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In the hustle and bustle of trying to live a successful and effective life we should never forget to balance complex success strategies with the simple power of abiding in Christ. In today's culture we learn 4 keys to this and 7 steps to that. Many of these things demonstrate to us the things that we need to do, the works that we need to perform, or the actions that we need to take if we want to reap any kind of reward in life. Granted, it's crucial to teach people what we need to do in order to be successful. We should be learning work ethic, social skills, and character building principles that will help us grow to be functional people. Still; lest you become too consumed and burdened with works that you forget the power of rest, I want to share the key that Jesus taught us to walk in for fruitfulness which represents the flip side of the fruitfulness and success coin.
"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." John 15: 7-8
There is a time when you really need to understand strategies and tools of success in your career, relationships, and personal life, but then there are others times when things spin out of control in life and you don't know why these strategies and tools don't seem to be working. Have you ever been through a time when it felt like your faucet of blessing was shut off? Have you ever felt denied for no good reason at all?
God spoke one word to my wife and I during a time in our career in business and ministry when things didn't add up for any good reason at all. In this time God spoke the word Abide in our spirits. The word Abide means to bear, endure, remain, or last.
You see, God desires that we learn not only diligence in work but total dependence upon Him. There is a spiritual reality as well as an earthly reality to our success in life. If you plan on being anything in the working world you've got to learn the power of good old fashioned work ethic, people skills, and industry knowledge, which is the practical perspective of success. We are very big on getting practical education and applying knowledge to the things of life. I don't tend to over spiritualize many things in life because I'm naturally practical, yet God set a time for me to learn the powerful effects of abiding in Him and simply depending on Him which freed Him up to perform great things in my life.
When everything is going wrong in your life and you know you're not in any sin that will surely cause your well to run dry, then God may be saying to you that you just need to take this time to get to know Him better.
"How does the branch bear fruit? Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air not by vain struggles-It simply abides in the vine, in silent and undisturbed union, and blossoms and fruit appear as of spontaneous growth."- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abiding in Christ means that you are resting in His sovereign will. You are acknowledging that He is omnipotent and that you know He has a perfect plan for your life. Sometimes God has to let your efforts fail just so that He can get your attention, sit you down, and remind you that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. My wife and I got to the point where we realized we were striving to make things work in our life. Got wanted to show us what He could do without our help. We finally said, "God is God, and He's going to give us what He wants us to have anyway so we might as well quit trying to strive and just rest!"
This may be a foreign thing to you as well but you shouldn't sacrifice everything else important in life over an extended period of time for the sake of your career. If you're sacrificing giving everything you've got to your work and still seem to be in a rat race, God says, "Abide in Me." You need to stop striving and start abiding. We need to be diligent and hard working but we must learn to balance this with resting in the will of the Lord for our life.
As we learn to cling to, bear with, and remain with the Lord, even when nothing seems to be going right in our life, we will reap greater fruit with less the effort. Sometimes God wants you to work more but other times God wants you to watch Him work more than you could in a lifetime while you just abide.
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