Abide in Me

⁴ Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so 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, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

                                                                   -John 15:4-5


   This year, instead of making a list of resolutions that I won't keep, I decided to choose a word that correlates with a verse to use as my 'word of the year'. Can you guess what it is? Yes, it's 'Abide'! God really laid this concept on my heart last month, as He took me through a cleansing process. He brought me to a place where I saw myself as I am, and showed me that as long as I tried to make myself holy, I would fail, but if I let Him mold me, then I could gain even greater ground. At first it was hard for me to understand how doing nothing could accomplish anything, but then He showed me that I could do something, I could simply abide in Him. So this is my goal this year: to learn to abide in Christ every moment of every day. I have found that listening to an audio bible as I clean my room or do laundry is a very practical way to accomplish this. (here is the one I listen to online) There are a lot of verses that come to life when you hear them compared to simply reading them. Another way that I'm working on, is choosing a verse or quote to meditate on if I have some mental down time, such as while I'm doing laundry or sweeping the floor, and you can't beat prayer as a way to stay close to God. I would love to hear some of your thoughts on this, and if you have any ideas for practically living out the call to abide in Christ I would love for you to share them!