I want to suggest to you today, that your eternal destiny depends on if you are abiding in God today. Now let’s be clear – we are saved by grace alone. Your abiding doesn’t save you or provide you any merit. Abiding can’t get you saved or add to your salvation but NOT abiding can get you lost.
Take a look at John 8:31-32. This is an invitation to abide but what happens if we reverse this promise? If you don’t abide you can’t be a disciple and you won’t know the truth and then you won’t be…. what? Free.
Same with John 15:4-7. Reverse it: if you don’t abide you won’t bear fruit; won’t be with God but be cast out. If you’re not abiding, God’s words won’t abide in you.
Again, he has saved us by his grace. However, if you don’t abide in him, and he’s not abiding in you, he can’t heal your brokenness; you won’t take his hand as he tries to lead you home.
We need God to take us by the hand because if he doesn’t, something else will. If you do a search in the Bible on the phrase “by the hand” you’ll notice that when people reject God’s hand and from his love he gives us what we want, someone else – someone evil and bent on our enslavement and destruction – takes God’s place.
If you want evidence of this, look to Jesus on the cross. Burdened with our sins that black out his connection to Eternal One-Father and Eternal One-Spirit he experiences the ultimate reversal of abiding; he is torn from the father’s hand, and he cries out in agony, totally God-forsaken. He bore that burden to demonstrate the love of God and the horror of sin – anti-abiding.
Jesus experienced the loss of abiding with the Father; he experienced being torn from the Father’s hand – so you don’t have to. So please, today, hear his plea – abide with him.