When change and decay is all around . . .

A classic hymn from 1908 goes, "There’s a peace in my heart that the world never gave,

A peace it cannot take away;
Though the trials of life may surround like a cloud,
I’ve a peace that has come here to stay!

• Refrain:
  Constantly abiding, Jesus is mine;
  Constantly abiding, rapture divine;
  He never leaves me lonely, whispers, oh, so kind:
  “I will never leave thee”—Jesus is mine.
• *****

Jesus Christ says in John 15:4, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me."

In verse 7, He says it a little differently: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."

“Verse 7 helps you define verse 4 when He says, ‘Abide in me, and I in you,’ " explains Jordan. " 'You abide in me--you keep your heart focused on me and you be occupied with me,’ Christ says in preparing the apostles to go through the time of Jacob’s trouble.

“To abide in something is to stay there. Constantly, you don’t leave. This is home. You’re going to dwell here. You’re going to be there not just occasionally, not sporadically, not fitfully, but this is where your heart’s going to be occupied.

“ ‘And if my word abides in you' . . . He tells them in Hebrews, 'Your heart’s going to be occupied with me; keep your eyes on me (look to Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith) but also have your life regulated by the Scripture.’

“They’re to be focused on who Christ is and what He’s provided for them. They’re to take their stand and just rest in who God’s made them and the provisions God’s going to equip them with in Christ and then let their thinking and their actions be regulated by what His Word has to say.

“By constantly, habitually communing with God through His Word until it becomes the substance of their inner being and that’s exactly what Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 tell them that’s going to take place.

“He’s going to take His law and write it in their hearts and that law that He writes in their hearts is going to cause them—there’s going to be an internal compulsion that comes from the Word written in their heart, causes them to keep His commandment--that internal empowering. He’s talking about, ‘That’s the provision and that’s where you want to be.’

*****

“James 4:3: ‘Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. [4] Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

“Notice the problem here is, if you’re a friend of the world, you’re an enemy with God; your thinking doesn’t match God’s thinking, so when you’re asking for things, what are you doing? You’re not asking for the will of God that you learned in the Scripture.

"You see, when Jesus gives these promises to the (apostles) about getting their prayers answered, they're not standing there saying, 'I wonder what God wants done. I wonder what the will of God is for my life.' They have that information, that annointing. They KNOW what God's will is. They've got verses, the information's been implanted in their inner man. They've got the Scripture to look at as an objective standard to identify it. They know what to ask because they're friends of God.

"Jesus says in John 15:15, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’

*****

"Here’s a verse of Scripture I hear on the radio all the time; people love these fast little verses that sound good but don’t mean much. Psalm 37:4 says, ‘Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ Man, doesn’t that sound wonderful?

“You know, it’s, ‘Let’s talk about Lord, how wonderful you are, my Jesus, I just think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and by the way, I’d like to be rid of that Toyota and get that BMW.’

“When it says delight thyself in the Lord, look at what He said in verse 3: ‘Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’ Verse 5 says, ‘Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. ‘

“How do you trust in the Lord; commit your way to the Lord? First, you’ve got to know the Lord and know His mind. How are you going to trust Him if you don’t know Him? How can you trust Him if you don’t know what to trust Him about?

“The verse says to ‘delight thyself in the Lord.’ Don’t you think you need to know some things about the Lord to be delighted about? People make all this stuff up; they talk about the Lord. They make a God in their own mind and delight in their own God.

*****

"The way you do what’s in Psalm 37, and this is a tremendous psalm, is in verse 1: ‘Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.'

“If you ever wanted to see some people who had reason to worry and the antidote for it, it’s this tribulation remnant in the tribulation looking out and seeing evil prosper. What are they to do?

“Proverbs 3:6 says, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.’

“Jesus says, ‘If you abide in me, focus on who I am and value me more than anything else, and let your mind be controlled by my Word, you know what will happen? You’ll have the knowledge to ask the right things that ought to be accomplished.’

“By the way, you know the old adage, what is prayer? A-S-K. Ask, seek, knock.  If you go back and read Matthew 7:7 ('Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you'), the people Christ’s talking to in the context are fruitful Believers. That’s on the Sermon on the Mount.

“John 15:8 says, ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.’ When you are bearing fruit, the way you bear fruit is you abide in Him, you draw your resources from Him and you have your thinking regulated by His Word. It's the outward expression of that inner life."

(new article tomorrow--promise)