His Teaching in Your Heart

During the earthly ministry of Jesus, twelve men identified with him in a close and public way.  But one of these men, Judas Iscariot, was a superficial follower. Though he presented himself as a believer, he had never believed on Jesus as God and Savior in his heart. In reality, he was an artificial branch whom God eventually cut off from the vine and threw into the burn pile.The other eleven men followed Jesus for real. They believed on him as God and Savior. They were genuine branches who were connected to Jesus and who would produce the kind of fruit that comes from God. Therefore, God would never cut them off or throw them away. He would trim their branches so they would produce more and more fruit instead.Like these men, God prunes the life of every true believer through suffering. Through pain and sorrow, difficulty and loss, setbacks and conundrums, opposition and persecution, he trims away your wrong thinking and misplaced motivations. In this way, suffering serves as the “snipping shears” of God to make you more like Christ. That is why a genuine believer must learn to “abide in Christ.”

A genuine believer must learn to “abide in Christ.”

The word abide means “to remain” or “stay put.” Therefore, if you have believed on Jesus as God and Savior, then you must prepare for suffering. You need to respond like a child who sits still in the barber chair for a haircut or the child who stays put in the dentist chair for a root canal. You must consciously rely on Jesus throughout the difficulties of life. Stay close to him and he will guide you through the suffering. As you cooperate with him in this process, you will become more like him and will produce more and more fruit from God.To abide in Christ, to consciously depend on him through the challenges of life, you need more than to rely on him in an abstract, subjective way. Your response to suffering is a part of the process, but there is another crucial element as well. God uses experiences of suffering to trim your branch, but he also uses the words of Christ in your heart. One preacher explains it this way: “Suffering is the handle, but Scripture is the blade of God’s pruning” (John MacArthur).

To abide in Christ, to consciously depend on him through the challenges of life, you need more than to rely on him in an abstract, subjective way.

Consider how the writer of Hebrews describes the words of God: “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb 4:12). The words of God serve as his special tool for cutting away the wrong motivations and perspectives in our hearts. That is why a disciple of Jesus allows the words of Jesus to permeate his life.A disciple of Jesus allows the words of Jesus to permeate his life.To “abide in Christ,” you must learn how to consciously depend on Jesus to guide you through personal experiences of suffering and hardship. To do this, you must develop a growing familiarity with what he taught (and what the Bible teaches in general). You need to know what Jesus said to his followers, and you need to rely on Jesus by responding to suffering the way that he teaches you to do. In this way, “abiding in Christ” is connected to how you choose to interact with the teaching ministry of Jesus.

I. You abide in Jesus when his teaching remains in you (John 15:7-10).

The words of Jesus remain within every believer to some degree. At the basic level, the core gospel belief in Jesus as God and Savior remains in you. But Jesus taught more than how to enter an eternal and secure relationship with God. He also taught how to live out this new relationship in a daily, life-changing way. You need to allow his words about living out your relationship with God to increase in your heart and permeate your life.Notice how Jesus refers to his words and commandments when he taught about abiding in him (John 15:7-10). These words refer to all that he had taught them in the space of approximately three years on earth. So, to abide in Christ through suffering requires you not only to consciously depend on Christ as a person, but to consciously know and act according to the words that Jesus gave to you in Scripture.Jesus refers to his words remaining in you. With this, he emphasizes your need to let his teaching go with you throughout life. The question is not, “Have you heard what Jesus said in a sermon, Bible study or classroom somewhere?” The question is, “Have you retained what Jesus said? Are his words staying in your heart and guiding your actions?”The focus here is not on how much time you spend each day in personal Bible study and prayer or how frequently you listen to sermons at church. The focus is on how much his teaching actually permeates the rest of your life throughout the day when you are not alone with God in prayer or gathered together with your church. Do his words stay with you and do they influence the way that you think and live?

Do the words of Jesus stay with you and do they influence the way that you think and live?

To be sure, you should spend time alone with God each day, and you should gather together with your church family on the Lord’s Day and more. But that is not the key to abiding in Christ. The key is to carry his words with you in the daily journey of life – at home, at school, at work, and wherever else you go. Do his words go with you when you walk from A to B, ride in the car, or hop onto the bus or subway? Do his words go with you into the office, into the store, and into the movie theater? Do they “remain in you” wherever you go and during whatever you do?A person who spends time with God in the morning and attends church on Sunday has established good habits and is laying a good foundation for a healthy relationship with Christ. But this is not abiding in Christ. This is listening to God sometimes, not always. When a genuine believer carries the words and teaching of Jesus in his or heart – and the words of Jesus remain in him – then the way he or she interacts with God and with people will change in two significant ways. These are the results – or the fruit – of abiding in Christ (and his words abiding in you).

