Abiding and Asking

“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.  Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.”-John 15:7-8

Abide in Me.  Jesus commands all who follow him that they abide in the Lord.  Then he implores us to “ask what ye will.”  Christ likens this relationship (in John chapter fifteen) to a branch and vine.  In this he illustrates the relationship between the disciple and Jesus Christ, and the tremendous blessing that comes from asking. 

In the book of Exodus, the man Moses was tending sheep on a mountainside when God called to him out of a burning bush.  His task was to go down to Egypt and cry against Pharaoh (king of Egypt) to let God’s people go.  To cry against the bondage that held God’s people.  Moses’s obedience and his willingness to abide in the power of God is what gave him the ability to accomplish such a monumental task. A task which he could not perform on his own.  Moses didn’t have an army, money, military strategy, or plan of action.  Yet one man (with the power of Almighty God), walked into the throne room of the world’s most powerful man, and said “let my people go.”  He told Pharaoh that the Lord God of the Hebrews said: “let my people go that they may serve me.”  Moses was asking Pharaoh to release his substantial slave labor.  Labor that Pharaoh was using to build his cities, monuments, and economy.  Why would Pharaoh do this?  He wouldn’t, but God was with Moses and when Moses cried out to God, God answered, until the plagues destroyed Egypt, and the people were delivered.  Moses was seeing things through God's eyes and not his own.  He wasn’t focused on the resources that he lacked, but on the God who supplies all our need according to His riches in glory.  He was abiding with God the Father and because of that he had access to all the resources of the Almighty God.  Christ left to us the same example by praying, fasting, and abiding with the Father.  When the disciples lacked, Jesus would exhort them to pray.  Abiding and asking allows us to access all the resources of God.  Resources that we desperately need.  How could we ever hope to deliver anyone out of the bondage of sin?  We can’t do it.  Can you change hearts?  Can you impart righteousness?  Only through God and Christ can this be done, and much more.  Therefore, Jesus said: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”   

Herein is the instruction to those who are sanctified and abiding in the Lord.  Who are abstaining from the world and sin.  Who find their delight in reading God’s Word and spending copious amounts of time in prayer.  The branch cannot bear fruit of itself; it looks to the vine to supply the nutrients and resources needed to bear it.  Such fruit will glorify the vine, so when the branch requires anything, it needs only ask, and the vine will send it.  Therefore, let us trust his promise and believe his Word.  Abide and ask.  For Christ also said:  Ask and ye shall receive.