Our Postures—Part Five

Biblically, a posture is a physical position in worship that reflects the heart's attitude of reverence towards God and our dependence on Him. At the beginning of this year, the Lord impressed on us that there are six postures—six mindsets—that He wants to undergird and inform our prayers for Forgiving Forward.

All for God’s Glory
Jesus Focused
Shepherd Led
Gospel-Centric
Abiding Trust
Self Denied

This is the fifth in a series of blogs unpacking each of the postures that guide the ministry of Forgiving Forward. The fifth posture is:

Abiding Trust

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him,

he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

John 15:5

Several years ago, I heard Chip Ingram share that he had read a chapter in A. W. Tozer’s classic book The Knowledge of the Holy, which is an examination of the attributes of God, every day for over 30 years. Because I respect Chip, I was intrigued, so I decided to give it a shot. Since that time, my morning routine includes reading a chapter of Tozer’s book every day. There are 23 chapters, and when I finish chapter 23, I start over with chapter 1. I read it about 15 times a year. Why? The main reason lies in two statements Tozer makes in the book. The first line of the first chapter reads, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” The second statement is found in the preface, “The low of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of 100 lesser evils everywhere among us.”Tozer’s overarching premise is that our view of God determines and impacts everything we think, say, and do.

As I continue to saturate my mind with the attributes of God that He has revealed to us in His word, my perspectives on everything have been re-ordered and renewed. I have found that the more I get to know God, the more I find myself trusting Him more and trusting myself less. But it is a challenge, isn’t it? Here’s Tozer again, “Left to ourselves, we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can, in some measure, control.” I don’t know about you, but I tend to downsize God regularly. How often do we view God as the “Heavenly Express Card,” something we keep hidden in our wallet and whip out when we need Him? The problem is that when we downsize God, we upsize ourselves, which is the root cause of most, if not all, of our troubles. The essence of idolatry, according to Tozer, is “the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.” Ouch!

However, when we have a proper view of God, when we see him for who He really is, the rest of life finds its balance and order. The more I know Him, the more connected I want to be and the more dependent I become. I think that’s what Jesus taught in John 15 when He encouraged us to abide in Him.

In the heart of the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus called us to a renewed relationship with Him. While it seems like a new relationship, Jesus was actually calling us back to the original relationship God had with our first parents. When God created Adam, Adam’s primary responsibility was to walk with God, and out of his relationship with God, he was to govern the earth. Man was created to be constantly connected and desperately dependent on God. God was his source for everything. When Adam and Eve sinned, their relationship was disconnected, and their dependency was disrupted. There was nothing man could do to pay the cost to re-establish the broken connection.

In John 15:1-11, knowing that He was hours away from paying for our sins, Jesus offers to restore us back to the original relationship God had with mankind. Using the imagery of the Vine and the branch, God is the owner of the vineyard, Jesus is the Vine, and we are the branches. The only source of life in a vineyard is the vine. The branches are simply extensions of the vine through which fruit is produced. The branch doesn’t produce the fruit; it simply bears the fruit. Since the branch is totally dependent on the vine for its life and fruitfulness, it must remain constantly connected to the vine at all times. Simply put, it must abide in the vine. Apart from the vine, the branch can do nothing.

The same is true for us. Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. That is why Abiding is the only way we can live the life we were redeemed to live. The Greek word translated abide means “to stay, to wait, to remain in, to stay in place, to remain in a sphere, to remain in one place with someone, to reside.” It carries the connotation of living in an intimate relationship with someone. Abiding is simply being constantly connected and desperately dependent on Jesus.

Abiding is how we live, and it’s how we grow in Christ. It flows like this:

The more we choose to abide in Jesus, the more our knowledge of God grows.
The more we know about God, the more we trust HIm.
The more we trust Him, the more He reveals Himself to us.
The more He reveals Himself to us, the more dependent we become.
The more dependent we become, the more we abide.
The more we abide, the more our knowledge of God grows.
The more…

Faith becomes natural to those who abide.

When we were processing this posture of trust, my first thought was that we needed a posture of “radical trust.” You know, the bold “Sun, stand still!” “Go big or go home” kind of trust. But as we sat with the Lord on this, we realized that while God sometimes calls us to trust Him for big things, He is more concerned with the consistency of our faith. Is trust our automatic response to everything we face in life, whether we consider it to be good or bad?

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast,

because they trust in you.

Isaiah 26:3

We have learned that there is a two-word answer to every circumstance that comes our way. It is the same two words whether it is the greatest thing ever or the worst thing imaginable. The two words are this: Well, Amen! That’s it! The Hebrew word “amen” means “God is faithful, God is sovereign, God is trustworthy.” In other words, God has us, no matter what; God can be trusted.

In our last Board Meeting, Pastor John Offutt declared, “Faith and fear do not disagree on the facts; they disagree on who is in charge.” We know that our Lord and Savior is in charge, and we are His, therefore, we kneel before Him, dedicated to staying constantly connected and desperately dependent on Him.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Romans 8:31-32

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