Why Abiding in Jesus is the Key to Maturity

What does it really mean to abide in Jesus? Does He really mean it when He says, "Without Me you can do nothing?" And what does abiding have to do with maturity in Him?

In today's episode, I'm taking you on my own journey of wrestling with the Lord. What does it mean to be mature in Him? Why is dependence so important to the Lord? And how do we grow in endurance, grace, and union with Him so when the storms of life come, we don't default to suspecting Him, but instead trust that He is with us, working for us, and will carry us through. I pray this episode encourages you in your own walk with Jesus as we wrestle against our own strengths, weaknesses, desires for self-sufficency and see that the one of the most beautiful places in to walk in this world is securely in Jesus and His word. 

Scriptures Referenced:

• John 15-4-5
• Matthew 11:28-30
• 2 Corinthians 4:7-12
• 2 Corinthians 12:9
• 1, 2, 3 John
• Ephesians 1:17-18
• 2 Peter 3:18
• Matthew 6:9-13

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:05

Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of Honey from the Rock. I am so glad you're here. And I am going to jump right into today's episode because I am in the midst of a wrestle with the Lord. And I wanted to share with you some things that I have been talking to my family about, uh, wrestling through with some friends. And it's it's related to issues of Christian maturity. And really, where this is coming from is a few months ago, it's been a few months now, I think it was at the beginning of the year, the Lord challenged me with a question. And I really, really sensed that he was asking me, Carrie, do you believe that I can do anything? And initially, when I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit around this issue, my, you know, my first natural inclination is to say, Of course, Lord, you can do anything. You know, Jesus literally says, with God, all things are possible. So yes, you can do anything. And do I believe that? Absolutely. But I have really discerned that there is a deeper issue that the Lord's getting at with this question. And I think as Christians, it's really, really easy to tell the Lord that we believe that He can do anything. But then when we are put in situations of suffering or affliction or hard things happen to us, or we even suffer the consequence of our own choices and our own sin, we fall away, we we back away from that belief of the Lord can do anything, and we fall into a place of self-sufficiency. We uh try to fix things with the Lord in our own way rather than going to him repenting or seeking his face. We um we question him, which again, as I have said so many times throughout so many episodes, the Lord can handle our questions. We can ask him why. But I think a lot of times we we like to keep faith as a really small thing, we like to keep it at in in a in a little box. So that way, if we have a really nice, tightly controlled definition of faith, then we think that maybe the Lord won't challenge us in areas. But because the Lord is good, because he wants us to know him more, he challenges us and he wants us to grow deeper roots of faith. He wants us to grow in revelation of him, he wants us to know him more, and he wants us to know him more through his word. And that's really kind of the angle I'm taking today in this episode, is in this umbrella question of Carrie, do you believe that I can do anything? One of the issues under that question that I have been thinking through and see the Lord really challenging me in my life and my walk with him is in maturity. And what does what is the Christian definition of maturity? What are we actually called to in maturity as Christians and as disciples? Because I don't know about you, but for years I had an unbiblical misconception about maturity. I really felt like in my walk with Jesus, there was going to be this level that I was going to hit where I would just really start understanding things and operate and just fly through things and just be like, man, Lord, look at what I can do for you. And look at how I'm just crushing, crushing this discipleship walk, you know, and and over the years, the Holy Spirit and his kindness and his graciousness to me has really convicted me about that. To say, that's not actually maturity, that's pride. And what I have really come to see, especially in the last few years of my life, is that maturity is not growing in this is gonna sound weird, but it's the only way that I can think of to describe it, conjoined independence. Like I'm walking with the Lord, but I'm also kind of, I'm also kind of uh, you know, separate from him. I'm not separate, separate from him, but it's like, you know, oh Lord, you were holding my fingers, you know, I was holding on to your fingers while I was learning to walk, but now I can let go, or you're taking the training wheels off and look at me fly while he just kind of stands back and watches us as a benevolent father just smiling. Um, I think the Lord takes immense pride and joy when he sees us growing in our faith. But I really am coming to see and believe that actual maturity in the Lord is really a growth in dependence on him. And that's why I think this is so connected to the question that the Lord is asking me about do I really believe that he can do anything? And he's not asking me that from a place