Abiding: Prayer

Week 1: Overview

John 15:4–5 ESV

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Week 2: God’s Word

1 John 2:4–6 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

What do I need to know?

What is abiding

“Nothing” means nothing of eternal value. You can only achieve this meaningless temporary success that will have zero value for all of eternity.

Why do I care?

What do I do?

Intro

Well if I have not gotten to meet you yet, my name is Aaron and I get to work here at the grove which is pretty cool. I get to hangout with middle and high school students all the time. Like the Christmas party we had a week ago.

Who went? How amazing was it?

Well as most of you know, I’m in college right now and all my friends are also in college. But unfortunately they go to colleges all over the United States. I even have one friend named Mason that spent this last semester all the way in London for his college.

Me and Mason are really good friends and very close. In fact, he was actually my roommate last year in college, so we were together all year long.

And because I care about him so much even though he was in London I still talked to him all the time. I would call him whenever I was driving and catch up about how life was in England.

We would play Fortnite together and text all the time, and we would send each other a lot funny videos.

So naturally we stayed really close friends this entire semester even though I didn’t see him even once.

Well he got home from London last week and we hung out with some of our closest friends and it didn’t feel like I hadn’t seen him in months at all. It felt like no time had passed and we were just as close as before he left.

We were only able to maintain this level of friendship because of how often we talked and how meaningful our conversations were.

Abiding

Well for the past two weeks we’ve been talking about a similar idea to this called abiding.

Jesus tells His followers to abide in Him, which means to truly live out a personal relationship with Jesus. And this personal relationship with Jesus is what actually saves you and what actually makes you a Christian.

You’re not a Christian because you go to church. Going to church can never get you into Heaven.

You’re not even a Christian if you simply think “yea God is real,” but you never acknowledge Him or have a real and personal relationship with Him.

And Jesus says this so clearly. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is teaching to a huge crowd of thousands of people and He basically says there is going to be a lot of people that when they die and meet Jesus, expect to get in to Heaven. And they’re like, “look at all the good things I’ve done.”

For us today this would be like us facing Jesus and being like, “I went to Church every single Sunday and I prayed before I went to bed at night.” And we expect that because we did those things we’ll get into Heaven, but Jesus’ response is so the opposite. This is what the Bible says His response will be to anyone who thinks they can get into Heaven because they did the right things,

Matthew 7:23 ESV

And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

He says, “I never knew you.” “I never had a relationship with you.” Jesus is like, “Dude, I’ve been right here this whole time and instead of being in a relationship with me, you thought you could earn your way to Heaven by doing what you think is right.

And He says “Oh no my child. You have missed the point entirely. You don’t even understand what I asked of you. I never wanted you to be someone who just went to Church. I never wanted you to be someone who only talked to me every once in while. I wanted you to be in a real and authentic relationship with me.”

This verse is oftentimes called the scariest verse in the Bible because so many people don’t realize that Christianity is not about going to church, it’s not about saying a prayer before you go to bed at night. Don’t get me wrong these are great things and you should do them, but hear this. Going to Church cannot get you into Heaven and simply saying a prayer at night can never save you from your sin.

Jesus says the only thing that can save you from Hell is a real and personal relationship with Him. And He calls this abiding. And he uses the imagery of a branch and a vine that just like this branch is totally connected to this tree and they are completely together. That is how we are supposed to be with Jesus. He says that this is the only thing that can save us from our own sin and from Hell.

Transition

For some of you, this is the first time you are hearing that your Church attendance cannot save you. And you need to know that because Jesus doesn’t want you to go your whole life thinking that you’re saved because you go to church or you were raised in a Christian family only to be turned away from Heaven because you never had a real relationship with Him.

For others of you, you have heard this before and you know that Jesus says to abide in Him.

But here’s my question for you. Do you just know this is true and understand it or is this a reality in your life? In other words, is abiding up here or is it down here? Can you honestly say that you are experiencing abiding in your life and your walk with Jesus?

And if not do you realize that Jesus says you cannot do anything of significance without Him.

Do you realize that Jesus says it is impossible, completely absolutely impossible to live a fruitful life with joy and peace and love without Him.

But you have to get this. If you hear nothing else today you must hear this. Abiding is not about checking the boxes like reading your Bible or praying.

Abiding is not a to-do list of things. It’s not like, “yep I read my Bible today and I prayed twice and I talked to somebody about Jesus. I’m abiding.”

No because guess what. You listen to your school teachers 5 days a week every single week. And you talk to them every class and you talk to them in the hallway, but you are not best friends with your teacher. You do not know them personally.

In the very same way you can read your Bible 5 days a week and you can pray everyday. But if you don’t really build a relationship with Jesus you will not be saved. It is really that simple. And that should be scary because so many people do this.

Get this, if you read your Bible just to read your Bible, but you don’t actually take anything away from your reading and you’re not changed as a person. That’s not abiding. That’s checking it off your to-do list.

And if you pray just because your parents or your pastor tells you to pray, but all you do is ask God for things in your life. That’s not abiding. That’s checking it off your to-do list.

Abiding is not about checking things off a to-do list.

Scripture

Now we know what is not abiding, so then what is abiding.

Last week we talked about how to abide in God’s word which is the Bible. This week were talking about How we abide in Jesus through prayer. And the verse is super simple today.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 ESV

pray without ceasing,

Ceasing means stopping. So Jesus is saying pray without stopping. Pray endlessly.

This is how we are supposed to live our life, in constant prayer. We should be so close to Jesus that we are always with Him. Always talking to Him. Whether that’s in your head or out loud, whatever it is we should always be with Jesus.

Exactly like this branch is always with this tree. They are never separated.

Application

So when you’re in the car you’re thinking about Jesus and your talking to Jesus. And when you’re in school you’re thinking about Jesus and you’re talking to Jesus.

But get this. Prayer is not just about asking God for things. Its not like, “God help me grow 8 inches so I can be good at basketball.” or “God give me the grades that I really want.”

Just like if the only time I talked to you I just asked you for things. Me and you would not be very close friends if i just asked you “hey can you go grab that thing for me. or can you help me with my math homework.”

We know that is not how you have a friendship and yet for some reason we treat God this way and think that God’s only as good as what He gives to me.

The way we abide with Jesus and the way we pray without ceasing is by talking to Jesus about the things that we would only talk about with our closest most trusted friends.

Just like me and my friend Mason had real and deep conversations about what was going on in our lives. We need to be having these conversations with Jesus.

And when we ask Him for things, they shouldn’t just be selfish requests based on what we want. They should be like, “Jesus help me follow you better. Lord, help me understand your word better.”

Our prayers should not be so selfish, because you wouldn’t even talk to your human friend like that.