God invites us to abide in Him.

Sunday’s sermon, on July 20, 2025, entitled “Abiding on Earth,” challenges the notion that we can only abide at certain times of the day.

During prayer. During a devotional. During spiritual meditation.

Those occurrences are good, but, based on Genesis 2 and 3, we can abide all the time.

When Adam was in the garden, he abided with God during work and during rest–he was always in God’s presence.

According to the sermon, we compartmentalize the secular and the sacred–thinking that they are two distinctive and separate things.

But abiding resists separation and rejects the sacred/secular divide. In other words, we can be with God all the time.

We can abide with God when we walk, sit down, lay down, and rise up.

Psalm 139:2 says, “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.”

And Deuteronomy 6:5-7 says, “ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

We don’t have to consciously focus on God to be with Him. We just need to be aware of His presence. The moment we “space out,” or forget that God is with us, that is when the enemy shows up to deceive us.

Thus, abiding also resists deception, or rejects bad beliefs, like, “I must earn God’s favor.”

Abiding is not only exclusive mental concentration, but it is also comprehensive. We can abide with God both when we work and when we pray to Him.

And finally, abiding resists hiding. We don’t have to hide from God. He has made a way to cover our sin and shame through Christ’s payment for our sins.

We can go boldly to God in Christ and not hide from Him.

When we confess Christ and believe in Him, we can know that God sees us as righteous because Christ has taken our bad record and given us his good record.

God is the God of my universe. He is in my work, and He is in my play.

Even though we disobey when we are deceived and then feel shame, God covers us and invites us to abide.

In John 15:4, Jesus says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”

I can abide in Jesus all the time. I just need to be aware of His presence and acknowledge His presence everywhere I go.

—Ann Elizabeth Yeager