If you abide in Me.

     The other day I stayed late at work. Most everyone else had left including the maintenance guys. I went over to a coper to cope some rails, and turned it on. All I got was a hum, nothing else. The motor would not turn. I shut it off and tried again with the same result. Without a maintenance guy, there was nothing I could do about it. I went back to work trying to do without the coper. All of a sudden I thought to check the plug. It runs on 220 so I went to check it out. It was only plugged  in half way. I plugged it in and turned it on and it worked perfectly!
     Many Christians are like that half plugged in coper. They are connected to Jesus, but they do not abide in Him. He said "If you abide in me, and my word abides in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you". The text goes on to show that God desires us to bear fruit for His glory, and that it is impossible to do so without abiding in Christ. We witness and work, and pray, until we are tired out with little or no results. We get discouraged and give up, blaming it on a host of things, without stopping to see if the problem might originate with us!
     We need the fulness of the Holy Spirit. The mighty baptism of power that is available to all who will take it by faith. It means a full surrender of ourselves, a complete devotion of our all to the cause of Christ. It is a full and complete abiding in Christ. It means that we hold His word dear, and allow it to mold our lives. If we would truly delight ourselves in Christ, truly abide in Him, and allow His word to form itself in us, I believe that our prayer life will be transformed. Our requests will change, our motives for asking will change. We will see answers to prayer. Our labor for Him will take on new meaning and will be done in new found strength.
     O how we need to be plugged in to the only true source of spiritual life. We must abide in Him. Apart from Him we can do nothing!