John 15:4-5 NASB95
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5 NASB95
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
Victorious Christian living isn’t the result of attending a seminar and memorizing some formula. It is not the result of someone laying hands on you and imparting to you victory. Victorious Christian living is a person, and that person is Jesus Christ and the Christian who trusts Christ moment by moment for full victory lives the life of an overcomer. We are not called to mimic Jesus, trying our best to be like him. We are called to abide in him daily by faith, and each moment that is experienced in victory can be credited to Jesus alone. Having said that, when we fall, which we, unfortunately, do from time to time, we alone can take credit for that.
Sin is nothing more than a deception from the enemy to try to get us to steward the moment apart from trusting Jesus for victory. An even bigger deception and lie from the enemy is that once you have fallen is that you have to somehow work your way back to where you were spiritually before you fell. The enemy tells us that we lost ground that it will take a while to get back to where we were. He tells us that so we will lose hope and just give up. The truth is though, is the moment you realize that you fell because you stopped relying on Jesus for your victory, you can quick as a look, start abiding again, trusting Christ for full victory. He’s not the one who sinned, you were, and the moment you start abiding again, looking to Him one step at a time, he will be just as victorious as he was the moment before you fell. This is a liberating truth! You don’t have to linger around in self-hatred trying to earn your way back to a place of victory. Jesus is there in you waiting for you to simply start looking to him again in childlike faith. He is the place of victory.