Suppose you are in an elevator, traveling toward the top of the World Trade Center. As the elevator moves steadily upward, you lean over to tie your shoe, slip, and fall down. You have gone down, even while going up!

This is perhaps a feeble illustration of the two different kinds of abiding. We can come to God day by day and abide in Him day by day. It is the abiding daily relationship that gives God control of our direction. If we abide in Him day by day, through a daily relationship with Him, our direction will be upward.

We choose whether we will abide in relationship with Him day by day as we choose whether or not to spend that thoughtful hour in contemplation of the life of Christ and in prayer and communion with Him, And so long as we come to Him in an abiding daily relationship, inviting His control of our lives, our direction will be upward.

But many Christians have become painfully aware that even when they have chosen an abiding daily relationship with Christ, at times they still can look away from Him to themselves. And at those times they fall and fail and sin. Which brings us to a second kind of abiding–a moment-by-moment abiding dependence. Even when the abiding daily relationship is unbroken, it is possible for the moment-by-moment abiding dependence to be on-again, off-again.

Let’s nail it down to begin with, that it is the abiding daily relationship that determines our direction and our destiny. Steps to Christ, pages 57, 58, says:

“The character is revealed, the occasional good deeds and occasional misdeeds, but by the tendency of the habitual words and acts.” (Emphasis supplied.)

But the moment-by-moment abiding dependence is what determines victory or defeat in the Christian life. Any time we are looking to Jesus and depending upon His strength, we will experience victory. Any time we look to ourselves and depend upon our own power, we are defeated. Depending upon whether we are strong or weak, defeat may be only inward, or outward as well.

If we are strong, we may behave correctly, but fall and fail and sin on the inside. If we are weak, the defeat will be outward as well as inward. But if we are depending upon self instead of upon the power of Jesus, we have no choice but to fall and fail and sin.

If we were going to try to draw a graph of the Christian life, it could look something like this:

The one who is in an abiding daily relationship with Christ has the upward trend in the life, in spite of the occasional failures.

However, if one is not in an abiding daily relationship with Christ, the line would go like this:

He may have occasional impulses that reach out toward God, but the general trend of the life is downward.

If one is in an abiding daily relationship with Christ, then Christ is in control of his direction. If one is not in an abiding daily relationship, the devil has control of his direction.

People often ask “Then who is in control at the point of the downward steps, even when the general direction is upward?”

The answer is that the devil is in control, moment-by- moment, any time we look away from Christ and withdraw from dependence upon His power. Of course the devil has to be in control any time we sin. But it’s possible for the devil to gain control of our lives for the moment, while God is still in control of our direction. And what makes the difference in God’s control of our direction?

Again, it’s an abiding daily relationship with Him.

God’s goal for us is to lead us just as fast as possible to the place where we will know him and trust Him sufficiently so that we will never be turned away from Him, even for the moment. And when that time comes, our lives will look like this: