Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

Missionary pioneer J. Hudson Taylor of China was working and worrying so frantically that his health was about to break. Just when his friends feared he was near a breakdown, Taylor received a letter from fellow missionary John McCarthy that told of a discovery McCarthy had made from John 15—the joy of abiding in Christ. McCarthy’s letter said in part: Abiding, not striving nor struggling, looking off unto Him, trusting Him for present power … this is not new, and yet ’tis new to me.… Christ literally all seems to me now the power, the only power for service; the only ground for unchanging joy. As Hudson Taylor read this letter at his mission station in Chin-kiang on Saturday, September 4, 1869, his own eyes were opened. “As I read,” he recalled, “I saw it all. I looked to Jesus, and when I saw, oh how the joy flowed!”

Writing to his sister in England, he said: As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month or more has been perhaps the happiest of my life, and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul.… When the agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. Believing and abiding is the key to a happy life. That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.¹

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This weeks call is:

Work the Word until the Word works, that is, continue in looking for ways to apply the Bible in your everyday situations.

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Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believers life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

How do you practice abiding in the Word? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Episode Resources

You can find additional information on the subject of John’s Gospel in the resources listed below.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Believing and Abiding: Bible Definitions

John 8:29–36 (ESV) — 29 And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” 30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him. 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Let’s take up two of these words in this passage, one at a time.

Believing

The word ‘believe’ means to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence, believe (in), trust, w. Implication of total commitment to the one who is trusted.²
The word ‘abide’ is also a favorite word of John.
He uses this word forty times in his gospel.
Weaving these definitions together, we have the following: to be a faithful follower of Jesus, you must entrust yourself with complete confidence, with total commitment, and afterward continue in that state or activity.
We could say it another way: followers must have complete confidence, complete commitment, with comprehensive continuance.
Paring it down a bit further, we have total trust for total time.
If you live this way, Jesus said, in total trust for the total time of your life, you are truly my disciples.

Abiding in Jesus for the Long Haul

Abiding in Jesus, being a faithful follower of His is about the long haul.

Josef Gabor grew up in Czechoslovakia when it was dominated by communism, and religion was despised as weakness. His father taught communist doctrine classes. But Josef’s mother, who believed in Jesus Christ, took Josef and his brother with her to church.

They got up early each Sunday morning and took a 3-hour train ride to Prague. Then they walked to the church and sat through a two 1/2-hour service. After eating lunch in a nearby park, they returned to church for another two 1/2-hour meeting. Then they took the 3-hour ride home. Today Josef Gabor is a missionary to his people in Czechoslovakia.

When he tells about going to church as a child, his eyes fill with tears of gratitude for a mother who cared enough about his spiritual welfare to help him come to know and serve Christ.³

The kind of dedication this mother showed is what takes to live the follower’s life.
Are you willing to go to this length to abide in the Word?

Abiding and the Parable of the Sower

The Parable of the Sower shows that productiveness for God is not a ‘some-timey’ thing.
Here is Luke’s account of Jesus’ explanation.

Luke 8:10 (ESV) — 10 he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’

What Jesus is about to share is a secret.
The Greek word means ‘divine secret,’ a secret from God to those to whom he chooses to share the information, especially concerning the method and history of God’s redemption or other supernatural information.

The Word of God is the Seed of God

Luke 8:11 (ESV) — 11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.

The Parable of the Sower is about the Word and how it does or does not produce in a person’s life.
Different kinds of soil represent these people.

The Word of God Sown Along the Well Known Path

Luke 8:12 (ESV) — 12 The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.

The first soil Jesus clues us into is the one along the path.
The sower sows here.
The path is a way of traveling or moving from one place to another, way, road, highway.⁴
And, with that thought, here’s the historical background of the day.
The general Old Testament term for road is the Hebrew word ‘dere?’, from the root “to tread.” It sometimes indicates the usual ungraded roadway, with surface merely packed down by the passing of vehicles, animals, and pedestrians, and sometimes an improved highway… Some highways were paved, particularly during the Roman period.⁵
So, when Jesus uses the word ‘path,’ we need to see in our minds either a compacted harden surface from all the foot traffic or a paved road.
You can easily see that this type of ground is not conducive to the germination of seed.

The Word of God Sown on Boulders

Luke 8:13 (ESV) — 13 And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.

Some of the seed fell on the second type of ground, rocks.
Where did these rocks come from?
The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land may give us a clue.
It says,

For many thousands of years preparing a road consisted solely of clearing the path of boulders, placing them at the side of the road and filling the larger holes.⁶

So here you have some seed that fell on the road, that didn’t work out well, and now you have some of that same seed that falls on the rocks by the side of the road.
This kind of ground doesn’t produce either because the rocks do not allow the seed to root.
Notice, Jesus equates this person to one who believes only for ‘a while’ and then in time of testing, falls away.
You remember the definition of believing and abiding: total trust – total time.

The Word of God Sown on Top of Thorn Bushes

Luke 8:14 (ESV) — 14 And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.

