You Remain - My Personal Wrestling Match With GodSample

According To Jesus We Have One Role

What started out as a one week challenge to my church, has turned into nine weeks of daily reading and living through the lens of Jesus’ words in John 15. I don’t know how many messages I’ve heard on this passage, but Jesus has captured my attention enough to the point of me working and living it out.

“I am the Vine (Jesus), and my Father is the Gardener…” Stop right there. Why have I lived my life thinking that I was the gardener, thinking it was my job to plant seeds, water, grow fruit and prune myself and others? I thought my job was to protect the plant, provide all its nutrients, etc.

What would it look like for God the Father to be the Gardener in our lives? What if we are simply to be branches attached to Jesus the Vine in the greater Garden of the Father? I think the “Kingdom of God” could be synonymous with the “Garden of God.”

“…Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful…with fruit that lasts.” Have you ever seen a rose bush that has been properly pruned? It looks bare, naked, beat up and humbled. Yet without this pruning, the plant will not bear much fruit. It will eventually cease to be effective, hence cut off from the vine. What if the Gardener’s pruning is motivated out of a love for His Vine and its branches? Have you been pruned lately? What if pruning were a gift, not necessarily comfortable, but a gift?

I double dog dare you to try this: Read the first half of John 15 every day this week. Try not to learn too much, but just start asking questions and poking holes, such as: What is fruit? What does remaining look like? What’s my role?

Simply BE A BRANCH attached to the Vine (Jesus) trusting the wisdom of the Gardener (The Father)!

-TIM

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