It is a joy for me to be here with you, brothers and sisters, and to share this time together. Every year, the Lord blesses me in a special way by allowing me to come and have fellowship with you, to share our Lord together, and to share together in His Word.
Today, I have in my heart for us to consider some thoughts from the Gospel of John, chapter 15. Let us read the first seventeen verses of this chapter.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away:
and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples.
Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.
These things I command you, that ye may love one another.
Let us look to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, it has been such a joy and such a refreshment once again to have been found in Your presence around Your table. We thank You that, once again by Your Spirit, You have brought something new, fresh, and living to our hearts regarding Yourself.
We have found our hearts drawn to You and captured, we trust, in a deeper way by Yourself. We thank You for the worship You have drawn out of our hearts this morning. As we have found ourselves worshiping You, we sense that there is a fulfillment taking place in us and a satisfaction being fulfilled in Your own heart. We are grateful to be a part of that.
Now, as we come to this time when we will look into Your Word, we would once again see the Lord Jesus Christ. In whatever way the Holy Spirit of God would want to present Him to us from the Word of God, we turn our hearts, our minds, and our whole beings toward You.
Reveal to our hearts the truth concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. We need so much for You to help us. Therefore, we cast ourselves upon You, that both in speaking and in hearing we may know the help of the Holy Spirit in our time together. We ask it in the name of our blessed Lord Jesus. Amen.
Beginning in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, it seems that we have something of a change in direction and emphasis on the part of our Lord Jesus. John tells us that, before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that His hour had come, that He should depart out of this world unto the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
It seems that chapters 13 through 16 express something of the love our Lord Jesus had for His followers, His disciples. In chapter 13, He demonstrated His love and set an example of love by washing the feet of His disciples.
In chapter 14, we discover our Lord Jesus, out of His deep Shepherd’s heart, speaking comforting words to His disciples. He knew that, in a matter of hours, He was going to leave them. They would feel as though they had been left as orphans.
So the Lord Jesus spoke concerning the ministry of the coming Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the One called alongside to be everything to them that He had been while He was with them. In the midst of this emphasis upon the Holy Spirit’s ministry, the Lord exhorts and informs His disciples concerning who He is and the relationship they are to have with Him.
The Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.”
When we read the Word of God, we discover that the vine was used in the Old Testament to describe the relationship Israel, the people of God under the old covenant, was to have with God. The children of Israel, the nation of Israel, were to be God’s vine, God’s vineyard.
God anticipated producing out of their corporate life that which would fulfill His own purpose and will. But, as we find in the old covenant, the children of Israel failed in being that vine which God desired. He had done all that was necessary to prepare the land and plant a precious vine, but when fruit was produced, it was only wild grapes. They were worthless and of no value to God.
So God’s judgment had to come upon them. Now we find our Lord Jesus, just hours before His crucifixion, speaking to His most intimate disciples and saying, “I am the true vine.”
In a sense, He is saying that what was unable to be fulfilled in the nation of Israel is now going to be fulfilled in Him. “I am the true vine. I am the genuine one.” We can have the assurance that our Lord Jesus will fulfill that which was not fulfilled through the nation of Israel.
He is the vine, the vehicle God is going to use to fulfill and bring to conclusion that which was originally in His own heart. His Father is the vine dresser, the owner and caretaker of this vine. This vine is precious to the Father, and through it He will fulfill that which is in His heart.
Then, in John 15:5, Jesus says, “I am the vine; ye are the branches.”
If we are not careful, we may misread this as though He said, “I am the stock, and you are the branches.” But that is not really what He says. He says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.”
In reality, the branches are none other than an extension of the vine itself. They are the part of the vine on which the fruit grows. The life that is in the vine is expressed through the branches, and together the vine and branches produce the kind of fruit that is to be produced on a vine.
As branches, we are none other than an extension of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. We are a means whereby the life of Christ and the will of God can be expressed and brought into reality here on this earth.
When we give some thought to these verses, it seems to me that the major issue involved is the bearing of fruit. Eight times in these verses our Lord Jesus mentions the matter of fruit.
Having been mentioned this many times, it ought to indicate to us that the Holy Spirit is saying, “This is the major issue.” The issue is not how beautiful the vine is, or all the other factors involved. The major issue is the vine producing fruit.
I find it helpful to gain some clarity here, because I think this passage has often been understood among the people of God as though the issue at stake were salvation. I do not believe salvation is the issue our Lord Jesus is dealing with in this particular passage.