where, you know, of like health wealth doctrine, or I need to name and claim certain things, or um, you know, just it's it's not from an area of, well, if I just had more faith, then I would see Jesus do more things in my life. I re that's not, I know that's not where the Lord is at with me. Instead, it is, do I really believe that the Lord can do anything so that when I see him act and move on my behalf for me in my life, that when I see his hand, when I trace the work of his hand, I can see that it was the best and most beautiful and most gracious and true thing that could have happened for me. And I don't say that lightly, I don't say that um flippantly, um, having walked through incredible difficulty and grief, um, I I, you know, it's it's hard to look at death um and say, oh yeah, Lord, that was the best and most beautiful and true thing that could have happened in the moment and even a year down the road. And yet at the same time, as as the Lord comforts and he has revealed himself to me in this grief process, I also can I can see his gracious hand. I can see his goodness in the passing of my dad and my sister in calling them home. And I can see how he has brought forth beauty and truth for me and for my family in it. And so as I talk through kind of where the where the Lord and I are wrestling and where I feel like he's really trying to deepen my my holy spiritual understanding, I want you to consider in your own life, what is your definition of Christian maturity? And what does what does dependence on the Lord act actually look like for you? And also in that I would love for you to ponder this question with me. Do we really believe that the Lord can do anything? And so digging into this maturity as dependence, where the where I've where the Lord landed me today, because I looked at several different scriptures as I was just trying to follow the Lord and and figure out what he was trying to teach me and find his leading is is landing in John 15. And at first I was a little bit like, really, like everybody knows these verses. John 15, Jesus is the vine, you know, the father is the vine dresser. And I mean, honestly, my first my first um response to the Lord leading to me this verses, to these verses should have told me everything I need to know about why he's led me here, right? Because we just we talk so much about abiding all the time. Um, you know, these these verses of abiding are thrown around. Um, you know, people teach out of them, and and Jesus gave them to us for many, many reasons. They're incredible, it's the incredible truth of of what he has done for us. Like, we can't abide in the Lord unless we're in Jesus. Like, we can't know the Father as Father unless we're in Jesus. We don't get the Holy Spirit as comforter um unless we come to Jesus. And so um I was reading these verses and I was reading specifically John 15, 4 through 5, where Jesus says, Abide in me and I will abide in you, right? Uh, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. And again, these are familiar verses. I mean, I've studied them on and off for years. However, what really hit me when I read them today is where Jesus talks about, abide in me and I'm going to abide in you, right? And as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. What is fruit on a vine? What is fruit on a tree? It's signs of maturity. Now, there can be fruit that peaks too early. Um, you know, I think about the fig tree that Jesus cursed. The the fig tree had green leaves and it looked fruitful. It looked mature, but when he went to it, there was no fruit on it. And and so just thinking about maturity being being fruit, but this fruit that the Lord expects us to produce, we don't produce separate from him. He says that this kind of maturity can only be produced. This kind of fruit can only be produced by abiding in him. And the phrase that I've just that I have been kicking around in my head is that maturity is actually growth independence on Jesus. It's not it's it's not a it's not a platform, it's not a growth in numbers in an audience, it's not a growth in huge numbers in a church. Maturity is growing in revelation of Jesus. It's why Paul prays in Ephesians 1 that we would grow in the grace and revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter prays the same thing in 2 Peter 3 that we would grow in the grace and revelation of Jesus Christ, that growing in these things, growing in knowing Jesus, our increasing revelation. And that increasing revelation means he is revealing himself to us through his word. And as we get in his word and then we also walk with him, the experiences that we then have with him that fit with the word, like he's deepening our knowing him and not just knowing about him, but but actual, actual union with him, because abiding isn't just relationship, it really is union. If we're going to be engrafted into the into the olive tree, like Paul talks about in Romans 11, then we have to have like you can't graft uncut skin into uncut skin, right? It has to be wound to wound. We're we're grafted in in that way. And and that graft has to take hold. At no point can an engrafted branch ever break away and still bear the fruit of the vine that it was attached to. It just can't. You know, Paul, I think I can't remember if I said earlier or if it was when um I was recording one of my 17 intros that I had to scrap, where Paul talks