that, because I don't want it to look empty. I don't want it to look exposed. But the reality is that the dead things around here are killing the rest of the life around this plant.

And part of the process of abiding and pruning is us killing the things before they kill us. And the things I'm talking about here is the sin in our life, the practices that are leading us farther from Jesus, not closer to him. They are going to infect and the rest of the life that is happening. So we need to prune it. We need to take it out and we need to kill it before it eventually kills us.

Pruning is a part of the process. Why don't we prune? Well, like I said, pruning requires vulnerability. Pruning requires, oh, now I'm exposing myself and people might see into me in ways that they couldn't see before when I've just left all this dead stuff around.

And some of the things, it might even look a little bit like life. It might not actually look that dead. So we keep it because it's covering the things that we don't want exposed. We keep it. We don't want to be exposed. Also, because sometimes it's a little bit painful to have things cut out of our lives. It's a little painful. And painful to the point where you might even feel it.

You might feel that it's missing. You might feel the wind a little bit stronger. You might feel the rain in a different type of way. And so we keep it. We keep ourselves covered.

But here's what God's word says to us. When we expose the dark things to the light, that light overcomes the darkness. So that we can abide and be healthy and stay connected to who Jesus wants us to be.

Isaiah and a New Thing

As I was preparing for this this morning, I was looking for a verse in Isaiah for just my own prayer time. And I stumbled upon Isaiah 43. And I want to share some things with you today because I highlighted Isaiah 43 in my Bible from just, I don't even know when.

Isaiah 43:18 says, "Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do not perceive it?" I read this and I was like, yes, wow, what a word for 2024. Like, do not dwell on the things of the past. Perceive, I'm doing a new thing. Do you see it? Do you perceive it?

And then I kept reading. It starts there. And then it says:

I'm making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. Again, I'm like, yes, amen. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself, that they may proclaim my praise.

So he's telling us why he's doing it. So that they proclaim my praise. But here Isaiah 43:22 is where it gets interesting.

Yet you have not called upon me, O Jacob. You have not wearied yourself for me. You have not brought me grain offerings or burnt offerings, nor honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with great offerings, nor wearied you with demands for incense. You have not brought any fragrance for me, or lavished on me the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses.

Even I, he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and remembers your sins no more, even I. Let us review the past together so we can state your case for your innocence. Your fathers sinned. Your spokesmen rebelled against me. So I will disgrace the dignitaries of your temple and I will consign Jacob to destruction and Israel to scorn.

Isaiah 43 starts with saying, "Don't dwell. I'm doing a new thing." And then it shows us and reveals to us, as he's walking through saying, "I am doing it." But the question is: are you a part of it?

Because the people of Israel at this time, they were not being obedient to the things that God had called them to. Now, it's important to know as we're reading the Old Testament Isaiah things, that this is more describing what was happening. This isn't a, okay, now we go and give all these burnt sacrifices, right. It's what we would call more like descriptive and prescriptive. So this isn't saying that now we need to do these exact things. But at that time, that was part of their obedience and worship: to give these burnt offerings and these sacrifices.

And so God's saying, "I'm doing this new thing, yet you're out here. You're not even calling on my name. You're not being obedient to the things that I have asked you to do." And there is a consequence to that. They weren't obedient. They were not enduring. They were not abiding. They're not submitting to the things of God.

If you're here today and you're feeling stuck, you're feeling like you're looking at the fruits of your life and you feel like this is not what I think it should be. Why am I feeling this way? I encourage you: go back to who you know that God has called you to be, to the things that he has asked of you, and ask yourself, do a little intake.

In the same way, the Lord said, "Okay, let's review this together. Review with the Lord. Are you being obedient? Are you living a life of surrender to him? Are you being obedient to what you know?"

Now, here's the thing. I'm not going to get too over-spiritual about this, but chapter 43 is what we're reading, right. Now, all of a sudden, if you turn the page into chapter 44, things start to shift.

But now listen, O Jacob, my servant. Israel, whom I have chosen. This is what the Lord says: He who made you, who formed you in the womb, will help you. He will help you. So do not be afraid, Jacob my servant. For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams. One will say, "I belong to the Lord." Another will call himself by the name of Jacob. Still another will write on his hand, "The Lord's," and will take the name Israel. This is what the Lord says: I am the first and I am the last. Apart from me, there is no God. I will help you. You are not alone in this.

For us to abide in Jesus, to suffer, to endure, to submit to his way, we are not alone. Because the good news for us is that this is Isaiah. This is the Old Testament. But we are living, right, knowing the New Testament, the New Covenant, which is Jesus who came to die on the cross and pay the price for our sins.

And not only was he resurrected and ascended into heaven, but he left with us his Holy Spirit, who is known to be our helper. That is with us here today. He will help us. He will guide us. He will continue to give us the strength to remain. So we need not fear or to be afraid today.

Personal but Not Private

The next thing, though, that I want you to see as we keep reading is that abiding is personal, but it is not private. It is personal, but not private.

