Like a branch in the vine

In the past two months, God has been hammering home that I must abide in him.  I keep reading and re-reading John 15, when Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches.  I have heard this many times, but I am marveling at how new and beautiful the words seem.

Several weeks ago I was down the beach playing volleyball.  One of the guys was sitting on the sidelines because he had recently got a tree tattoo on his inner forearm.  "Any significance?" I ask him, "Or do you just like trees?"  He said there was actually a lot of significance, mostly based in Matthew chapter 21, in which Jesus curses the fig tree that does not bear fruit.  His tattoo is a reminder not to be fruitless.  Amazing.

Then, this past Sunday, I heard in a sermon (on John 15) that "there is no such thing as a fruitless Christian."  Basically they are mutually exclusive, they contradict each other.  To be a Christian is to be a person who bears fruit for God's kingdom.  This is something that I have no trouble understanding- our role as workers, kingdom-builders, fruit-bearers.

But the message that God is making sure I understand is that I am not to be so concerned with the doing but instead to be concerned with the abiding.  The more I abide in him and in his love, the more I will bear fruit that will last for the kingdom.  He will work through me, but I need to abide.

I think of a branch and a vine.  How the fibers of that branch are connected to the vine and through them all nutrients and water travel, through the vine to its branches.  I want every fiber of my soul and body and mind to be in Christ- that I thirst daily for his presence and his word.  That I know that cut off from him, I will die, just as a branch would die cut off from the vine.

If you are like me, you look at this world and see a lot of pain, a lot of people who do not know God, and all of this means that there is so much work to be done.  But Christ says, apart from him we can do nothing.  We can do all things through him, but nothing apart from him.  We must abide in him.  We must conform our will to his.  We must be people of prayer.  We must seek him first.  We must rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us, speak through us, act through us, open our eyes and our ears to all that God is showing us and telling us.



Jesus, teach us to abide in you like a branch in a vine.  Use us for your kingdom.