A Message From God - Reading Planنموونە

Start with prayer, asking God to meet and speak to you. Then watch the film clip below.

Read John 15:1-17, stopping to think and pray about anything that strikes you.

The heartbeat of the Christian faith is relationship with God. In fact, Jesus says here that it is everything. He is blunt and to the point, saying 'apart from me you can do nothing' (v5), but also gloriously re-assuring just before: 'if you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit' (v5). Our ‘success’ and fruitfulness as Christians doesn’t depend on our intellect, skills, or performance at all. It is entirely dependent on whether we are rooted in Jesus. If we are, we will flourish. If not, we will wither and fail.

But how do we 'remain in me, as I also remain in you' (v3)? Jesus gives us lots of help. Two things he emphasises are prayer (v7) and being filled with the Spirit (just before, John 14:17-20).

I want to focus on a third element though - listening to what he has said. Jesus talks about 'the word I have spoken to you' (v3) as the starting point of our relationship. And when he says 'if you remain in me' he immediately expands that by saying 'and my words remain in you' (v7). Our relationship with Jesus cannot be sustained by our own thoughts and imaginations, but only by the reality of who he is and what he has said.

That is then reinforced in the rest of the passage, as Jesus emphasises the importance of obedience in our relationship with him. We often struggle with this, assuming that love and obedience don’t mix. But Jesus is clear that they do. He says 'if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love' (v10) and later, 'you are my friends if you do what I command' (v14).

So where do we find Jesus’ words and commands? The answer is the Bible. That is most obvious in the gospels, but it’s also true for the rest too. As we saw yesterday, all scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit and God speaks through it. As we read it and listen to it, and as we pray and seek to be filled more with the Spirit (as Jesus also tells us to do here), we will find that we can and do ‘remain in him.’