Stop Striving, Abide in Me (and new music)

For just as the branch cannot bear any fruit unless it shares the life of the vine, so you can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me. I am the vine itself, you are the branches. It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful. For the plain fact is that apart from me you can do nothing at all. (John 15:4-5, Phillips)

The past few years I have been learning, often painfully slowly, to abide in Christ. Thankfully, he is a good and patient teacher. When I strive to do things, to fix things, to be something that I’m not, his reminders come sweetly and gently to remind me: “abide in me. Share my life. Let me live through you. It’s really much easier that way. Do you remember me telling you that my burden is light and my yoke is easy? Trust me. Rest in me.”

I recently stumbled across a new artist (to me) on noisetrade.com: Jenny & Tyler. Their simple, honest, humble music struck a chord in me (pun intended). I downloaded the album Faint Not on noisetrade, and was notified of their new album that released on April 3rd called Open Your Doors. I strolled over to iTunes to check it out, and this song called Abide really hit home with me. I love the music and I really love the words to this song. There’s a great line in the song: “The labor of God is to trust in the Son.” I feel like it captured much of what I’ve wrestled with. Reading further about the album, I found that the whole album was written around this theme of not striving in our own power and abiding in the life of Christ. I downloaded the album and have not been disappointed!

Click here for Jenny & Tyler’s website.

Here’s a video of Jenny & Tyler playing Abide live.

Another song: Faint Not