Scripture: John 15:5
Journal: What is your sense of your own nothingness today? When and how are you trying to be something
apart from Jesus? How will you abide in
him this day?
Reflection:
Morning by morning and day by day and hour by
hour and step by step, in every work, I have to abide before him in the simple
and utter helplessness of one who knows nothing, and is nothing,
and can do nothing. Oh, beloved
workers, study that word nothing.
You sometimes sing: “Oh, to be nothing, nothing”: but have you really
studied that word and prayed every day, and worshiped God, in the light of
it? Do you know the blessedness of that
word nothing?
If I am something, then God
is not everything: but when I become nothing, God can become all, and
the everlasting God in Christ can reveal himself fully. That is the higher life. We need to become nothing. Someone has well said that the seraphim and
cherubim are flames of fire because they know they are nothing, and they allow
God to put his fullness and his glory and brightness into them. Oh, become nothing in deep reality, and, as
worker, study only one thing—to become poorer and lower and more helpless, that
Christ may work all in you.
Workers, here is your first
lesson: learn to be nothing, learn to be helpless. The man who has got something is not
absolutely dependent; but the man who has got nothing is absolutely dependent. Absolute dependence upon God is the secret of
all power in work. The branch has
nothing but what it gets from the vine, and you and I can have nothing but what
we get from Jesus. (Absolute Dependence by Andrew Murray)
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Forgive me, Lord Jesus, for trying to make
myself something, when the truth is that apart from you I am nothing. My biggest problems in life typically come
when I try to avoid that nothingness, rather than embracing it. Help me to learn what it really means to
abide in you. Amen.
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