Location, Location, Location

If you’ve read my last two stories, you know my life changed when I f ell in love with Jesus (Part 1) and learned to abide and not strive (Part 2).

This is the story of how I exchanged my exhausting self-effort for the power of God that is found when we abide in Jesus.

In case you wonder about the word abide since it isn’t heard often outside of Scripture, Jesus used it to describe the intimate, permanent relationship He wants with us. He calls us to abide in Him (John 15:4-10), to abide in His Word (John 8:31-32), and to abide in His love (John 15:9-10).

Abiding in Jesus

Jesus isn’t asking us to casually hang out with Him. He’s telling to change our address. He wants to give us a totally new way of life, not just to mix in some of God’s goodness with our old thoughts and habits. Abiding is not us trying harder to be good people. It’s us having the power of Jesus to live and love as He does.

Because I was an overachieving perfectionist, I thought I needed to move my best self into Jesus’s house. After all, I didn’t want to disappoint God. My best self, however, was my false self. It was the “look at this amazing woman” self that was a cover-up for the person who felt insecure, inadequate, and fearful.

I didn’t want to admit my brokenness to anyone—not others, not me, and especially not God. I tried to hide it in that same way that Eve and Adam had tried to hide their nakedness from God.

Then one day while I was reading the Bible, a verse leapt off the page into my heart: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). I remember thinking, “What? Nobody is good? Not them, not me? Then I don’t have to keep pretending!”

Relief washed over me as I realized that God knew the naked me. He created, chose, redeemed, and purposed that me—and all of that had nothing to do with my own goodness! I was finally free to be broken because I finally understood that God loves not the righteous people (there are none) but the broken! I can’t explain how I had missed knowing that in the five years I’d been reading the Bible.

It wasn’t until I understood God loved me in my brokenness that I believed that I deserved to live in His house.

Abiding in His Word

Living and growing up in Jesus’ house requires good communication. That means you not only talk but also listen. If you’re going to renew your way of thinking, there’s no substitute for spending time with Jesus and His truth.

The most important habit I have developed is regularly reading the Bible as God’s love letter to me and hearing God through it. It’s really not so much about the method as it is about the time, but if you’d like some direction to begin, you might try my daily routine. It has three basic parts: read, listen, and respond.

Read

First, I read God’s love letter, also known as the Bible, for a bit. I pray before I begin that God’s Word will bring me life, as Jesus told his disciples in the book of John: “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (6:63). When I read devotionally like this, I prefer the New Living Translation, which captures the meaning of the original Hebrew and Greek in phrases that make sense in modern English.

Listen

I also pray that God will speak to me through His Word. If you’ve never considered that God speaks to His children, listen to what Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). God’s Spirit joins with our spirit and guides us into all truth (Romans 8:16, John 16:13).

Please note that I’ve never heard audibly from God, but instead I hear His Spirit speaking to my spirit. It’s difficult to tell someone else what it’s like to personally hear from God, but as your relationship grows, you’ll know when God is speaking to you. You’ll be able to recognize the voice of your beloved heavenly Father just as you recognize voices on earth. You may hear God prompting you to do something good, sharing His great love for you, or nudging you to admit you’ve done something that needs to be fixed.

As I prepare to listen, I focus on being in God’s presence—just being quiet and still for a couple of minutes. It is not easy to sit in stillness and silence even for one minute, but it is worth your effort. I ask God to speak so that I can hear. I pray to hear only His voice and that all other voices be silenced.

When you first begin to practice listening to God, you may find many thoughts and voices already swirling in your head: “I’ve got to remember to send a note to my sister about this weekend” … “Did my mother really think my chocolate cake was dry?” … “Did I forget to turn off the burner on the stove?”

My mind is a busy place, ready to be distracted in an instant by things to do, even things to do for God. I write them down to get them out of my head.

Then I close my eyes to help me focus, taking some deep breaths. I breathe in God’s love and breathe out all my distractions, discouragements, and demands on my life. I let the One who loves me most fill me with His love as I sit in silence and rest in this love.

Respond

Whatever I sense God impressing upon me, I write down in my journal. If God is the source of these thoughts, they will be spoken in love, and they won’t contradict any of God’s truths in the Bible. Then I write a love letter back to God. My journal is full of thanks, questions, concerns, experiences, insights, and epiphanies.

Remember that learning to quiet your mind and listen to God is a process, so don’t be disheartened as you practice coming into his presence. Keep on showing up and sitting in stillness.

And never forget that God delights in you. He takes great pleasure in speaking with you when you make time to intentionally come into his presence.

Abiding in His Love

God’s love for you and me is the theme of God’s Word. There is a difference between reading about His love and feeling it, though, as I talked about in “The Difference One Little Word Made in My Faith.”

I wasn’t brought up in church, but as a child, I had a picture Bible as well as a painting of Jesus hanging above my bed. I also had a portrait of Zorro that I switched out with my picture of Jesus. When my mother asked why I alternated the pictures, I explained that I had just one nail.

I had a one-nail understanding of God that didn’t include my being His beloved.

To embrace God’s love for me, I had to read over and over God’s declarations of love in the Bible. I especially like to place my name into verses. It moves my head knowledge into my heart as I treasure how God’s love for me is described:

I welcome Tonya. (from Romans 15:7)

I love Tonya and gave myself for her. (from Galatians 2:20)

Because Tonya is my child, I sent the Spirit of my Son into her heart (from Galatians 4:6)

Wherever Tonya is, I’ll find her—I’m already there waiting! (from Psalm 139:10)

I am working in Tonya both to will and to work according to my good purpose (from Philippians 2:13)

Absolutely nothing will ever separate Tonya from my love (from Romans 8:39)

When we don’t understand God’s love, we engage in all sorts of rebellion as did Eve when the serpent talked her into doubting God’s motives. When we don’t know that God is good, we can believe that He is holding back something that would bless us.

We come to believe what God says as we come to believe that God is good and wants the best for our lives. Conversely, our doubts emerge as we think we know better than the One who created us, forgave us, and loves us.

It is only as we embrace God as God and ourselves as not that our relationship matures, that we live well as we abide in Jesus.

How about You?

This is my story—but how about yours? Are you striving in your own strength, or are you learning to live in God’s love and power? Are you abiding in Jesus, in His Word, and in His love?

He is inviting you right now—not to do more for Him, but to be with Him more. Abiding is where your soul finds rest, where your heart is filled with His love, and where you joyfully surrender yourself to the self-giving, self-sacrificing love found in Jesus’ home. Why settle for anything less than the house God built for you?