“No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain on the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
John 14c
Imagine I were to give you a severed branch from an orange tree. The orange tree is nowhere to be found, but I give you the branch and say “Just wait, there is going to be a ton of oranges!” You would think I was crazy. Everyone knows that a branch cannot bear fruit unless it is connected to the tree (the thing that nourishes the branch to cause it to bear fruit).
There is no substitute for being connected to Christ. We cannot bear fruit in our lives apart from our relationship with Christ. So many of us as Christians try to do good stuff, maintain good behavior and say the right things in hopes that we will please God. But, ultimately, what we need is to stay connected to Jesus.
What this means that is our entire life is about admitting our desperate need for Jesus on a daily basis. We must admit daily that we need Jesus to survive. One of the concerns that I continually have for us is that we fool ourselves into believing that we ‘graduate’ and can, at some point, maintain our faith through our own good works. This is a lie. Instead, we need to remember that, apart from Christ, we can do NOTHING.
PRAY and admit to God all of the ways you are dependent upon Him. Ask Him to help you daily remain connected to Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment