A personal letter to Ray about remaining in Christ amid ordinary demands, distraction, and spiritual dryness.
Dear Ray,
I keep coming back to one thing. With all we have learned, and all the things Christians are told they should be doing, I believe the whole matter comes back to remaining in Christ and allowing His life to live in us.
Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4).
I read those words and wonder why we make everything so complicated. He has brought us into Himself. He has given us His life. Now He tells us to remain in Him. Everything else has to come from there.
I am writing this to myself as much as to you. I can think about the Lord, write about Him, and explain something I have seen, while losing touch with the very thing I am writing about. Knowing the words does not mean I am living in their reality. That troubles me.
Jesus used the simplest picture. He is the vine, and we are the branches. The life in the vine flows into the branches, and fruit comes from that life. The branch has nothing of its own to contribute as a separate source. Its whole existence depends upon the vine.
Then He said, “for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5).
We ought to let that settle something in us. We can be busy. We can speak well. We can spend our whole lives doing things people call Christian. But where is the life coming from? That question reaches beneath everything we can measure or show to someone else.
Ray, I believe this is where we keep going wrong. We receive Christ and then begin trying to produce a life that will please Him. We take His words and make them into things we must accomplish. Soon we are occupied with our progress, our failure, our usefulness, and our place in the work.
Meanwhile, He is within us.
Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Christ lives in me. I do not know how we can read that and then return so easily to depending upon ourselves. Paul was describing the source of his actual living. The Lord had entered him. His life was now being lived through a man who belonged to Him.
Paul still had things to do. He traveled, worked, spoke, and suffered. Abiding did not remove him from life. Christ became the life within all of it. That is what I want to know in experience, in the ordinary hours when nobody is watching and nothing seems especially spiritual.
Paul also wrote, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Colossians 2:6).
We received Him. We walk in Him. We never arrive at a point where we have enough knowledge or experience to supply what only He can supply. Our dependence upon Him reaches into every part of our living.
John puts it plainly: “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11).
The life is in the Son. That is where I keep coming back. Zoe is the divine life we have received in Christ. We cannot separate that life from Him and use it as something we now manage. We have Him, and in Him we have life.
This has to reach me while I am working, while I am tired, while someone is irritating me, and while I am trying to explain myself. The Lord is present in those moments. His life can touch the very place from which my reaction is coming.
I may want to defend myself. I may want recognition. I may be holding tightly to an opinion. As I turn to Him, He can uncover what is driving me. Something I was so certain I needed to say may lose its hold. His life begins to have room where my own insistence was filling everything.
I cannot manufacture that inward change. I can respond to the One who is working in me.
“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Even the willing has its source in His working. That gives me hope. He has not left us alone with a set of demands. He has given Himself to us. The One who calls us to abide is the One whose life makes the living possible.
His love, His patience, and His truthfulness have their expression as His life flows through us. We can spend years trying to imitate the fruit while giving little attention to its source. The fruit belongs to the life. We need to remain where that life is flowing.
And I do not want to turn abiding into another thing to perform correctly. I can imagine myself measuring how quiet I have been, checking my feelings, and wondering whether I have done enough. That brings me back to myself again. Christ is here even when I feel dry or distracted.
John wrote, “And now, little children, abide in him” (1 John 2:28).
There is something tender about that. Little children. We can receive Him with empty hands. We can turn to Him in the middle of an unfinished day. We can let Him have the matter we keep trying to settle by ourselves.
Ray, this is the one thing I want to stay with. I want Christ to have my actual days. I want His life to be the source of my words, my work, and whatever comes through these writings. I want what passes between us as brothers to come from that same life.
There will be things to do, words to speak, and matters to face. Let them come out of our remaining in Him. We have received the Son. We can trust the life that is in Him to bear its own fruit.
Your brother,
Brent
Scripture quotations: King James Version.
Companion readings
The One Thing — An essay tracing five New Testament concerns—Christ’s saving work, faith, abiding, shared life, and resurrection hope—back to the one living relationship.
The One Thing, Brother — A quiet reflection on the Son’s eternal communion with the Father becoming the inward reality of prayer, suffering, and abiding.
The Blessing of Remaining — Christ Himself within suffering and unanswered questions.