John 15:11-17 says:

I told you these things that you will be filled with joy. Yes, your joy will overflow. This is my commandment: love each other in the same way that I have loved you. There is no greater love than you lay down your life for your friend.

Jesus wants relationship with you that is so deep and so intimate and so personal. But it always goes beyond just you.

We are a part of this greater story that we, on this side of eternity, can only begin to comprehend. The way that we get to show our love, there's no better way than in the context of community and in relationships. There's no better place to practice patience and kindness than there is in the context of relationships.

You can't lay down your life for a friend unless you actually have friends, right.

It's personal, but it's never meant to be private. And you see that in Isaiah 44:3-5, where God names Jacob. But then it also says, "And your descendants." Right. Jacob and your family. We are a family journeying together in a personal way with God, but not privately.

We want generations and generations here, even in this city, as we begin to think of what the Lord is doing. We're planting seeds, not just for the years that we get to live here and be alive. But we are sowing seeds and abiding with Christ so that people for generations and generations can come to Madison, Wisconsin, and experience the love of Jesus in such a personal way that it transforms the way that they live and the way that they do life for all of eternity.

Fruit and Faithfulness

Here's the thing. The Lord is pouring out his spirit. It will overflow beyond our lives. And that is the promise that we have.

Abiding does produce fruit. John 15 says: "I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me, you will produce much fruit. But apart from you, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. But if you remain with me, my words remain in you. You can ask whatever you want and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you invite disciples and it brings my glory."

There are some serious statements that we're reading here. Isaiah also talks about this, but this idea of being thrown out. And Isaiah 43:28 says, "I will disgrace the dignitaries of your temple and I will consign Jacob to destruction." So there are consequences that we're reading here for us not abiding and not staying connected, and our disobedience. There's consequences for sin and things that separate us from God.

But if you remain in me and if my words remain in you, if you continue to dwell, submit, continue, endure, be obedient to you, you produce much fruit to my Father's glory.

Back in Isaiah 44:2, where it says, "He who made you, formed you in the womb, will help you." So we don't have to be afraid.

And so if we look at our lives and we know that there's things that need to be cut off, or there's things that are killing us and suffocating us, we can surrender that to Jesus because he came to be our helper and to be our provider and to be our way to forgiveness, redemption and salvation for all of eternity.

And so we know that and we can have hope in that.

But I want to point out something powerful here. Isaiah 44:3 says, "I will pour water on the thirsty and I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants." It starts by saying, "I will do these things." "I will do these things."

At the end of the day, the hope that we have is that we're abiding with Jesus and surrendering. Simply saying: I'm going to come near to you. I'm going to come close to you. I'm going to worship. I'm going to obey. I'm going to be near to you, Jesus. And as I do that, you do the rest.

It's all on him. Our job is not to produce the fruit or the outcome. Our job is to be obedient and to obey and to trust him with the rest.

Isaiah 44, he says, "I will." And then, here's the fruit that comes. Isaiah 44 says, "They will spring up like grass in meadows, like poplar trees by flowing streams." And in John 15, we see that you will overflow with joy. There will be an outpouring. There will be fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. The things that our souls long for, peace, kindness, love, security. All of that.

He says they will. Like, they will have it. Why? Isaiah 44 says, "I am the first. I am the last. Apart from me, there is no God."

They will, because I will. And I will, because I am the I am. That is what God is saying here in the Scripture.

That is what I want us to get a hold of today. That there will be fruit as we abide. God will pour his spirit out. He is pouring his spirit out. And we can see and experience the fullness of that fruit. The fullness of his presence. The fullness of the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. All of that. And so much more. Because he is the I am. He is the first, the last. The alpha, the omega. The beginning and the end.

It's not about striving. It's about us surrendering to the one who was and always will be. That is what abiding is. He's going to pour his spirit out. He is pouring his spirit out. And we get to experience the overflow because of who he is.

The outcome, it's not ours, but our role that we get to play is to abide. To stay connected. To suffer for. To submit. To dwell. To continue with. To remain.

Closing

I'm going to invite the worship team to come as we get ready to close today.

So many times we read things like this and we enter these new years and we start with this mind shift of saying, "This is who I want to become. Lord, let it be. This is who I want to become." But what our prayer should be, the posture that I want us to take, is: "Jesus, you are the one that I'm after. And I trust you with my life. It's your glory that I live for. So Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit, have your way."

God is saying, "If you stay rooted, I will pour my spirit out. And you're going to become whoever I want you to be, whenever I want you to be that. Because I am the I am. I am the one who has always been."

So will we trust him.

I want to encourage you today that even as we go into this time where we're going to have just a few more moments of just worship and prayer and time to just sit in the presence of God. To take some of that inventory in. To review with God. To review what are the things in my life that are not bearing fruit that I need to cut out, that I need to get rid of, that I need to not take with me to this new year.

What are the habits? What are the things that are separating me from God that I need to be separated from. Take time to review and to process that.