A. You will pray as he taught you to pray (John 15:7).

When you allow the teaching of Jesus to permeate your heart and mind, he changes your desires. More and more, you will know your need to rely on him. More and more, you will know what to ask from him. When you face difficult choices and painful experiences throughout the day, you will ask God to meet your need, and your prayers will reflect the teaching ministry of Jesus instead of your normal, self-centered, worldly-wise inclinations.In this verse, Jesus is not teaching that every prayer a true believer prays will be answered. Also, he is not teaching that the more you quote and claim Bible verses in your prayers, the more your prayers will be answered. Furthermore, he is not teaching that certain believers can learn a deep and mystical ability to know the will of God because they are somehow “closer” to God than you or me.

In this verse, Jesus is not teaching that every prayer a true believer prays will be answered.

In this verse, Jesus is teaching that as you know and embrace the teaching of Jesus for yourself (and by extension, the teaching of the entire Bible), the more you will know how to pray. You will understand your need from God’s perspective. Your selfish desires will change and your selfish prayers, too. Your desires will become more synchronized with the desires of God because they are in harmony with the teaching of Jesus.Most of your trials and challenges do not happen during your quiet time in the morning. They happen in all the other moments of your day. Most of your suffering does not spring upon you at church. It comes up at home, at school, at work, and as you go about your regular activities of life. That is why the words of Christ need to “remain in you.”You need the ability to “pray your way” through the trials of your day on a moment’s notice and on a regular basis. That is why you need a mind and heart that thinks and feels like Jesus. The more that the teaching of Jesus permeates your life, the more you will pray and respond to difficulties as Jesus teaches you to do.

B. You will love as he loves (John 15:9-10).

When the teaching of Jesus permeates your life, you will do more than pray as he taught you to pray. You will also love as Jesus loves. In his life on earth, Jesus always did what his Father wanted him to do and said what his Father wanted him to say (John 6:38). That is why Jesus could say that he “kept his Father’s commandments and continued in his love.” He describes this for us as “loving us the way that the Father loves him.”When the words of Jesus permeate your heart and mind, you will find yourself making choices that “love yourself” less and that “love God and love others” more. In fact, loving God and loving others is a summary of everything that Jesus taught. It is also a good summary of every command in the entire Bible (Matt 22:37-40).

When the words of Jesus permeate your heart and mind, you will find yourself making choices that “love yourself” less and that “love God and love others” more.

Pause to consider for a moment the way that you respond to suffering when it happens in your life. When a difficult moment creeps into your day, how to you respond? Do you respond in a way that shows a conscious awareness of and dependence on the words of Jesus? Do you pray to God and to you pray the way that Jesus taught you to pray? Do you respond in a way that shows love to God and others rather than love to self? Do your responses show a close personal awareness and commitment to the words of Jesus? To understand what this means, consider three examples from the ministry of Jesus.

Example 1

The twelve men who followed Jesus once looked for a place to spend the night in a village in Samaria (Luke 9:51-56). Due to ongoing racism and prejudice between Jewish and Samaritan people, the residents of the village refused to give them a place to stay.Were the disciples abiding in Christ when they faced this rejection? No. Noticed how they “prayed.” James and John asked Jesus to call fire down from heaven to destroy the people of the village. They even referred to Bible verses in the Old Testament as the basis for their request (2 Kin 1:10, 12). Even so, Jesus expressed strong disapproval, saying that he had come to deliver people from sin, not to destroy them for it.When you encounter rejection, neglect, and hatred from someone else, how do you respond? Do you pray like the disciples and ask God to pour judgment on them? Do you quote Bible verses out of context? Or do you respond with grace and humility and move on? Do you look for a way to show them the saving love of Jesus Christ?

Example 2

On another occasion, the disciples asked Jesus a difficult question (Matt 18:21-35). Peter asked, “How many times should I forgive a person who sins against me?” Then he suggested an answer that he likely thought was spiritually mature – “seven times.” But this was wrong. Jesus taught them to forgive “seventy times seven,” which meant “indefinitely,” not 490 times. To emphasize the importance of this, he told the story of a man who had been forgiven of big sins but had refused to give forgiveness to others for small sins. With this story, Jesus taught us to forgive people repeatedly and without limits.Does this teaching permeate your prayers and actions throughout the day? If not, then you are not abiding in Christ. But if yes, then it is because you are aware of this teaching and you are keeping it in your heart and mind, waiting to put it into action.