Some of the seed fell among thorns.
Could it be that these ‘thorn bushes’ were also by the side of the road, maybe a little further inland from the well-traveled path and the rocks by the borders of the road?
Maybe we are now on the other side of these rocks.
But in any case, these thorn bushes are the same thorn bushes used to make the crown of thorns pushed down on Jesus’ head.
It is now called the Syrian Christ-thorn, Zizyphus spina-christi, and it is a shrub or small tree 9 to 15 feet tall, sometimes growing into a 40-foot tree.⁷
It is widespread in the East.
The leaves of the Christ Thorn resemble those of ivy, as they are of an intense glossy green.
Maybe the enemies of Jesus wanted a plant that resembled what the emperors and generals were crowned with but with the added ignominy and insult that the thorns would bring.⁸
The Romans wanted to mock Him and make Him hurt.
So, the seed is cast, and some of it falls within the sphere of these thorn bushes, falling to the ground and occupying the same ground like the roots of these bushes.
The seed tries to grow, but it’s intertwined with the thorns and so fails to produce fruit.
Now, we come to the last kind of soil.

The Word of God Sown On Good Soil

Luke 8:15 (ESV) — 15 As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.

So, we have ‘hearing the Word,’ and ‘holding it fast,’ and ‘honest and good heart,’ and the word ‘patience.’
The Greek word for ‘hold it fast’ means to heed, to listen, hear or pay close attention to, and usually respond in conformity.
Jesus said the person who is ‘free indeed’ is the person who hears my Word and pays close attention to it and then responds by conforming his life to that Word.
This soil produces.
It is good ground, not a travel road, not a boulder by the side of the road, not a thorn bush by the side of the boulder.
No, we are inland now, good ground, fertile soil.
What happens?
The ground produces.
Notice the characteristics of this kind of person whom this good soil represents.

Abiding and Good Ground

Why does this fourth ground produce; that is, why does Jesus deem it as good ground?
Let’s take a look.
This Jesus follower, whom this soil represents ‘holds fast’ to the spoken Word.
We’ve already seen that this means to heed, hear, or pay close attention to, and then respond in conformity.
You have to hold the Word fast, not just hear it.

Believing, Abiding and the Concept of ‘Hearing’ in the First Century

I’m using the word ‘hear’ in a broader sense than Jesus uses it.
In Jesus’ day, the day of the first century, 90% of the population could not read, so all they could, for the most part was hear.
Hearing was the primary mode of information transmission in Jesus’ day.
If you wanted someone to know something, you said it to them as opposed to writing it to them.
The face of literacy in our day is not the same as the first century.
Hearing in our day includes the discipline of reading.
But, among the Hebrew people hearing meant more than just sound waves hitting the ear canal and vibrating on our eardrums.

Deuteronomy 6:4 (ESV) — 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

The Twenty-First Century Concept of ‘Hearing’

Uploading the Jesus principle of ‘hearing’ to the 21st century means that in whatever way you receive the Word, you have to hold fast to it.
Are you reading a book from your favorite Christan author?
Did some of what you read strike your heart?
What are you doing with what you read?
Maybe you had an ‘Ah-Ha’ moment, an uncovering, a revelation?
What did you with that?

Four Questions to Help with ‘Hearing’

I came across these four questions that I began asking myself when I engaged God’s Word.
Maybe they will help you.
1. What does God want me to understand?
2. What does God want me to believe?
3. What does God want me to desire?
4. What does God want me to do?⁹
Nice, neat, simple, but effective.
Stop and apply these questions to the portion of God’s Word you heard, read, or saw.
For me, asking questions of this type are about slowing down enough to ‘think’ about God’s Word instead of running to the next thing on the agenda.

A Present-Day Example of Believing and Abiding

So, here’s an example.
Say you feel ugly toward a person because they have wronged you.
Maybe you’re stewing over that, and you want to strike out verbally and give that person a piece of your heated thinking.
The Word of God says to forgive.
You know it does.
It states that you should overlook the offense you’ve experienced and live in peace.

Proverbs 19:11 (ESV) — 11 Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

Romans 12:18 (ESV) — 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

You see these verses, you hear them in your heart, you think about them with your mind, and then you act on them despite your feeling and opinions because Jesus is your Lord.
All of that is abiding in the Word.
Every part of that is acting or continuing in the Word.
The whole of this is the lifestyle of a disciple.
Asking the question, ‘What does the Word of God say about this fill-in-the-blank situation that involves you and then bring your thoughts, your thinking, and your ways into harmony with the answer to that question is what believing and abiding is all about.
You cannot call yourself a disciple and not take part in this process.
You have to have the Word as part of your thinking.
And, you follow this process for the whole of your life: that’s total trust for the total time.

What Is The Parable of the Sower?

References:

Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 1. ↩
William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 817.
This word ‘believe’ occurs ninety-eight times in John’s gospel.
It’s a favorite word in John’s mouth.
You remember that this was His purpose in writing the gospel in the first place, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you might have life in His Name – John 20:30.

Abiding

The word ‘abide’ means to continue v. — to continue a certain state, condition, or activity.
Louw Nida has it as remain in the same place over a period of time—‘to remain, to stay.[3. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 728. ↩
Galaxie Software, 10,000 Sermon Illustrations (Biblical Studies Press, 2002). ↩
William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 691. ↩
E. R. Thiele, “Roads; Highways,” ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979–1988), 199. ↩
Avraham Negev, The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1990). ↩
Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Plants,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 1726. ↩
John M’Clintock and James Strong, “Thorn,” Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1881), 379–380. ↩
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/8-questions-to-help-you-understand-apply-the-bible/ ↩

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Why Believing and Abiding Is the Key to the Happy Life

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 41

by Emery Horvath

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