Stay In The Water

My, Devotion to Him #180

Verse Passage: John 15:9-10 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” NIV

JUST KEEP SWIMMING

Jesus tells us in today’s passage to remain in Him and His love for us. Now some might ask what does it mean to “remain in my love?” It means to stay put! 

Now in the beginning we talked about “What We Treasure” and then we moved to “Dive In” which was a call for us to dive into Him. And the third part was “Into His Fullness.” Now we are talking about remaining In Him which is important after we: 

A. Found what we treasured. 

B. Dived into what we treasure.

C. Stepped into the fullness of what our treasure has to offer us. 

After you have dived in, stay in the water! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen and heard of people diving in and stepping into His fullness only to get out and dry off. 

When you dive in, stay! Stay till your fingertips look like raisins. After that, stay! Stay! Stay! Stay! Our prayer should be to be so immersed within His presence and our relationship with Him that we are so far away from dry land we have no other choice but to stay! 

Keep swimming towards Jesus and allow His heart to become yours. Give Him the freedom to shape your mind and direct your actions. We do that by discovering what Jesus treasures. We spend time with the Savior. We invite Jesus to join us throughout the day.

Verse Passage: Luke 10:38-42 “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” – NIV

Jesus points out that there is truly only one thing important and that a relationship between Jesus and you.

Martha at this moment is like many Christians. They are worried and distracted by this and that but Jesus is saying “listen! There is only one thing that is important and that’s me and you” You can not afford to put small worldly things on your priority list if it means becoming distracted by them and your relationship with Christ suffering. I’m not saying to have a carefree attitude but your number one focus should be Christ and then everything else. Martha was more worried about preparations (daily trivial things) than she was about spending time with Jesus. The moment that we put trivial things above time with Christ or place more value or importance in them getting done then spending time with Jesus, we have made a grave mistake. This is the time for us to adjust that and really revaluate where we place most of our focus, energy, thoughts, etc.  

Today, make that change. Do not get out of the water and dry off and say, “that was good I’ll come back later”. For all those that have not gotten in. Now is the time to get in, don’t stand around and say, “I will soon but there are things I have to do that really don’t matter. These things in the end are trivial things and don’t matter much on the scale to Jesus. However, I just want to continue doing my own thing”

Remain in Him! Mary came to Him and sat and listened. She knew what had to be done but she was not going to give up her dive. She put more importance on Jesus than daily things. 

Once in stay in. Don’t make your relationship with Christ work around this world and your life. Make your life and this world work around your relationship and time with Christ. Stay in the water! 

God bless. 

Copyright © 2019 by Jacob D. Olinger