abide in Me – Heather C. King

I picked my older girls up from the weekend camp and breathed a mom sigh of relief at the sight of them.

They survived without me.

They had on slightly crazy outfits despite my careful planning as we packed their bags days before. “Mom, I ran out of shorts and play-clothes,” they tell me.

Their cheeks were a little red from too little sunscreen, but not truly burnt. (Hadn’t I fretted all weekend about sunscreen application?)

They tried Mountain Dew for the first time.

I opened up those suitcases at home and shook my head at the wet swimsuit and towel folded in there with the rest of their clothes.

But, really, all things considered it’d been two-and-a-half days without mom and they had made a million little decisions and done just fine.

Sometimes you gotta let them grow up. Maybe it’s harder for us moms than it is for them.

I hear it all the time.

“I can do it myself, Mom.”

Little bursts of independence from these ‘babes’ and that includes the nine-month-old, who wants to feed himself and make his very own decisions about where to go, when to go, and what to put in his mouth.

This is my job as a mom, to love them into independence, teach them how to do and what to do on their own.

But that’s not God’s desire for me as my Father, not His parental mission or responsibility. He’s doing the opposite, wooing my independent heart into trust and showing me the lesson of the vine:

Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5 NIV).

This abiding life, the never separating from God, never stepping out on my own and depending on my own strengths or abilities sounds so simple.

It’s not.

It takes effort to remain in Him.

Dependence after all can feel so uncomfortable, so helpless, so out of control, so uncertain.

But Jesus didn’t say, “Apart from me you can do small things, but not the big stuff.” Nor did He say, “Apart from me you can be okay, but with me you can be extraordinary.”

He said that without Him, we can’t do a thing. Anything. Not the big stuff. Not the small things.

In the same way, Lisa Harper says, “We can become more dependent on God by trusting Him with the full weight of our lives” (Stumbling Into Grace 165).

When I consider the “full weight” of my life, I realize just how often I stroll along carrying most things on my own. It’s only the big cumbersome packages of circumstances that I hand over to God.

Sometimes we have no choice but dependence. We’ve exhausted ourselves in independent efforts and faced the fullness of our weakness.

Most of us have been there. The stress of overwhelming circumstances breaks us down and we know that what we face is simply too much, too impossible and too weighty to handle on our own. We’d be crushed.

So, we turn to God. That’s all that’s left to do. As Paul said, “I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). We declare dependence, we trust in His strength alone to help us through, and for a short season we have no choice but to rest in Him.

Yet, we have a way of confining God’s direction to “important” life matters. When it comes to where to live, our job, our relationships, our marriages, our health, and other huge life decisions, we pray frantically for God’s will and for direction and wisdom.

But when it’s a matter of those everyday life details like our schedule, our eating and spending habits, our conversations, and our tasks at work or home, we tend to think we can handle that “all by myself.”

Apart from Him, all by myself, I make things more difficult, I make a big mess, I miss out on blessing, I reject obedience, and I can do nothing.

This is the lesson of dependence, the learning to listen, learning to respond to that gentle nudging of the Spirit all day, every day.

This is the Spirit-led life: Yielding, loosening the grip, and giving over control.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

So I wake up on Monday morning after a busy weekend….

For one thing, the string on the church piano broke in the middle of the worship service on Sunday…

I have meetings, events, appointments, and extra activities all week (adding “Call Piano Tuner” to the list)…

Then right before the bus comes, my daughter pops her foot into the sneaker and says, “Look, Mom, my shoe broke, but I can still wear it,” at which point she takes a step forward to demonstrate its viability as a workable shoe and the sneaker falls off her foot and plops to the floor….

So, I grab an extra pair, but the laces are knotted up tight….

And the school bus comes and picks up one daughter but the other one is still fiddling with the replacement shoe.

I’ve got this. I rush the preschooler through her school preparation because she is at this point still standing there in her pajamas with un-brushed teeth and messy morning hair.

Then I pop the baby in the car seat (still in his pajamas, but who would know?), and expertly drive the oldest child to one school, the four-year-old (who is now dressed with her teeth cleaned and her hair in braided pigtails) to a different school where I arrive early (for once!!!) and the baby back home without losing my temper, my cool, or my driver’s license.

And then…

Then I feel compelled to hit that to-do list all determined and focused despite the wearing down from brokenness and need.

I could cry because it is hitting a little bit on the tender part of my soul still bruised a bit from weekend wear, but it’s also hitting a little on my sense of my humor.

Really?

A broken shoe?

How does that even happen?

It’s also hitting me here, too: thinking how life can trip us up with so much that’s unexpected. You can plan and plan and make those lists and keep those agendas and then a sneaker breaks on a Monday morning and you better hope that all you have holding you together isn’t just a list you jotted down in a notebook with a blue pen.

You better hope you’re resting in Jesus.

Saturday, I was yanking mint out of my garden in patches. Years ago, I planted this tiny pot of mint and now it’s everywhere. As I pull up one sprig, a vine pops up from underneath the soil and I discover an underground network of mint, all connected and interwoven.

The depth, the connectedness, the strength is all hidden in the dirt, only revealed by the weight of my tugging.

And life, it yanks at us here or there, pulling at this little bit, trying to unravel what it sees. Yet, we are to be connected deep, even in hidden ways far beneath the surface, to the Vine.

Jesus said:

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5 NASB).

This ‘Abiding….” or “remaining” (as the NIV says), what does this mean for me this day, this Monday of unexpected breaking?

In The Message it reads:

“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing” (John 15:3-8 MSG).

Chris Tiegreen writes:

Presence is everything in the Christian life…The truth is that His Presence working within us is the key to everything and without Him we can do nothing.

Why? Because all that is truly important, the obedience, overcoming trials, bearing fruit, navigating relationships and practicing spiritual disciplines changes essentially when I experience the Presence of Christ—-my attitude improves, my prayers deepen, my faith grows, my joy is renewed, passions re-kindle, service comes easy even on a broken Monday morning.

All because when hassles, bothers, broken shoes, minor annoyances and even true trials pull at me, they reveal more than some superficial root system that gives way at the slightest pressure.

They reveal the Vine.

And today, I’m holding on for dear life, but I’m still holding on.

Dear God, today it’s not chocolate or tea, a hug, kind words, or some encouragement from a friend that I need. What I need is You. I know this is true: Apart from You, I can’t do anything. Please “live in me. Make Your home in me” and in the “intimate and organic” relationship that grows, help me to thrive in You.