Why I remain in Him

"You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:3-5)

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." (John 15:9-12)

"My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Then Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:27-29)

When Matthew 11 stopped me in my tracks today, my thoughts were "You talk about a yoke You give us, but it never felt like a yoke to me. It felt more like a warm blanket that you placed on my too exhausted soul after I tried so hard to be good for You..." The my next thoughts was "abide" so I went to John 15.

He starts by explaining how abiding works and that it works because it has always worked between Him and The Father. Why? Because it is not based on one of Them trying their very best to please the other. It is all natural and simple because it is relational. It is based on something that is already there, freely given and completely accepted- Their love for each other.

That is why The Father says about The Son "This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17) 
And that is why The Son never questions The Father's love and He knows what He was entrusted: "As The Father loves Me, so I have loved you"; "My Father has entrusted everything to Me."
Why? Because they remain in each other based on Their love for one another. They don't strive to remain, they just do it out of love. The Son doesn't sit there asking Himself "How can I make sure I remain in The Father?" He just knows He is in The Father. Remaining is not a process for Them. It is just who They are because of their relationship and what they are for each- "I am The Father", "I am The Son".

This is what Jesus was trying to explain to us. The Vine never questions or doubts Its fruitfulness because It knows and relies on The Gardener's hands. Jesus simply wants us, out of love for Him to replicate the relationship. He wants our remaining in Him, to be because of our relationship with Him and what we are for each other- "I am The Son", "I am a child of God because of You". It is that simple. For as long as you remain aware of this, you remain. You don't have to make yourself remain, you just do because it is all relational.And therein comes the rest.
Why does He want us to replicate the relationship? Because only He truly knows The Father. And He loves The Father so much that He wants us to "truly know" Him like The Son does. 

So where do we go wrong? How do we become so weary and burdened that we need an intervention? How do we start in love for The Son and one day end up here, crashing?
From personal experience, I think that this happens because we forget the beauty and simplicity and trust of Their complete love for one another. And we fall back on loving Him with a human kind of love. The only problem is that the human kind of love is selfish and insecure most of the times. It is selfish because it focuses on the self: "I love you so much that look what I've done for you..."
And it is insecure because it always needs reassurance and proof, so inevitably it always ends up focusing on performance and keeping scores: "If you love me, prove it, do this for me..." or "Remember when, out of love, I did that for you and you didn't reciprocate...?"

Jesus always talked about how much The Father loved Him and everything Jesus did was a reply to The Father's love for Him. He was trying to teach us God's love, the love that never focuses on the self and makes the object of their love the focus of everything that motivates their actions. He wants our actions to be motivated by His love for us, not our love for Him.
But we forget His kind of love, that love that drew us in the first time we encountered it. The feelings remain because we carry on speaking of our love for Him, but our actions become motivated by a human love that focuses not on His Persona, but on how much we love Him. And we carry on like this for a while without even realising that we are branches without a Vine; trying to produce fruit out of a selfish insecure love. And we try and try until we fall down exhausted and tell Him that what He is asking is too hard. Completely forgetting that the only thing He asked was for us to remain in His love and to allow that love to flow to others. But when we end up in this place, according to His good habit, He steps in again and beckons "Come to Me, My weary one, and I will give you rest. Let me teach you..." And then He starts again, "Remember how The Father loves Me? Look at Me and remember- that is how I love you. And beloved...I already proved it with My own life. So remember My love for you next time you tell Me how much you love Me, or when you're demanding proof. I love you as I am loved- completely. Now rest..."

That's why His yoke feels like a warm blanket on my exhausted soul. There's safety and complete acceptance here and a love that just flows over me without asking me to prove myself. So I remain here and I make His warm blanket my abiding place. Not because He asked me to or to prove my love for Him. I remain because He loves me like He is loved by The Father, fully and completely.