Do you ever just have one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments? Your sitting there just marinating on all thats going on around you and BOOM it hits you like its news you’ve never received before. Yeah we all have, but this one in particular was a start to something very powerful, meaningful and life changing for myself.
Squad leading is something that has terrified me from the first mention of it actually happening. Thats initially what pushed me to pursue it because I knew that the Lord would stretch me and mold me in ways that I couldn’t reach any other way. So as I sat in the training day after day I began to feel a little defeated. I began to listen to the exact lies that the enemy wanted to place upon me. Was I good enough? Can I really lead these people well? How can I lead when I’m still a wreck myself? As I sat with my leadership team I shared my vulnerability of how hard the week had been and how defeated I was feeling and thats when it happened.
The light bulb clicked on. The boom rang loud and clear.
“Why do we make it harder than it has to be? Why do we insist on being miserable? Why do we think that it ALWAYS has to be uncomfortable?”
If you’re wondering what the answer is here it is plain and simple, it doesn’t. How many times in life are we so captured by everything happening around us and so swooped up by all the emotions and all the hard things that we forget the one true thing that really matters. How often do we get sucked into the victim mentality of everything is happening to me, instead of walking in freedom and affecting everything around us.
ABIDE
One small 5 letter word that holds so much power and truth. So much stems from this word. Abide is to dwell, dwell is to inhabit-live in. If we are truly living by this word, if we are taking it for its every meaning, nothing else would ever matter.
I want to take a moment to speak over all of you what I had the opportunity to speak over Asquad this past weekend. As you read the passage I want each of you to let each word speak to you, to relish in the words, let them cover you and sink into your heart. I want you to live by these words, because its time we start living by the standards of the living word rather than just reading them and saying we know them. We can know a lot, but it itsn’t until you’re living them out that you are truly walking in obedience and living out the Kingdom and the life you were called to.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
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.
If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
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.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command.
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.
Instead, I have called you friends,(WOW)
for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you (COME ON)
and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
This is my command: Love each other.
-John 15:1-17
If we are abiding everything else is an overflow. He is in us, we in Him. I pray that we all learn to truly abide.