Example 3

On another occasion, Jesus taught his disciples a lesson about splinters and logs (Matt 7:1-5). He taught that we should be less aggressive about pointing out the flaws and failures of people around us and more aggressive about correcting our personal flaws and failures instead. But to what degree does this teaching from the ministry of Jesus permeate your life?Do you live this way, giving serious attention to your personal weaknesses, while being patient and understanding with others? Your natural tendency is to make a major deal about the problems of people around us and to make a minor deal about the problems of your own. But living this way is not abiding in Christ.

II. More and more, the world will see God through you (John 15:8).

The more that you allow the words of Jesus (and the words of Scripture) to permeate your life throughout your daily pursuits, the more the world will see God through your life. This is the spiritual fruit that Jesus mentions. When a person observes a vine, he doesn’t look at the sap inside the branch, and he doesn’t pay much attention to the leaves either. He looks at the fruit, and the fruit reveals what is happening in the vine.Jesus provided the world with a firsthand encounter with God. His life was a perfect example of divine fruit. Today, however, he bears his fruit through you. He is not hear walking around the earth in his physical body. He is at the throne of God in heaven ruling over all things and giving to you the opportunity to be God’s representative on earth.This is what it means to “glorify” the Father. Throughout the gospel of John, glorifying the Father is a concept that refers to Jesus dying on the cross for our sins and fulfilling the mission for which God has sent him into the world. Today, Jesus has passed this mission on to you and me. We – through our suffering and difficulties – have the opportunity to provide people with a close encounter with God. That is why we need to carry his teachings closely in our hearts, praying and acting accordingly. The result of this will be a life that demonstrates the character of God.

Through our suffering and difficulties, we have the opportunity to provide people with a close encounter with God.

In another place, Paul calls this “the fruit of the Spirit.” He said, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22-23). When you read this list, you will notice that these qualities resemble the kind of life that Jesus lived and the kind of life that he taught us to live as well.Though Jesus did not provide a complete list of these qualities in John 15, he emphasized the quality of love. By doing this, he emphasized the root quality from which every other quality proceeds. When you love as Jesus loved, then you will also exhibit the other fruit that Paul describes. Love is the primary fruit that comes from God, and all other fruit is the byproduct of that primary quality. Even so, notice how Jesus teaches that by allowing the words of Jesus to permeate your life, you will love has he loved and you will experience the joy of Jesus as a result. Here you have a clear mention of the second fruit of the Spirit.

III. More and more, you will experience the same joy as Jesus (John 15:11).

Suffering does not end, and difficulties do not die for anyone who genuinely believes on Jesus as God and Savior. “Abiding in Christ,” then, is not some kind of blueprint for getting rid of suffering. It is God’s blueprint for accepting suffering and learning the cling tightly to the words of Jesus in your heart. It is a call to know what Jesus taught, to know the Scriptures. It is a call to study the Bible, and even more – it is a study to carry what you learn into the daily struggles of life, praying the way that Jesus taught you to pray and loving people the way that Jesus loves them. This is abiding in Christ. This is spiritual growth. This is God’s way to Christian transformation.As you learn to take this approach, you will find that though suffering does not end, delight in life, joy and genuine gladness will increase more and more. This happens as you allow the teaching of Jesus to permeate your life, praying and loving as he taught you to do. You learn to experience more joy, not less.

No matter what other things you may do in life, there is no delight, or pleasure, or thrill, or joy known to man that surpasses the sheer and lasting joy and gladness that comes from knowing the will of God and doing it.

What is joy? It is genuine gladness that is not based upon circumstances, but it is based instead on knowing that you are doing the will of God. How do you know that? By knowing what Jesus taught you, praying as Jesus taught you, and doing what Jesus taught you to do, you can consciously depend on the words of Jesus as you navigate the challenges of life. When you live this way, you know that you are doing the will of God. No matter what other things you may do in life, there is no delight, or pleasure, or thrill, or joy known to man that surpasses the sheer and lasting joy and gladness that comes from knowing the will of God and doing it.Questions for Personal Reflection

• Are you conscious of what Jesus and the Bible teaches as you move throughout your day?
• Do you pray throughout the day in a way that reflects an understanding of what Jesus taught you to pray?
• Do you love others as Jesus loves them? Do you respond to people and reach out to people the way that Jesus exemplified and taught to his disciples?
• When people observe your life, do they see someone who is a living example of the qualities that come from God? Or do they see someone who responds to problems in a selfish or immature way, like the disciples?