Scripture tells us that we will bear much fruit if we abide, but it doesn't say specific fruit or when. When you think about fruit, all different fruit grows at different rates, right. Different paces at different times. And there's so many different types of fruit. So the fruit in your life that the Lord wants to produce may not look like the fruit for the person sitting next to you.

And part of us abiding in Christ is trusting the timeline and the process that he has. Not rushing it. Not striving for it. Not comparing it to anybody else. It's sitting back and trusting his process.

Because remember, to abide is to wait, to tolerate, to remain, to be present, to endure. None of those words are fast, easy fixes. None of the words give an exact timeline. But what they do is they all point to closeness with Jesus. Because our job is not to produce the fruit, but to abide in Jesus.

And as we abide, the fruit will come.

When we talk about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, where it says love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. On my own, I'm not very kind. On my own, it's hard to love people and to forgive. Really hard on my own. I'm not filled with peace. But more often it's anxiety and it's fear of the future. Patience is not natural. Joy can be hard to find.

But with Jesus, staying near to him, these are the promises of the fruits that we begin to see happen in our lives. Where all of a sudden we're no longer basing how we feel on what the world tells us anymore, but on just presence with Jesus. And that becomes enough.

Isaiah 43:22 really hit me today when it said, "Jacob, you have not called upon me." As I walk into this new year and my prayer is: Lord, may that not be said of me. That I did not call. That I did not make myself available. That I did not give you space to speak and to move.

Let it be said that we came and we said, "God, we want to see you, and we are making space for you."

Psalm 27:4 says, "One thing I ask for the Lord, the one thing I seek, is that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all my days, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in the temple."

One day I asked: I wonder what is the one thing that you would ask of the Lord today?

David, who started out with nothing. Who had a great battle ahead of him. He fought. He overcame Goliath. He then was called. He ruled. He reigned. David not only tasted lack, but he tasted the luxuries of this world.

Yet at the end, he said, "The one thing I ask is that I would dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Now, if you remember in John 15, it says, "If you abide in me, then you can ask whatever you want and it will be given to you." And this verse has always been a little tricky for me because I'm like, what does that mean? Does that mean that if I spend time with Jesus, then if I say, I want that car, I'm kidding. Or if I say I want this relationship to be restored, it's going to happen.

But what this shows me, if we look at the psalm and the heart of David here, is that as we abide in the Lord, I think our desires and our assets change a little bit. Because we start to realize that nothing in this world that we have tasted, nothing in this world that we desire to taste, that we think is going to satisfy, will truly satisfy.

Because David, he tasted. He saw. He experienced it all. He had the glory. He had the power. He had the money. He had the relationships. He had it all. And yet he knew that it was Jesus. He knew that it was God's presence that he was after.

For us today, I believe that as we abide with Christ, that our masks and our desires are going to change. That we're no longer going to be looking for the temporary to satisfy. But our hearts too will say, "Lord, it's more of your presence. That is what we're after today."

So I'm going to invite you to stand. And we're just going to go into a time of worship. And we're going to spend time just abiding with the Lord.

I want to give you some invitations here to start to think about the ways that you feel the Lord speaking through this. And the first is this: that today, maybe you need pruning to take place. Maybe there's some things that you need to say, "Lord, help me remove this. Help me. Remember that we need you to kill it before it kills us. Ask the Lord: what needs to be removed from my life? What is not healthy? What is keeping me from growth?"

The next is presence. As I was pruning some of my old plants today, because I was thinking about it. One of my plants, it looked really healthy. I got really close and I noticed that the roots were coming out of the soil. So it looked healthy, but when I looked really close, I knew that after so long it's not going to be healthy and the entire plant is going to be dead.

Why? Because the roots were no longer deep and they were no longer covered. And I just wonder today if that's the word for some of us here. That maybe at one point we were planted really deep. But now all of a sudden the roots are starting to come up.

We just need to let the Lord come and cover us again. And we need to be present with him and practice abiding with him. And say, "Lord, let your love come and just cover me again so I can be deeply rooted and thriving."

And then the next is just to be praying this week about what are those practices that we can start to set in our lives that are going to set us up to be formed into the likeness of Jesus.

So I'm going to open us up in prayer. That he's going to lead us for a few moments today as we just practice together abiding with Christ.

So Lord, we thank you for your word. And God, I pray that as we continue to abide in your presence, as we continue to love you, to love one another, to serve, to be near to you, that you would continue to change us and to transform us, Lord. And may it be said of us that our only ask and our only desire is that we would be even closer to you. That we would dwell in your presence forever.

And so God, I pray for these next few moments, as we fix our eyes and our gaze on you and your presence and your glory. Would you continue to just reveal to us any areas that are causing harm that need to be removed? Would you show us ways that we need to be present with you and invite your presence to come and cover us again?

And would you just fill us with that hope and joy of the promises of the fruit, of the promises of your presence, God, and that it is so worth it. So we love you, Lord. We ask this in your name. Amen.