By Lisa Groen
John 15:4 in the ESV says, “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.”
Certainly, there are reasons God calls the believer to Himself for intimacy. As we live our daily lives, and think about our relationship with God, it seems apparent that people are designed by God for relational intimacy. We see intimacy within families, with friendships, with romance, with relationships in which one party must sacrifice or is called to serve others putting their own needs below the needs of those they serve. As a long-time church attender I have seen different aspects of intimacy with God play out in the lives and testimonies of those in attendance in several of the churches I have visited. One aspect of that intimacy with God that the Bible speaks of between the believer and Christ Himself stems directly from John 15:4 which is the Christian call to abide in Him.
What is the definition of abide? The word in the Greek for the word abide in John 15:4 is “meno”. The definition is “to stay, or remain”. The usage of this word in Biblical times was commonly “I remain, abide, stay, wait; I wait for, or I await.”
For a Christian who seems to think it is better that he busy himself or herself with church functions such as going to church potlucks or clean-ups, craft shows, or movie nights rather than waiting on or abiding in God we can challenge those temptations that are so common to us with the truth of John 15:4. I have personally observed the attendance at church potlucks, clean-ups, and craft shows among most churches are quite regularly higher than most of the same churches’ prayer meetings. Fellowshipping with other Christians is without a doubt of high importance for a believer, but if the whole of our free time after our families and jobs are only about giving time to church social events rather than spending time getting to know God, we have to ask ourselves, am I getting to know God, or only His people? The poignant reality of the definition of eternal life is found in John 17:3 NIV which says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
A very basic reason Christ died on the cross is to help God’s people to know Christ and to know God. Isn’t this the reason The Father sent Christ to earth? Knowing God is the very definition of eternal life itself! This is what we will be doing and growing in for the whole of eternity. Intimacy with God and knowing God will unfold for us one day at a time, and we will be more and more filled with the knowledge of God day after day and it will never get old!
Now by personal experience I have observed that many of our church prayer meetings seem to be filled with respectable, pleasant and honorable Christians attending the prayer meeting to say thanks to God for quite a few things and then jumping right to the long prayer request list. But personally, if we can objectively think about this approach, if a wife or husband were to approach the spouse and say to them “thank you for this and that…and would you do the next 50 things that I and my friends would like to see you do?” And they make it a sure a regular habit to properly rush through the long prayer request list very much like a speed reader would do in order to be a good steward of their time and to not bore the people who are listening so they can cover the most bases and quickly get through the entire large dry sterile tasting mountain of prayer requests, adding a few thank yous here and there….One has to ask if we experience intimacy with God by speed-praying covering something like a long task list of needs, in order to make the most “progress” through our mountains of lists, have we left any room to LISTEN to God? Does anyone LISTEN to God anymore as we pray? Have we resigned our relational God who is the author and creator of relational intimacy to fulfill a mere role of butler and bellhop–errand boy and to the role of prayer request fulfillment technician or have we forgotten that our relational God who is the author and creator of every healthy intimate relationship possible is the God we are praying to? Do we put on the back burner the truth that His sheep hear His voice? Not just that He hears OUR voice?!
Now to the human familiar with earthly habits, one common way to get to know a person is to stay at their house talking with and observing the one you would like to get to know, and God interestingly offers the same kind of approach we earthlings can take with drawing near to our Heavenly Lord and obtain the results of a growing intimacy with Christ and with God.
Through observing church goers over the years, it has become apparent to me that intimacy with God is not found in the loudness of music, nor in the loudness of the praying. It is not found in rushing our prayers, or in rushing our preaching getting the most words in within the time limit because we have to end the church service on time, because the second service has GOT to start on time AND END on time! Intimacy with God is not found primarily in some kind of sense-oriented ecstatic experience, although God can draw his people near to Him and allow sense-oriented experiences of Him.
From Biblical and personal examples for the church attender, we can see that those with a developed intimacy with God can grow in intimacy with God by reading in His Word about His historical actions, what He defends and fights against, His ordinances and decrees, His ways of relating to His people, and other Biblical messages such as in the poetic scripture books, finding out the things that please Him. Another big part of getting to know God is to observe how God carries out His answers to our prayers, and by what we can see of his Sovereignty in the news, in secular history, and in how He handles as a Heavenly Father the lives and circumstances of our Christian brothers and sisters both peripheral and central to our daily lives.
Even beyond these ways that we can observe God objectively through his word and through looking for the things that please Him or anger Him in scripture and noting His responses to the circumstances of our Christian brothers and sisters around us, we must note God is also a personal God–for us. Although the world around us speaks of God objectively, I believe though the witness in scripture of the first institution of God which was put in place by Him of Adam and Eve, a husband and wife, and then the next institution of God put in place called the family, are without a doubt a clear testimony that God continues to speak to show us down through the millennia, that people can know Christ intimately and subjectively, the way family members are set up to know one another.
Without a doubt people are allowed to be in relationships with discernable individual experiences of one another and this speaks of how we can know God in subjective and individual ways. Life and intimacy exist among human beings the way that it does because we are made in the image of a God who lives within intimacy within the 3 persons of the Godhead all of which can be known by His people with the same manner of intimacy even if it is not the full or perfect level of intimacy experienced by the 3 persons of the Godhead. This is a much better intimacy we have been made in the image of God for only than by knowing this God by mere common convention ideology or seeing His ways from afar.
Personal experience or subjective encounters with what seems to be God should never be taken as grounds to set aside what can be known about God objectively through His written word.
In part 2 of this series, we will cover common responses of people in the church in New Testament times that stem from them having one or more encounters with God that they take to be a kind of conviction to give them grounds to set aside what can be known about God in His written word. And that is where the danger begins! This gives insight into the importance again of admonition Jesus gave of John 15:4 of “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.”
Until next time,
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