“Abide in Me.”  John 15:4

Last time we talked about some things that Jesus didn’t mean when He said, “Follow Me.” He didn’t mean follow Christian friends or follow leaders. But there are other ways we can fumble the idea of following Jesus. I got a note from another writer and pastor responding to this. He had a few more examples of what people sometime think Jesus meant when He said, “Follow Me”. He suggested;

“Attend church, Come see, Obey commandments, Follow pastor”. He wrote, “All these exist today and yet are in stark contrast to Jesus’ words.”

Today I’m adding a few more common misconceptions about what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus didn’t say, “Follow your instincts” or “Follow your best intentions”. Not “Follow your gut”. Even if these things would do us any good, He knew we could never do them with any consistency. The problem we have as humans is that even when we have some idea of what is good and right we can’t do it consistently, let alone with a pure motivation.

We are addicted to sin; worse, we are addicted to sinfulness. Who is going to save us from THAT?

Only Jesus. Jesus said, “Abide in Me.”

Shortly before Jesus spoke those words He said: “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (14:20). That’s abiding.

If God’s presence is in our lives, sinning will be more painful, more difficult, more quickly repented of. We will not be able to function outside of His presence. But so long as we’re abiding somewhere else, sinning will master us, we’ll make excuses, and we’ll be slow to repent. The Jesus thing just won’t work the way it’s described in the Bible.

This is because, as Jesus concluded in the same passage, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).