John 15:8 says, “Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples.” To me, that is the issue in these verses. It is not an issue of salvation, regeneration, or being born again. It is an issue of discipleship.
The Holy Spirit is able to work in us so that we express the life of Christ. The result is that the fruit God is looking for is produced. When much fruit is being produced in our lives, it proves that we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is a process of learning how to live by the life of Christ. In reality, there is only one in the whole universe who can live the Christian life: the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
The only possible hope for you and me of living the Christian life is for us not to live, but for Christ to live in us.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith,
the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
The Christian life, in its simplest form, is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, living His life in us and through us. A disciple is someone who is learning to get out of the way in himself and to allow Christ to become so incorporated into his being that, in a natural way, Christ lives in and through him.
What is this fruit that our Lord Jesus mentions? I think we receive a clue in Matthew 7.
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;
but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;
but he that doeth the will of My Father Who is in heaven.
Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name,
and by Thy name cast out demons, and by Thy name do many mighty works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.
This helps us understand what our Lord Jesus is speaking about in John 15 when He speaks of fruit. Very simply, the fruit Jesus is looking for, the fruit the caretaker is looking for, is doing the will of God.
A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. Then Jesus says that it is he who does the will of the Father who enters the kingdom of heaven. That is the good fruit. Good fruit is simply that which ends up being the will of God.
It is possible for individuals to take the name of Jesus and, in a sense, even the power available in the life of Christ, and use it to fulfill someone else’s will other than God’s. Therefore, the fruit our Lord Jesus has in mind is none other than doing the will of God.
As disciples, what we are being discipled to do is the will of God. It is not merely to be good people or to do good things. It is possible to do good things and still not do the will of God. We can even do miraculous things in the name of Jesus, and still they may not be the will of God or the fruit for which God is looking.
There is only One who can produce the kind of fruit God is looking for, and that is God Himself. Yet He has chosen to have branches through which His will may be manifested. Jesus is the vine, and we are part of that vine as branches. Through us, He seeks to produce fruit that is none other than the will of God.
Our Lord Jesus is concerned not only with fruit, but with an increase of fruit. In John 15, we see fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and fruit that remains.
There is a progressive increase: not merely fruit, but more fruit; then much fruit; and finally fruit that remains. It is possible for Christians to live their lives and produce fruit that does not remain, because God is the caretaker and the One who decides whether the fruit is acceptable.
It ought to awaken us and shake us to the core of our being to understand that it is possible for us, as Christians, to live a good life that is acceptable in the sight of men, while the final result is fruit that is not acceptable to God and will not remain.
We are not talking about salvation. We are speaking of coming into the presence of God, of Him opening the record of our lives and saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” We desire that there would be fruit which He has been able to produce in us and through us.
The Lord Jesus spoke on a number of occasions about weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many years, I thought of that only in terms of those who never came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. But I am not convinced that it relates only to those.
There may be weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who never got down to the business of seeing that the fruit produced in their lives was fruit that would remain and stand the judgment and inspection of God.
There is a real burden in the Lord’s heart as He speaks to His disciples, and to us today from His Word. He challenges us, exhorts us, and encourages us to get ourselves into right relationship with Him, so that the result of our living is that we are doing the will of God.
I do not know that it is necessary for us to become tied up in asking every few moments, “Is this the will of God? Is this the will of God?” Rather, we must become settled in our own hearts that, above everything else, we want to do the will of God.
In John 15:2, Jesus says, “Every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.” Sometimes we are too easily satisfied with the fruit produced in our lives because we get the idea that the fruit is for us.
We inspect it and conclude that it is pretty good fruit. Then we somehow want to take a holiday from the whole process. But the vine dresser does not look at it that way. If fruit is already being produced in your life, what is He going to do? He is going to prune it, so that more fruit may be produced.
How does the Lord carry out this pruning process? Usually, it is painful for many of us. Many of us probably did not fully understand what we were doing when, out of love for the Lord, we came to Him and said, “Lord, my life is Yours. I am fully committed to You. It is my will to do Your will. You are my Lord. I am Your servant. I will do anything and go anywhere You want me to go.”
We may not have understood what we were getting ourselves into when we made such a commitment, but He took us seriously. He is not going to back away from the commitment you make. You may back away, but He will not.
Fruit begins to grow, and the vine dresser sees potential. He begins to prune away that part of the branch which receives the sap but produces no fruit.