about when I was a child, I acted like a child, I thought of a child, but now I I've grown up, and so now I think as a man. You know, all of these pictures that were that are talked about in in growth means that our maturity actually looks like steadfastness, it looks like trust, it looks like rest, it looks like surrender, it looks less like a need to constantly ask the Lord why, and more to say, okay, Lord, you've either done this or you have allowed this to happen, or I'm wrestling with the sovereignty, sovereignty of your will, but in it, Lord, how do I get through this? Lord, I I I how do I how do I know you more in this? What are you trying to show me? Lord, comfort me. You know, there's many times throughout the New Testament where we're admonished to not be tossed about by every wind of doctrine or by the wave of of all sorts of things in life, the lusts of the flesh, the pride of life, you know, all of these things that just bandy us about and beat us. I I really do believe the Lord is is He is trying to teach me, and it's it's a lesson for me that's probably really long overdue, that that maturity is a deepening of the roots in in Jesus. And it is also a growing in insettledness and in standing, so that when the things of life come, and yes, they they buffet us. I mean, Jesus tells us in in Matthew 7 that the storms are going to come and they are going to blow against our houses. But if our foundation is on him as the rock, our house will not collapse. If our foundation is sure, we will not collapse in the storm. And and I what Jesus, I really what Jesus is is trying to teach me is that abiding in him is the only place of steadfastness. If I am going to try and define my own Christian discipleship walk, my own maturity by how much I know about Jesus or how many scriptures I've memorized or how well I can communicate the word or you know, walk in a certain amount of ease in my gifts and calling. That's not actually maturity and it's not actually dependence. But Jesus is Jesus is saying, I've called you, I've made you, I love you, I've died for you, I've resurrected so that I can I can go to the right hand of the Father and send you the Holy Spirit. I've created you for good works in me. You know, I've saved you by grace. My mercy has fallen on you instead of my judgment. I've called you to repentance. None of these things can happen about me. So why do we think that after coming to the Lord, that there is a certain place where we can do things without him? And I think it's really unconscious. I think we've got it in our head, and maybe this is really a Western way of thinking, because we are such an independent to pull us, pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, you know, the great American story of self-made men and women. Um, you know, that kind of is the the banner of our country, is that we think dependence makes us look weak. If we actually have to depend on the Lord all the time, are we weak? Yes. Yes, we are. But also in that weakness, again, I mean, it's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12. In that weakness, the strength of Jesus is made manifest. We see that his grace is sufficient, and we we start to learn not just in our heads, but also in our hearts and our spirits and our souls in our bodies, that that literally without Jesus, we can do nothing. There is no glory we can bring to the Lord. There is no sacrifice that is a sweet aroma and that is pleasing to him. There is there is nothing of the fleshy works of our hands that we can offer him that is acceptable to him unless we are in Jesus, unless we are abiding in him. And and this it I am the I will totally admit, I am the first to say, I am I am a very independent person. I have a very strong drive. Once I put my mind to do something, it's gonna get done. And sometimes sometimes that's to my detriment to say, well, if nobody else is gonna do it, I'll do it. Fine. You know, and sometimes I wear my independence and my self-sufficiency as a badge of honor. Like I don't need anybody. But if that's my disposition, then what I'm really communicating is I don't actually need the Lord either. Because I can get, I can get all of this done and look at me crush it. You know, I'm a girl boss or whatever. But but the Christian, the the discipleship walk with Jesus is actually a call to forsake myself, to forsake my strengths, to forsake my weaknesses, to completely lay down my life and surrender to him, and let Jesus put to death in me the things that are sinful and displeasing to him, the things that offend him, that he would then resurrect within me and we would have union in this abiding, and that I would see his yoke, which is easy and light, as a yoke of how do I even put it? A yoke of glory, a yoke of goodness. It is it is good, it is good that I need Jesus. It is good that he shows me that I am growing in him when I am consistently recognizing my need for him. I mean, he built it into the Lord's Prayer. You know, we honor the Father, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, Lord, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Like everything belongs to the Lord, and he is a gracious father, and he is a gracious king, and he willingly gives us the daily bread that we need. He willingly opens his word to us if we will take time to get into it, to feed on him daily. And so I just I am seeing in my own life