Wait. There is a world of articles, books, and information out there when it comes to Christianity, but we are mostly stuck with rhetoric and double talk when it comes to our relationship with the Lord, our new identity as believers, and the security and finality of the work of Christ. Are you getting everything you need spiritually from your church, or do you find yourself feeling hungry for more? Wake up. Join Lenny as he unpacks what Scripture really taught about our Lord Jesus Christ in context and why this matters to you. Wake up, wake up, wake up to grace.

Welcome back everyone, and thank you for joining me. As promised, our study today will be about how we apply what we've learned in our John 15 passages. Essentially, we'll be discussing how to abide in Christ. I'll also show you how the theme that we see of ask and it will be done actually applies to us abiding in Christ and not merely asking for Him to grant our wishes. I already know how to abide in Christ, you may be thinking, I already believe. But we must recognize that although we do abide in Christ when we believe, and he also abides in us, these passages are about fruit bearing. Yeshua is calling on his believers to bear fruit. This comes only through belief and can only be done by belief. Let me repeat this because it's important. Abiding comes only through belief and can only be done by belief. In other words, the faith and belief that saves us is the same faith and belief that sustains us. We're called to live out our belief. We're not called to live independent of the Lord or live autonomously just doing whatever we feel like. We're called to live a holy life, which is to be guided by the Spirit of God. We're called to abide in, continue in, remain in Christ, which is simply to continue in our belief. We cling to the Lord in His guidance. We're not directed by our own guidance. Proverbs 16 9 says, The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. When you first believed in Christ Yeshua, did you think that gospel sounds good? I need some help in my life, I could use some extra blessings. Or did you instead think, I need Christ, how can I be saved and guided by Him? I hope it was more like the latter, because it will be difficult to abide if the former was our disposition upon salvation. When we believed the gospel, we saw our sinfulness and despised it, didn't we? When we believed the gospel, we trusted God, did we not? As newly regenerated Christians, we trusted that God would be working in our lives, didn't we? Did we not also want to know where to start? What we could do? Yes, and that's typically when we're the most misguided by today's leaders and church institutions. Without good discernment, we'll find ourselves being guided by a counseling handbook and not the counselor that dwells within ourselves. We'll be guided by our devotional efforts and not the Spirit of God. Okay, so let's talk about abiding in Christ. If we're talking about abiding in Christ, why in the world did you title the message Ask and It Will Be Done? you might be thinking. Well the disciples may have been thinking that same thought. How can this possibly have anything to do with abiding? In his vine and branches analogy in verse 7, Yeshua says, If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. And even more peculiar is the fact that he repeats it himself again, displaying importance in verse 16. We read, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. In John 14, 13 it reads, Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. We see this concept ask and it will be done being established very much in the context of our John 15, one through six passage. This must pertain to abiding. But maybe it was specific to the apostles and those with the miraculous spiritual gifts at the end of the age. After all, Yeshua was only speaking to his true disciples here. Well, John spoils that idea when he echoes the words of Yeshua to his entire audience. In 1 John 3 21, we read, Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. We see it said one way here, and then he seems to want his audience to understand it from another angle at the end of his letter. In 1 John 5 13, we read, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us, and if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. In this passage we seem to gain the additional detail that we need to understand the intent of the statement. When we understand the reconciling grace of the gospel, we can have confidence in our salvation. We then go beyond asking for more forgiveness. We have all that we could ever need in Christ Yeshua. Now we're able to ask for things that are pleasing to the Lord. We begin to think like Him more often and share in His desires. We know that our Father hears all of our prayers, but in this context, John explains that the Lord hears requests made according to his will in a different way. In these cases, we can know that we have the requests that we've asked. Based on this, how can we be sure that we're thinking in line with the will of our Lord? When we ask for holy things? When we ask for good things to happen to certain people in our lives? We see neither of these ideas presented here, do we? No, we see that when our requests are granted, that our will has lined up with the Father's will, don't we? It's like magic that we never performed. We simply believed in God most high and received a reward in our lives. Is this reward limited to only what we received? Not even close. When we find our will lining up with the Father's will, we're encouraged. We're strengthened. We've connected with the God who created all things on a personal level, and his great love for us has been magnified. And that's only just getting started. We're granted our requests, and we're taught the great value of abiding in our spiritual requests. But how are we taught to abide here? We're taught to abide by our Heavenly Father revealing his will to us in our prayer life. When we're granted requests, it's like the Lord telling us you're on the right track now. This is a request that honors me. I'm proud of you, my son, or I'm proud of you, my daughter. We've been given directional clarity. The Lord has directed our steps. Fruit has been produced in our lives from the true vine. We could never support in Scripture the idea of this being a genie in a bottle message like the televangelists convince us to believe. Paul