Most of us realize that our greatest obstacle to producing fruit is the person we look at in the mirror every morning when we get up. That is the issue—not Satan alone, although he certainly works against us. If there is none of that self-life in us for him to work with, he does not have much to use.
The Lord Jesus said, “The prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in Me.” When Christ is incorporated into us, the enemy finds no place in which to stand or operate. He cannot operate in our Lord Jesus Christ.
When fruit begins to develop in our lives, the husbandman comes and begins to clip away those things which hinder the production of more fruit and remaining fruit. For many of us, the process seems almost inexplicable.
Some go through deep waters for which there is no human explanation. There is no logic; it does not make sense. It is a mystery. You look through your life and ask the Lord, “Is there any sin in my life?” As far as you know, there is no sin, but still there is a continuing process.
We need to understand that our husbandman, our vine dresser, is at work. He is doing a work that we do not understand, removing that which we do not perceive to be a problem or a hindrance to fruit-bearing. But He knows, because He is the expert in growing vines.
He understands the whole dynamic of fruit-bearing. He cuts off and prunes away those matters in our lives so that, when the pruning is done, more fruit, greater fruit, and remaining fruit will be produced.
Let us learn, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to yield to the pruning process our heavenly Father puts us through. In many instances, it will come through the circumstances of our lives and through the impossible people we have to live with.
You have not met any of those yet? The Lord takes a lot of them in the Body of Christ and puts you right in relationship with them. These impossible people—you are one of them, probably. I know I am.
My brothers and sisters have no choice. The Lord has said to them, “You have got to love him.” It is a commandment, not a suggestion. “This I command you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.”
The Lord may take a comfortable group of Christians who are going on with Him and having a fantastic time, and then put me in their midst. That is pruning.
Or some circumstance comes into our lives which we cannot explain, and the Lord uses it as a means of cutting away that which is really a hindrance.
In order for fruit to be produced, the Lord Jesus emphasizes another significant matter: abiding. Abiding in Him.
The more I have read and meditated on this before the Lord, the more I have come to understand that it is not merely a single abiding, but a double abiding. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.”
It is not merely us abiding in Him, or He abiding in us. It is both together. It is us abiding in Him and Him abiding in us.
Let me illustrate. If I take my right hand and put it in my left hand, you can see that my right hand is in my left hand. In some ways, we could say, “This is me, and this is the Lord. I am abiding in Him.”
If I reverse the process, I could say, “This is the Lord, and this is me. The Lord is abiding in me.” But what if I interlock my hands? Which hand is abiding in which hand? Is the right hand abiding in the left, or the left in the right? You cannot distinguish, because they are one.
It is a mutual, double abiding that produces the fruit. It means that it is not merely a matter of the Lord wanting to abide in us. It is also a matter of us wanting to abide in Him, a coming together of these two lives in one so that you cannot distinguish one from the other.
Had you lived during the time when our Lord Jesus came to earth, lived, and carried out His ministry, would you have been able to divide what part of Him was God and what part of Him was man? I do not think so.
In John 5:19, Jesus said:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself,
but what He seeth the Father doing:
for what things soever He doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner.
In John 5:30, He said:
I can of Myself do nothing:
as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is righteous;
because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.
In John 8:28-29, Jesus said:
I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught Me, I speak these things.
And He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not left Me alone;
for I do always the things that are pleasing to Him.
Then, in John 14:10, He said:
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?
The words that I say unto you I speak not from Myself:
but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works.
In the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have the example of what it means to abide. There was a perfect abiding between Himself and the Father. Jesus could say, “I only speak what I hear the Father speak. I only do what I see the Father doing.”
He abides in Me, and I abide in Him. In a natural and spontaneous way, the Father’s life was expressed in and through Him. If there is one thing our Lord Jesus was not, He was not religious. He was real.
It is not a matter of learning something and then putting it into practice. It is a matter of learning Christ, living in Him, and allowing Him to live in us. What a difference that makes. It takes the sweat out of it. It takes the struggle out of it.
It does not mean that we do not have things to wrestle with or deal with. But when we understand that the Christian life and the production of fruit are matters of abiding in Him and allowing Him to abide in us, we can come to a place of resting in Him and trusting Him for it to happen.
What is taking place in this matter of our abiding in Him and His abiding in us? The word that came to my own heart was harmonizing.
The Holy Spirit’s goal is to bring our lives into harmony with the life of Christ. It has a beginning, a process of growth and maturity, and it affects different areas of our being.
