If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. John 15:7
Every time I hear the word abide, I can’t help but singing the old hymn, Abide With Me, simply because like so many words it’s not used very often anymore. Yet in this one chapter of John it’s used at least 8 times! When a word or phrase is used that many times in the Bible, especially in one chapter, it should give us pause to focus on it. It’s like God saying, this is important, take notice! The modern definition is quite different from the biblical one and from the earlly 1900’s. In Greek it is the word meno, which has several facets of meaning; to continue, to dwell, to lodge, to rest, settle, endure, to continue unchanged, to wait, close and settled union, to persevere, to survive, to be permanent Then apply those meanings to today’s verse and we see that abiding is a very active word, or as verb means an action word.
In today’s verse abide is a present imperative verb, which is an on going action. It’s a word picture of us getting closer and closer to God and in this case, through His Word. Rabbinic tradition has a saying that every word of Scripture has 70 faces and 600,000 meanings. It’s like a faceted diamond that when light hits it and it’s turned it reflects the light with beautiful colors and shapes, just like the many definitions of this beautiful word. When we have His word in us and we get into God’s presence His Light hits it and it explodes in new meaning and we get a clearer picture of what He is trying to tell us. It becomes a cyclical, never ending connection of us getting into God’s Word and the Word getting into us, deeper and deeper and transforming us from the inside out.
It is in this meshing that it becomes apparent that God never intended His Word to just be read like a book for information and entertainment. Many times throughout Scripture are we told to mediatate on His Word, to keep it in our hearts and to declare it. We are told in Psalms 34 and 119 to taste the Word of God. To drive this point, Jewish tradition is that on the first day of synagogue school the Rabbi covers each students slate with honey and are told to lick the slate as they repeat, ” How sweet are Your words to my taste!” Psalm 119:103. Each child learned that the Word of God is sweeter than anything else, it truly is the land of milk and honey. It is an experience that literally shows how important it is to get God’s Word inside of you and it is so sweet and nourishing you will keep wanting more and more. It’s about making it personal to each one of us.
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