himself didn't even receive what he wanted all the time. We see this in his letter to the Corinthians. Corinthians 12 7 reads, So to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong. We see that for Paul, depending on the Lord was going to have to do, and when it was revealed that the Lord's will was for him to carry this thorn, though it most certainly caused him suffering, Paul changed his mind and embraced it. In fact, he considered our Lord's response to be worthy of boasting in. Imagine the response that would occur if a prosperity preacher was told this by Yahweh. You can practically hear them saying, But that's not what I deserve, Lord. In a Roman study, we recently talked about how Paul had never met most, if not all, of the Christians gathering in Rome. He intended to go there and he had not made it yet. He prayed that he would be able to. When he found himself getting attacked in Jerusalem, it may have seemed like he would never make it to Rome. But by the grace of God, he found himself in Rome, though in chains, he had made it to his final destination and preached the word in person to those in Rome. Sometimes we don't get immediate answers, we have to be patient. Sometimes our requests are not answered. But our lives will always be guided and enriched through the requests that our Lord graciously grants us in his good will. His grace is sufficient, so ask and it will be done. We are often taught to live a Christlike life, to be like Christ. So are we to raise the dead, heal the blind, boldly rebuke the Pharisees of our day by the authority of God? Teach the law in all its truth? Are we to strive for a sinless life above all else? Is that what our scripture teaches? Or is there a much larger meaning to this concept? Christ Yeshua was fully God and fully man. We can't change this fact. But Yeshua did not rely on his own power during his earthly life. He remained perfectly dependent on Yahweh for everything. This is the best example of holy living that we could ever receive. So the popular question, what would Jesus do, has a very simple answer. Follow the guidance of the Father. This is the real call to action that all Christians are commanded. You've been given all things. Now live by those things. You've been given a counselor. Now follow his guidance, not your own. Ask and it will be given. Sounds easy, right? Well, not so much. The things that come naturally to us, as born-again Christians, don't come easy. The influence of the world around us is profound. It's much easier to go with the flow of the world than to go against it. It takes more energy to swim upstream. That's why we need the abiding power of the Holy Spirit. But now let's read our John 15 passage just to keep it fresh in our minds, shall we? I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I'm the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he's thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. We learn that this abiding power would come through the Holy Spirit when we study the context of Yeshua's words. In John 14, we read, If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Ask and it will be given also applies to belief, doesn't it? It's a superficial prayer to ask Yeshua into your heart until it actually comes true. And we know it's true by the work of the Spirit in our lives. There's so much we can glean from these words. Consider this. Have you ever heard someone question whether Christians love the Lord or not? It would seem by these words of Christ Yeshua that this would be a false accusation when used against one who has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. We can't be given the Spirit unless we love the Lord. On top of that, how can we even consider a loss of salvation being possible with the life-giving Spirit of Yahweh living in us? Continuing, we read, John fourteen twenty-three. Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. And then in fourteen twenty-six, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Can you see the importance of the Holy Spirit in our abiding as Christians? It's everything, isn't it? Yeshua actually makes it crystal clear that the disciples' love was quite lacking prior to their receiving the Spirit of God. In John 14, 28, we read, You heard me say to you, I'm going away and I will come to you. If you love me, you would have rejoiced, because I'm going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you, before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. From this we gather that they didn't yet have the love Yeshua was teaching about. And why was this the case? It was because they didn't believe. What didn't they believe? They didn't believe in the cross and resurrection yet, because despite Yeshua directly telling them, they couldn't understand him until the Holy Spirit revealed it to them. We see this context illustrated again in chapter 16. In 1624, we read, Until now you have asked nothing in my name, ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full. When it came to ask and it will be done, they had asked nothing thus far. Here Yeshua seems to foretell of their receiving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Ask and it will be done certainly applies to our salvation. And what would make someone even ask such a thing? In John 15, verse 16, Yeshua says, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. I think this passage more than speaks for itself in answering that question. I talk on God's sovereignty in message number thirty-five and thirty-nine, if you're interested in that. In closing, we read why Yeshua said all these things to his disciples. John 16 1 says, I've said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They'll put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he's offering a service to God, and they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me. But I've said these things to you that when their hour comes, that you might remember that I've told them to you. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. When John echoes the words of Yeshua closing in on the end of the age, we see that he fully understood the purpose that the Lord had for them. The salvation that saves the sustained salvation that sustains. Salvation is not only for the next life, we need it now. Stay tuned for my next message as we wrap up the abiding series with some more application of the truth we've learned.