By John A. Huffman Jr.
This abiding is not a mystical experience. It just involves walking with the Lord in a life that is marked by trust and obedience. Some of us don't know how to live lives that are disciplined. The Christian life is a disciplined existence in which we do, with the help of the Holy Spirit, keep Christ's commandments.
First John 3:24 reads: "All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us."
III.
You may be saying to yourself, "Impossible! I want to lead the Christian life. I have given my life to Jesus Christ. But if this fullness of the Holy Spirit is based on keeping the minute commands of God, I am going to have to throw in the towel right now. I can't even remember all of His commands, much less keep them all."
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The exciting and amazing thing is that you need not get hung up in total frustration. No one can remember all the commands of God. The more you know, the better off you are because His commands are not geared to spoiling your life. They are given to free you to a much more productive, happy style of living.
The commands of God, as numerous as they are, boil down to one basic commandment that has two offshoots. The Apostle John states it succinctly in 1 John 3:23: "And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us."
When Jesus was confronted with the multiplicity of biblical commands, He rolled them all together into this two-fold principle.
One is the vertical, "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." The other is the horizontal, ". . . and love thy neighbor as thyself."
The first principle is that of faith.
This involves the constant looking to Jesus Christ for continuous direction. The believer himself is spiritually dead. You and I cannot be self-improved. You and I need to be born again by His Holy Spirit. You and I need to be directed by Him. You and I need to draw upon Jesus Christ on a daily basis. He let us know that apart from Him, we can do nothing. He has told us that "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." The most beautifully prepared sermon means nothing unless it is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. The most carefully designed life amounts to nothing unless it is touched by the Holy Spirit. And this empowering is not a once-and-for-all thing.
For example, take two clocks. One is battery driven. It works well for a while. Finally, the source of energy wears out.
I learned that the hard way when I was a pastor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, the clock in the pulpit was battery run. One Sunday it ran down in the middle of the sermon. If you think I preach long now, you were fortunate not to have been there that Sunday morning. I preached at least fifteen minutes longer than I usually do. How embarrassing! What stopped me was hearing the bells of the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral next door.
