My Job is to Abide…

 I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.—John 5:30

Oh, to live this way!  Completely and utterly submitted to the will of my Father in Heaven. No agenda but His!  No desires but His alone!  Truly, when I examine my life in the light of Jesus’ complete and utter submission to the Father, the ONLY thing I see is my own utter and abject failure to do this.  What’s worse, when I really allow His Spirit to search my heart in this, I don’t even find a sincere desire to completely submit because in completing submitting, I disturb “my” world and risk losing it all.  

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.—Romans 7:24-25

And therein is the reason that I am thankful that it is God who works in me both to “will” and to “do” for His good pleasure.  He knows my frame…He knows that in me nothing good dwells.  He knows my hidden agendas and my wrong desires. He died for me anyway.  He will complete the good work He started in me.  My job is to abide. 

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.—John 15:4-5

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.—2 Corinthians 3:18

Beloved…

'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,'

Says the LORD of hosts.