"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full."
John15: 9-11
One today could see Jesus' call to obedience and immediately recoil at his words. For many us, we are so ashamed at how little we obey. We read a verse like this and retreat into a state of shame and despondency. We think, "Yes, he has loved me so much and yet I have obeyed so little. What kind of follower am I? Do I really even know Jesus?" And so we try to obey more but continue to fail. Believer, how deceived you have been by yourself and by the enemy of your soul. The problem is not that you do not obey, but that you have not truly experienced the Father's love through Jesus. You should leave from reading Jesus' words in this chapter with one thought, "I must love Jesus. I must abide in his love." That is all there is. Paul echoes this is 1 Corinthians 13 that if has not love, everything else is nothing.
For you, does not obedience exist as a limitation and restraint of your freedom? Has not the culture today conditioned you to think of obedience and submission in this way? When Jesus calls for obedience, you immediate think he is trying to limit your freedom and so you recoil and either stiffen your neck or become ashamed at your disobedience. Step back for a moment and look at the above verses. Obedience is tied together with love and joy, in fact it is sandwiched between the two. This then must be a different obedience than the one you have in your mind since the obedience in your mind is not connected with love and joy. Here we find the root of our problem with obedience. There is a beautiful interaction, an interplay between love, obedience, and joy that Jesus is bringing to life for us. See how he lived out his words: Love flows from the Father to Jesus and from Jesus to us and he showed us his love by laying his life down for us and and now he experiences joy as the fruit of his obedience. Would you follow him in this exact same way? Would you behold and experience the love of the Father through Jesus Christ until it becomes the motive for obedience and then enjoy the fruit of joy that appears afterwards. This is what it means to follow Jesus. How complicated the church has made following Jesus, adding to it things that were never meant to be added. If you're not really following him this simple way of love flowing into obedience flowing into joy, then today is the day.
Love has come from the Father to Jesus and from Jesus to you. Come before Jesus and ask him, "Let me know the love of the Father." Cry out to him from your heart. When your heart cries out to him in honest yearning, he turns to hear you. Turn your heart to him and say, "I want your love to be alive to my soul. I want to abide in it. I want it to be the air that I breathe. I want to want to obey and I know that once I have experienced your love, I will long to obey you. And in obeying you, dying to myself just like you did, I will be brought into the utter joy of being in your presence." Love in its' living way will flow through your heart and breathe out obedience which will bring forth the fruit of joy. This fruit is for you to eat and more leftover for those around you. And then it will be natural for you to lead others down the same road you traveled. They will have tasted the fruit and you will merely be showing them where it came from. The Father's love is the source. You can say, "I know the way to joy and it is through experiencing the love of the Father through Jesus Christ." Dying to yourself is painful but the love of the Father is the motivation, obedience is the practical walking out of that love, and joy is the fruit. It is fruit for you and fruit for others.
Love has come from the Father to Jesus and from Jesus to you. Come before Jesus and ask him, "Let me know the love of the Father." Cry out to him from your heart. When your heart cries out to him in honest yearning, he turns to hear you. Turn your heart to him and say, "I want your love to be alive to my soul. I want to abide in it. I want it to be the air that I breathe. I want to want to obey and I know that once I have experienced your love, I will long to obey you. And in obeying you, dying to myself just like you did, I will be brought into the utter joy of being in your presence." Love in its' living way will flow through your heart and breathe out obedience which will bring forth the fruit of joy. This fruit is for you to eat and more leftover for those around you. And then it will be natural for you to lead others down the same road you traveled. They will have tasted the fruit and you will merely be showing them where it came from. The Father's love is the source. You can say, "I know the way to joy and it is through experiencing the love of the Father through Jesus Christ." Dying to yourself is painful but the love of the Father is the motivation, obedience is the practical walking out of that love, and joy is the fruit. It is fruit for you and fruit for others.
Do not recoil because Jesus calls you to obedience, thinking that it limits your freedom. That is a crafty lie form the enemy. If there were no laws in a country, its' citizens would devolve into chaos. Imagine no laws against stealing and killing and no traffic laws. That would not bring freedom. And so you can see how the laws of our country actually create an environment for freedom. But not just any laws create an environment for freedom; it's the right laws, the right limitations. Jesus is actually extending you freedom through these verses by giving you the right law: the law of the Father's love, embraced and lived out in obedience, bearing the natural fruit of joy. This is something living and beautiful. Shed the garments of shame that you are wearing because of your disobedience. Go to Jesus and do you know what? The Creator of the all things waits for you to shower his love on you, to wash your feet, to wipe your tears, to speak courage into the bottom of your heart, and to have you experience in a very real way: You are loved. As you abide his love more and more each day, you will find strength to walk in obedience. Stretch yourself in this way. If you find yourself struggling to obey in a situation, go to the Father and ask him to show you his love and make it real to you. Cry out to him from your heart and know that he hears you and will answer in his time. When you finally begin to obey on a daily basis, the fruit of joy will begin to appear on your branches.
The overarching theme of these verses is Jesus' desire for you to abide in his love. Would you continue trying to follow Jesus in a different way than abiding in his love, obeying as the overflow of that love, and experiencing the joy of his presence in your life? Jesus says to your heart today, "I long for you to abide in my love. I made you, I know you, and I love you. Abide in my love." What is your response? The ball is in your court. Every day you wake up and again Jesus says to you,
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full."
What is your response? He asks not for the assent of your mind or the nod of your heard. He asks for the casting of your complete being upon him. Either you will give it or you will not. He offers his love to you in the complete humility and naked vulnerability of a man naked and covered in your sin and hanging on the branches of a tree. That man says to your heart with the utmost fierceness and tenderness mixed together, "Abide in my love." Will you cast your complete being upon him? Will you begin engaging with his love and taking him seriously. He will do the work of changing you and transforming you and he will do it by revealing to you his love in a real way, overflowing into obedience by engaging the present moment with his love, and bringing forth the fruit of joy which will be tangibly sweet to both you and others. Our lives will change dramatically in the best of ways if we will submit to the right law, the law of Jesus' love, one day at a time. Today is our day to start. Step one: relentlessly pursue a real revelation of the Father's love in your life through Jesus.
The overarching theme of these verses is Jesus' desire for you to abide in his love. Would you continue trying to follow Jesus in a different way than abiding in his love, obeying as the overflow of that love, and experiencing the joy of his presence in your life? Jesus says to your heart today, "I long for you to abide in my love. I made you, I know you, and I love you. Abide in my love." What is your response? The ball is in your court. Every day you wake up and again Jesus says to you,
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full."
What is your response? He asks not for the assent of your mind or the nod of your heard. He asks for the casting of your complete being upon him. Either you will give it or you will not. He offers his love to you in the complete humility and naked vulnerability of a man naked and covered in your sin and hanging on the branches of a tree. That man says to your heart with the utmost fierceness and tenderness mixed together, "Abide in my love." Will you cast your complete being upon him? Will you begin engaging with his love and taking him seriously. He will do the work of changing you and transforming you and he will do it by revealing to you his love in a real way, overflowing into obedience by engaging the present moment with his love, and bringing forth the fruit of joy which will be tangibly sweet to both you and others. Our lives will change dramatically in the best of ways if we will submit to the right law, the law of Jesus' love, one day at a time. Today is our day to start. Step one: relentlessly pursue a real revelation of the Father's love in your life through Jesus.
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