areas of pride and insecurity, areas where I have really felt like I'm gonna prove myself. I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show everybody that I can do this. And the Lord's like, what? You're gonna do what now? You know, I mean, and and it because he because without him, I can do nothing. You know, I know that the Lord called me to start this podcast. And I have to trust every time that I sit down behind this microphone, that the Holy Spirit is going to lead me and he's going to fill my mouth. I have to trust that these episodes will get out to the people that the Lord wants them to hear. Like there's people that the Lord wants to minister to through these episodes, and he will get these episodes out to those people. I'm still in a season right now where I mean, and just in just being Go, I'm still so tired. I'm exhausted. And I, and not because, oh my gosh, I've just been doing so much work. I'm so tired. But grief takes its toll. This last year has taken its toll. And I'm doing this podcast, and I'm sure people have noticed, like, I'm not spending a lot of time doing a ton of promotion right now. Because where I have enough strength to do this podcast is to sit behind the microphone and record it. And then I have to trust the Lord with who he wants to send it to. I can't be consumed with numbers. I can't be worried about stats and that kind of thing. Now, do I want to celebrate things like when I hit 1,000 downloads? Heck yes. Do I think the Lord's grieved about that? No way. But it's in all of those things, places where the Lord has gifted me, but I still have to be dependent on Him. I still have to abide. And I I love, I just, I, I love and I'm so thankful for the Lord opening my heart and my mind to show me, carry maturity in me is actually growing in dependence on me. It's not showing me that you can you can do the why does the phrase, who said I could do bad all by myself? Who said that? Somebody tell me. I can't remember. I can't remember who it was. Anyway. Um, but like that's the whole that right, that's our whole disposition. I could do bad all by myself. I can crush it. And the Lord's like, actually, in my kingdom, my upside down kingdom, growth in me and coming to know me more and getting further, deeper revelation of me and my love for you, of my holiness, of my hatred of sin, but my love for reconciliation with my people, of my, of my good, my good purpose and the commandments and the things that I tell you to stay away from and the things that I tell you to do, like to grow in these areas is actually maturity. Because I stopped, I stopped thinking like a child, which a child, you know, children, they hit a point where they, you know, I can do it by myself. I can do it by myself. I don't want help, right? When they're trying to figure out that stage where they're learning to walk and they're learning to talk and they don't want help and they do want help. Right. But but we like growing to a place where in this walk I can say, Lord Jesus, give me today your daily bread. Give me yourself today, Lord Jesus. Fill me with what I need for what you are calling me to do. And that I can't do this walk without him. And and that probably sounds pretty fundamental. But I think as we look at the church and we look at things that are happening in the church, ways and places that the Lord is exposing certain things in the church, um, that abiding sounds really fundamental and really simple. And yet I think it is one of the things that we are, we have the most difficulty actually surrendering and submitting to. And I think that if that weren't true, then John wouldn't have talked about it so much. Because the word for abide is mentioned 118 times in the New Testament, and John has at least half of those uses in his gospels and in his gospel and his three letters. John, the beloved disciple who rested his head on Jesus' breast during the Last Supper, who knew he was loved, who wrote about being the beloved disciple not as a shot at the other disciples, but who had come to such a place of abiding independence on Jesus, he knew. He knew he was beloved by the Lord. He walked in that security of the love of Jesus. And I think those are all things that we absolutely desire from the Lord. We we don't, we want to know that we're loved, we want to know that we're kept. We want to know that we're safe in the Father's hand, that he he desires and and purposes good things for us, that we have a place in his kingdom, that he takes our loneliness and he puts us in his family and in his body. There's so much, there's so much that we desire and that we crave that is good and can only be found in the Lord. And and I think that if if abiding were something that were so easy, was something so easy to do, we wouldn't see so much of just the upheaval and and the just just some of the insanity that we see in the church today. But we've got an idea in our head, and I and I own this, and I'm freely confessing it to you all. I have had an idea, a wrong, sinful idea in my life that maturity in Jesus and growing in my call means that I can't, I can do, I can do things separate from him. And I'm happy to let him kind of stand, stand far off and look at me like a proud dad and kind of pat me on my head. And so I I pray that this ministers to you. I pray that it challenges you like it's challenged me. I'm so thankful to the Lord