Houses change, but home never does. No matter our circumstances, God is always with us. But… we must also choose to be with Him.
This past Saturday marked two weeks since Charity and I have been in our new house. It has been a busy time of transition and change. Disruptive in some ways.
While we have changed houses, our home hasn’t. Houses change, but home never does.
This isn’t to say that our transition has been easy. Change is hard for me in particular. I get used to having a certain rhythm and schedule, knowing this is here and that there. Moving and uprooting your life is disruptive whether the move is 3 miles or 3,000 miles. Charity and I are still unpacking boxes.
These past two weeks have been long for us. But, despite being in a new house, our home isn’t new.
After the last supper, Jesus begins to prepare His disciples for His departure. At one point, He tells them, “Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them, and We will come to them and make Our home with them” (John 14v23).
The word Jesus uses that we translate as home is monē—a noun meaning “an abiding, an abode.” It comes from the primary verb menō meaning “to stay, abide, remain.”
Just moments later, Jesus uses menō 11 times in 10 verses. He describes Himself as a vine, His Father as a gardener and us as branches.
In the last two verses of this 10-verse section, He says, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commands and remain in His love.” (John 15v9-10).
Jesus tells us, He commands us to stay in Him. To abide in Him. To remain in Him.
Another way to put it would be to make our home in Him.
As followers of Jesus, we are to make our home with our Father. Every moment of every day we are to go out from the Father and come back to the Father. He is to be our home. Jesus’s love is to be our resting place.
Abiding is central to following Jesus. And it’s not optional. Jesus says, “Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the Vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15v4-5, my emphasis).
To live the kind of life that Jesus offers and bear the kind of fruit that pleases the Father, we must be people who abide in Jesus. This means living and walking in the Spirit as Paul later writes in Galatians 5 when he expounds on Jesus’s teaching found in John 15.
I don’t have all the answers on how to do this or what it looks like. But, as I said, as Jesus said, it’s not optional. All I know is that I want to become like Jesus and do what He did and that means I must be with Him. And the only way to be with Jesus is to abide, to walk and live in the Spirit. I’m learning to practice the way of Jesus, to take on the disciplines and yoke that He carried.
I will spend the rest of my life learning to abide, to make my home with the Father.
And there’s no other way I would rather spend it.
Because no matter what change, transition or disruption comes my way, I will always be at home. All because my home is with my Father, with the Spirit, with my Jesus.
And He is with me always. He is always for me. His love is always on me.
I just have to choose to be with Him. I have to choose to live in His love.
And that’s a learning process. One that I’m on and will be for the rest of my life.
I invite you into this learning process too. It’s never too late or early to begin learning to abide and live in the Father’s love.
Author:
Hi, I’m Keagan! Some of my friends call me “Keags” though! My wife, Charity, is the C to my K. I am loved by Jesus and am in love with Jesus! I am passionate about others fully knowing and loving Jesus and living life in His unforced rhythms of grace. Read more of my writing here.
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