Hi all,
I like this thread because it is such a personal one. Our religion is to be a personal one between us and God and we as a people seem to have forgotten it for a long time.
How can each of us abide? I think this is different for each of us personally. The principles will all be the same to guide each of us, but since each of us have different needs, personalities, characters, etc... this is the reason it is so hard to say exactly what abiding is.
To me, it is an attitude. An attitude that is born of a desire to be like Jesus and my knowledge of my inadequacy in being like Him using my own devices. As I study His life and Word I see Somebody who is so much greater than I. By this I do not mean size and power wise, even though these are very true also, but someone who is so much greater than I in moral goodness and worth.
I read something the other day that has really stuck with me. "In order to be the most total human you're capable of you must serve something other than yourself."
It is this that I see in Jesus, He lived only for something other than Himself.
Here is what draws us to Him and makes us desire to emulate Him, for in Jesus we see someone interested in us more than in Himself.
This attitude, the desire to serve something other than myself, leads me spend my time with Someone who I have learned to trust by trial and error, and by seeing who He is by the example of His life in His Word. This desire, leads me to where prayer, my communication to Him, becomes as Ellen White so beautifully puts it, the breath of my soul. Meaning that without this constant communication my life becomes empty and meaningless.
I shrivel with out this communication, from me to Him in prayer, and from Him to me in His word and the lessons taught to me by the Spirit through other people and the lessons of nature.
This to me is abiding. It is seeing the loveliness of the character of Jesus and longing with intensity to be like Him, for then my actions will follow my desires and my time will be spent with Him.
YOur brother in Christ, Gary
[This message has been edited by Gary K (edited 03-20-2000).]