IN ME

By Rick Mathes

John 15:4 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.

The parable of the vine illustrates our attachment to the Lord. Let me illustrate my experience. My birth-father was killed in WWII, my mother soon remarried and with a name change and step-brothers and sisters from my step-fathers 3 previous wives I began a new life. The one thing that couldn’t be exchanged to this new family was my real-father’s blood that ran through my veins; no one could take that away from me not even me. So it is when you are born again. The Holy Spirit runs through your arteries to your new heart and it cannot be removed or exchange for another spirit. You have a new “Abba” now!

Here is a brief word study on what you can find in Him:

• Joy: happiness, gladness, bliss, gusto, zest, exuberance, and euphoria.
• Love: fondness, tenderness, attachment, devotion, loyalty and respect.
• Knowledge: cognition, gnosis, perception, grasp, mastery and foresight.
• Persecution: chastisement, discipline, shame, degrading, and downgrading.
• Rights: birthright, prerogative, privilege, authority, and entitlement.
• Works: deeds, action, achievement, effort, measure, and performance.
• Glory: praise, honor, extolment, commendation, adulation, and tribute.

Here is a brief word study on what you will find that is not in a believer:

• Jealousy: resentment, ill will, bitterness, hostility, greed and rivalry.
• Ambition: reason, motive, impetus, ideal, aspiration, and driving force.
• Selfishness: self-interest, egotism, self-centeredness, and ego trip.
• Pride: conceit, vanity, egoism, vainglory, boastfulness and anything self.
• Self-seeking: self-interest, self-pity, envy, stinginess and littleness.
• Self-assertion: audacity, nerve, impudence, insolence and presumption.
• Self-love: ego, conceit, vanity, self-devotion, envious and avaricious.
• Weakness: feebleness, impotence, enfeeblement and fatigue.
• Fruitless: uselessness, worthlessness, pointlessness, and impossibility.

So here we have material for you to clearly see the contrasts of those who love Him and those who turned their backs. Which one are you?