The minute that you got born again you started abiding in Christ. The anointed One and His anointing became your home and your body became the temple of the Holy Spirit. All that you had to do was to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Jesus did the rest… He paid the price for your sin and He restored favor between you and the Father through His gift of grace. So, because of Jesus, you already qualify for the first half of the scripture.
Jesus goes on, “and [if] My Words abide in you… ”Our part of this wonderful covenant promise is to receive His Word and plant it into our hearts. Scriptural meditation is the key… Studying, reading, and sitting under the preaching of the Word are ways of ‘sowing’ the Word into our hearts, but scriptural meditation causes the Word to take root, grow and make it’s home in us.
What is scriptural meditation?
A great example of scriptural meditation is found in the book of Joshua…
In Joshua 1:7-8 the Lord said to Joshua, “Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe and do things according to the Word [The law] which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it [the Word] to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law [The Word] shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
‘Scriptural meditation is an ongoing [day and night] process of hearing, speaking, observing, thinking about, then doing the Word. Rolling the Word over and over in our minds… muttering the Word, strongly declaring the Word, stepping out and trying to implement aspects of the Word over and over until it becomes a part of us.’
You will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you…
A better translation for the word ‘ask’ is ‘require’… you shall require what you desire and it shall be done for you. The New Covenant way of asking or requiring is believing that we receive ‘with thanksgiving’. We have already freely been given EVERYTHING in Christ. As New Covenant believers we make our requests ‘with thanksgiving’… “Lord I thank you that by Your Stripes I am healed… I now receive that healing and command all sickness to depart from my body, in Jesus Name!” The Word that is ABIDING IN US as we are abiding in Jesus releases the promises of God to us as we require them in the same way that ‘fruit’ is released in season through a branch that is connected to a tree.
I encourage you all to keep your Word level up through scriptural meditation. As you do, you will ask and require what you desire, and it will be done for you, in Jesus Name!
