Striving or Abiding?

John 15:4 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”

In the 1940s, Eric ‘Bash’ Nash started holiday camps for boys at Britain’s top boarding schools. They had a huge influence in due course on the Church of England, raising up future leaders like John Stott, Nicky Gumbel, Archbishop Justin Welby and many more. Indeed those camps were used to bring me to faith as well.

When he was training as a young ordinand at Ridley Hall, Bash would rarely turn up to the daily morning service in chapel; and those times he did, he’d inevitably arrive late. One morning after chapel his tutor knocked on his door and found Bash still curled up in bed. From beneath the covers Bash muttered: “It’s about abiding, man!”

Do you tend more towards striving or abiding? Striving is necessary at times of course, but abiding is no less so, and is invariably sacrificed when we find ourselves under pressure.

As a church community, we can end up striving to do all the ministries possible, such that to the outsider, our church looks busy and successful. We have groups from the cot to the grave, for both genders, meetings every night of the week; we have prayer groups before breakfast and run every conceivable course on evangelism and discipleship. And yet we still seem to plateau and tread water, and despite all the striving, to make little progress.

Sometimes we need to forget how we look, forget what others will think, forget about being accessible to anyone at any time, and instead to take a rest in the green meadows and beside the peaceful streams that David talks about in Psalm 23. It’s there that our strength is renewed and restored to then re-enter the fray.

Here’s a good question to reflect on today:

Is your striving a joyful reflection of God’s grace and your abiding a disciplined communion with Christ?

Lord, I choose to remain in you today. Thank you that you will remain in me. Amen!