Are You a Visitor or a Resident?

I have a confession to make.

For years, I treated my relationship with Christ like most people treat a vacation rental. I'd show up when I needed something, enjoy the warmth for a bit, maybe leave a nice note on the counter, and then go back to my regular life. I called it faith. I called it prayer. I called it being a Christian.

What I didn't call it was visiting.

And there is a world of difference between visiting a place and living there.

Think about it. When you visit somewhere, you pack a bag. You're a guest. You're on your best behavior, you use the nice towels, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you're going home eventually. But when you live somewhere? That's different. You know where the creaky floorboard is. You leave your shoes by the door. You don't have to knock. It's home.

That's the picture Jesus paints in John 15:4 when He says, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me."

That word abide trips people up. We make it sound mystical. Complicated. Like something only monks with very long beards in stone monasteries have figured out. But the Greek word Jesus uses here—menó—simply means to remain. To stay put. To make your home there and not leave.

Abiding in Christ is not an activity. It is a position. It's not something you do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. It's where you live.

Here in the hills of Wales, I've grown quite fond of looking out my window at the landscape. No matter the season, whether those hills are green and glowing in summer or wrapped in grey mist in January, those hills are there. They don't come and go. They don't pack up when the weather turns rough. They are a permanent, unchanging backdrop to everything I see.

That is what Christ is meant to be for the believer. Not an event on the calendar. Not a resource to be consulted in emergencies. He is our permanent environment:  the air we breathe, the ground under our feet, the backdrop of every single moment of every single day.

So, how do we do this practically? How does a person actually stay? I’m so tempted to ask my dog this question because she seems to understand it better than I do. That being said,  I've found it comes down to four simple habits, and there’s nothing mysterious about them.

Talk - “Pray without ceasing," Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Not just a morning prayer and a bedtime prayer, but a running, ongoing, never-really-hanging-up-the-phone conversation with God throughout the day. A thought sent up while you're doing the washing. A quick "help me" before a difficult conversation. Continuous, unbroken communication.

Listen - God gave us His Word so we could hear His voice. Reading the Bible isn't a chore to tick off a list. It’s tuning your ear to the frequency of the One you love. You can't abide with someone you never listen to.

Obey - When the Holy Ghost nudges you—and He will—follow it. That small, quiet conviction in your chest is the vine-life moving through you. When we ignore it, we're essentially unplugging ourselves from the power source.

Depend - This is the one we fight hardest, isn't it? Admitting that we genuinely cannot do anything of lasting spiritual value without Him. Nothing!!! Not some things. Not most things. Nothing. Jesus isn't being dramatic in John 15. He's being precise.

Here is the beautiful simplicity at the heart of all of this: the branch's only job is to stay attached.

A branch doesn't worry about the fruit. It doesn't strain and grunt and strategize. It simply remains connected to the vine, and the life of the vine does everything else. The fruit is the vine's business. The branch's job is to stay put.

If the connection is secure, the rest is inevitable.

Are you a visitor or a resident? The vine is open. The door is never locked. Move in, and stay.

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This devotion is Part 1 of a three-part series on abiding in Christ and bearing fruit. Next time, in Part 2, we'll take a closer look at what spiritual fruit actually looks like because it may not be exactly what you think. And in Part 3, we'll tackle the question we all secretly ask: how do I actually get there? (Spoiler: it's a lot simpler than you've been making it.) Don't miss the rest of the series!