Abide In Abba

How has your intimacy with the Lord been looking in this season?

Do you feel His presence, or has the noise of life made it hard to hear His voice? Do you feel connected to the vine, rooted, nourished, and alive? Or do you feel more like Martha, busy and overwhelmed, juggling responsibilities while still trying to serve Him diligently?

Wherever you find yourself, one truth remains: God is always calling us back to Himself. He invites us to lay our burdens at His feet, to abide in Him, to rest in Him, and to take refuge in His presence.

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” — John 15:4 NKJV

In Luke 10, Martha welcomed Jesus into her home, but she became “distracted with much serving” Luke 10:40. Her sister, Mary, sat at Jesus’ feet and listened. Martha wasn’t wrong to serve, but she let her service pull her away from His presence. She grew anxious and troubled about many things when only one thing was necessary: nearness to Him.

We can be the same way. We feel the need to be strong, to hold everything together, to manage what’s in front of us. We forget that our Father doesn’t need our strength!

He wants our presence with Him. Not to worry over what we see, but to trust Him in what we cannot see. When we stop striving long enough to be still, we begin to see the evidence of His Spirit growing in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). Fruit isn’t produced by effort. It’s produced by intimacy.

Where in your life are you more “Martha” than “Mary” right now? What would it look like this week to abide and to rest in His presence?

Ask Abba to quiet your heart today and to help you lay down what you’ve been carrying. Abide in Him and trust that as you draw nearer to Him, He will draw nearer to you, and the evidence of His Spirit, His fruit, will grow.