for this wrestle. And I I just want I want to encourage you. You don't have to have it all together. The Lord is not a hard taskmaster, He is not placens on you that are heavy and strain at a gnat and make you swallow a camel. That is that is not Jesus. He wants you to come to him. I mean, I you know, I was reading John 15 and then looking at Matthew 11. Again, verses we all know, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And you, you know, take my yoke upon, you know, upon you. Come, learn of me, because I'm gentle and lonely in heart. You will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. I was reading the Tony Evans commentary, and he was talking about like this is a call to salvation, and that's exactly what it is. The call to rest, the call to abide is the call to let go of everything that hinders us, including especially ourselves, to lay down our lives at the feet of Jesus, to embrace the cross that He appoints to us, and then to wrestle and walk on this way of salvation, you know, to be sanctified in the Lord day by day by day. And I and I'm not saying, like, man, once I've learned how to abide, girl, I got this, right? Like, and now I'm crushing it again. No, but to abide in Jesus, what does he tell us? He tells us if we abide in him, we learn we can do nothing. If his word abides in us, right? And we abide in him, he says we can ask whatever we wish and he will give it to us. Well, what does that mean? If we're abiding in his word, we're being transformed to desire his will. And it doesn't mean that we can't ask for things that we want, we can't ask him for things that we need, but that our wills become transformed into his. And we and we we ask him for things and we trust that he will move and he will work. And then abide in his love, right? Jesus says, I have abided, or abode, I don't know. Grammar is hard. I abide in the Father's love. So come and abide in my love as I have abided in the father's love, right? But what then, what does he say happens in that? If we abide in his love, it's because we're keeping his commandments. If we abide in him, we will bear much fruit. If we abide in him and we keep his commandments and we bear fruit, his joy is in us and our joy is made full. This is this is freedom. This is freedom. One of my favorite verses, I mean, I have a lot in all of scripture, but is Galatians 5:1, where Paul says, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Don't take off the yoke of Jesus, the yoke of dependence and abiding and unity and union with him, and and put back on your yoke of slavery, your yoke of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, your yoke of I can I can crush this and I can do this. Paul said, you know, and he's and he's talking about that as well in the context of circumcision and the law, but it fits here too. And so I just I want to encourage you, friends, like let's wrestle through these things with Jesus, ask questions of him, ask him to fill us with revelation and understanding, ask him to help us depend on him, that that when the waves of life batter us and beat us, again, it's not that we can't ask him questions, but when when suffering and affliction and the difficult things of life come, as we grow in abiding and maturing in him, that our first question is, Lord, where have you gone? What's going on? But it is, Lord, no, I can look back on my life. You've not left me, you've not abandoned me. You are you are teaching you, you are teaching me, yes, but you are with me and you love me and you have me in this. And so I I pray that this encourages you. It's encouraged me, and it's something that I'm going to keep wrestling with. And so I want to close with two things. One, this definition of abiding, and then Paul's encouragement to us out of 2 Corinthians 4. So Warren Wearsby writes, to abide in Christ means to depend completely on him for all that we need in order to live for him and serve him. It is a living relationship. As he lives out his life through us, we are able to follow his example and walk as he walked. Paul expresses this perfectly in Galatians 2.20. Jesus lives in me. This is a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. Christ is our advocate in heaven to represent us before God when we sin. The Holy Spirit is God's advocate for us here on earth. Christ lives out his life through us by the power of the Spirit who lives within our bodies. It is not by means of imitation that we abide in Christ and walked as he walked. No, it is through the incarnation, through his spirit. Jesus lives in me. To walk in the light is to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. I just love that he says so much in there, but I just love that first, that first sentence. To abide in Jesus means to depend completely on him for all that we need in order to live for him and serve him. And like I said, I want to finish with these verses from first uh 2 Corinthians 4, because I know a lot of us are facing a lot of difficult things, but the reminder that Jesus is with us in these things and he is calling us to live in him, to abide with him in what we're going through. And Paul says, we have this treasure and jars of clay, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who live are constantly being handed over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you and the life of Jesus works in us as we abide in him. Amen.