Isaiah 27:2-3 “In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it day and night.”
The second objection that we hear quite often has to do with our sinfulness. Christians are so used to looking at sinning as something that we do daily because it is inevitable that we cannot keep up an abiding fellowship with Jesus, so we must sometimes be unfaithful and fail.
As if it was not just because we have a nature that is nothing but a fountain of sin that abiding in Jesus has been ordained for us as our only, and sufficient, deliverance. As if it was not the living, loving Jesus in whom we have to abide, and whose power it is to hold us fast is the measure of our expectations. As if He would give us the command “Abide in me” without also giving us the grace and the power to enable us to perform it. Above all, as if we did not have the Father as the Husbandman to keep us from falling. If we would just look to our God as the Keeper of Israel, of whom it is said “The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul” we will learn to believe that abiding in Jesus every moment, night and day, is what God has prepared for that love Him.
Do not let anything less than this be your goal. It might not be easy to attain, there might even be struggle and failure that you go through. If the church was what it should be, if older believers were to younger believers what they should be: witnesses of God’s faithfulness like Caleb and Joshua, encouraging their brothers to go up and possess the land with their “we are well able to overcome . . . if the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land” (Number 13:30; 14:8). If this was the attitude that the young believers breathe as they enter the fellowship of the saints, that of a healthy, trustful, joyful consecration; abiding in Jesus would come as the natural outgrowth of being in Him. But in the sickly state that the majority of the body is in, souls that want to abide in Jesus are hindered by the depressing influence of the thought and the life around them. I am not trying to discourage you, I am warning and urging you to throw yourself on the Word of God. There might be more than one time when you are ready to give up, but be of good courage. Mark 5:36 “Only believe.” The One that has put the blessing in your reach will also lead you to possess it.
Keep your heart set on the promise: “I the Lord do keep it . . . night and day.” In this word you have the law of His love and the law of your hope. Do not be satisfied with anything less. Take the language of faith to be the rule of your daily experience. I am persuaded that neither death with its fears, nor life with its cares, not things present with all their claims, nor things to come with their dark shadows, not height, nor depth of sorrow, nor any other creature, will be able, for one single moment to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and in which He is teaching me to abide (Rom 8:38-39).
If things look dark and your faith seems to fail, sing the song of the vineyard “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” And rest assured that if Jehovah keeps the branch night and day and waters it every moment, a life of continuous and unbroken fellowship with Jesus is our privilege!
Dale
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