"If..continue in my Word ..." continued

The essence  of being a Christian is having a relationship with God. All else follows from that. It is not first and foremost about being or doing good, it is about knowing Him.  In John 17:3 Jesus tells us “This is eternal (and so abundant) life,  to know the One True God..”.  But He is not interested in a one night stand, He is interested in relationship.  You can think of this as the feminine face of God if you like.  This is His desire and, if we would but know it, our “exceedingly great reward”.  This being the case, He has built into the fabric of the (fallen) universe aids to draw us into, and help us to stay in, relationship (see “ A cursed earth and the laws of sowing and reaping”).  When we turn to our own way and find ourselves in bondage for example, He builds “process” into the part we must play in receiving His solution. So He makes freedom (our desire) contingent not simply on a one time decision to believe (though we do have to start the process),  but on -  on going continuation in His Word.    So then the freedom He promises (see the last post),  is also progressive. We don't get it all at once. It comes little by little as we enter into relationship with Him, and learn to claim and appropriate the "land" of His promises.

He knows us well enough to know that if freedom came instantly and fully,  we would far too easily throw it away again and return to our bondage. The scripture pictures this as a dog, after being cleaned up, returning to its vomit. In fact for many of us, this is an accurate description of our journey.  His solution is the process of allowing Him to “put to death the deeds and the desires” of our perverse fallen nature. In a wonderfully helpful book (Transformation of the inner man), John and Paula Sandford  put it this way “We may need to fail over and over, until we can no longer stand not to die”. Part of this of course is that there are consequences to our choices, and they are usually extremely painful.

When we “continue in His Word” the way that He intends for us to do, we learn to come to Him quickly when we fall (it speeds up the process of becoming free). We discover that our God is gracious and full of mercy,  and (when we confess and return to Him), He will not only forgive us but cleanse us from it all. This is not the form of “Christianity” that like much of the rest of the world,  wears masks and pretends that everything is okay when it is not. It is the kind of Christianity where we are real with each other, where we find a safe place to “confess our faults one to another” and so receive the promise that when we do this,  we will be (progressively) healed (James 5:16).

As we continue in this way, one of the things that will slowly but surely start to sink in,  is that the Scriptures also bring us wisdom,  encouragement and comfort.  In and through the Scriptures, we learn how to stay connected to the One who is our “exceedingly great reward”.  They show us the part that we need to play in  tapping into the strength He wants to give us to live this difficult life in the here and now.  Those of us who are seeking to follow and appropriate the promises of God will tell you that the ways of God are not only good and right and proper, they are smart. They do indeed lead us out of bondage and into freedom.  But there is so much more. There is in relationship with Him,  there is joy and peace and love and hope and grace and the wherewithal to be all that He created us to be. You even get to like yourself. All this if we will but set our hearts,  with His help,  to continue. 

There is one last reason we need to set our hearts to continue, and that is,  as Jesus puts it, we do not “immediately desire the new wine for we says the old is better”. In other words there are times when perversely we still want the old ways. It is a little bit like the devil we know is familiar,  and at some level there is comfort in that (see “Do you want to be made whole”). It is like there is a barrier that we need to get through,  that only persistence and time (and God) will take us through. 

So these then are the reasons why it is important to set our hears and wills to continue. It is in many ways a battle.  However, when with His help and Bible help we do continue we will become progressively free.  It will be easier if we keep examples in our life of those who, in continuing,  are escaping the corruption of the lusts of this world.  Fellowship with His people is also important.