Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
I'll start at the end. Being connected with God is abiding. That is what I realized for myself was the disconnect. I was looking for something more than being connected and thereby receiving what the connection provided. And I'm not just talking about being saved = being connected. We keep looking for something that is more than being actively connected that must be done before we can assert that we are abiding and then start doing something. We are over-thinking abiding. We make it into its own activity that must be accomplished before anything else can go on. That is not what the metaphor I see would suggest.
|
Abiding is simply maintaining a personal spiritual contact with God. On the one hand it's very natural to do it once one gets a taste for it. On the other hand, the world, the flesh and the devil all work to distract us from it, so we tend to get distracted from it.
I never thought the LRC
taught there was more to abiding than what it is. I just think the LRC worked like any other religion to complicate the simplicity that's in Christ.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying abiding is not an activity that must be accomplished before anything else can happen. That in fact is pretty much what it is. Without abiding we can do nothing. So it must come first. Unless the problem you are having is with the word "accomplished." Abiding is never accomplished any more that breathing is. It is ongoing, it is sometimes almost unconscious, but it is primary.