When we first become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the process of harmonizing begins. It begins as God, by the Spirit, imparts His Son to us. In our human spirit, the Holy Spirit brings the life of Christ.
When we speak of accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into our lives, or receiving the Lord Jesus into us, it means that the Spirit of God takes Christ and deposits the life of Christ in our spirit. That is the beginning of the harmonizing process.
For many dear people of God, this was a momentous occasion in their lives. There was a peace that began to enter—a peace with God, most unexplainable. Suddenly, you knew you were no longer God’s enemy.
When you come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, that enmity dissipates. You find yourself, in an unexplainable way, in harmony and at peace with God. If you get in touch with the deepest part of your being, you find yourself calling Him, “Abba, Father, Daddy.”
Yet we have other problems that get in the way—this thing that sits on top of our shoulders called our head: the brain, the thinker. It is a real problem for us because, for the most part, it is not harmonized with God.
It has to be renewed. A process must take place by the Spirit of God in which what we have been thinking has to change. What you think determines how you act.
God is interested in harmonizing our minds. We find Scriptures such as, “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus”; “We have the mind of Christ”; “Set your mind on the things that are above”; and “Mind the things of the Spirit.”
The Holy Spirit comes and wants to work on our thinking. Much of the effort of our Lord Jesus toward training His disciples was to challenge the concepts they held, especially their religious and spiritual concepts.
After the Lord Jesus declared that He would build His church in Matthew 16, He began to tell His disciples that He would go to Jerusalem and be crucified. Simon Peter said, “This shall never be unto Thee.”
The Lord Jesus gave him a severe rebuke: “Get thee behind Me, Satan.” Why? Because Peter was thinking like a man and not thinking like God. That is a great problem for us.
Repentance in Scripture means a change of mind, a whole redirection of your thinking that results in the actions coming out of your life. If we merely change our actions without having our thinking redirected, we will find that the next time we will do the same thing again.
That is the difference between religion and the Christian life. Religion tries to get you to change your actions. The Lord Jesus changes your thinking. “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
We cannot even do this in ourselves. The Holy Spirit must do it, but He needs our cooperation. He needs our permission. We need to say, “Holy Spirit, I am fed up with what is going on in my head. It is contrary to the Word of God. I want it changed.”
Fasten your seat belts and get ready. The Holy Spirit will begin to take you into a process, and it will be painful. Some of the things we believe and think, we hold dear, even though they are totally against what God wants. We do not want to let them go.
Ultimately, I think the height of all spiritual experience is for us to have our wills harmonized with the will of God. It is not merely to be lifted up into the third heaven or to have other great spiritual experiences, marvelous and necessary as they may be.
The ultimate is when, both in our hearts and in experience, we begin to see that the will of God and our will are one. There is a harmonizing between what God wants and what we want.
It is never the other way around. We spend so much of our time trying to get God to harmonize with what we want. He will never give in to that, and I am glad He does not. He is perfect. He does not need to change His mind, but we need to change ours.
The Lord said to Brother Bob Mumford, “Mumford, you and I are incompatible, and I do not change.” The same thing is true of us. When problems come to us, the problem is not with God, brothers and sisters.
At some point in our lives, we have probably accused God, in a subtle way, of doing something wrong because things did not line up with the way we wanted them to go.
Jesus only did His Father’s will. In John 4, after speaking with the woman at the well, He said, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.”
Consider the experience of our Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. What was He wrestling with? It was not merely the physical pain involved in crucifixion. The deeper issue was this: “Not My will, but Thine, be done.”
This matter of abiding in Christ will finally bring us to the place where we must wrestle with, deal with, and come to a conclusion concerning God’s will and our will. They must be blended together and become one.
Then, in a natural, living, spontaneous way, the will of God is performed in our lives and through us. It may be so natural and spontaneous that we will not even realize it is happening.
There is another aspect of this which our Lord Jesus brings in. In the same context, He begins to speak about abiding in His love, as He abided in His Father’s love. This brings the whole dimension of love into the matter of abiding.
Doing the will of God is not something legalistic. It is not something we merely grit our teeth and endure. That is not the kind of abiding of which the Lord Jesus speaks.
It is an abiding which comes as a result of love—first of all, being loved. The only way we will abide in Jesus Christ and produce the fruit God is looking for is that we first learn how to receive God’s love for us.
There is no other hope. There are so many insecurities, problems, and difficulties in our lives that keep us from allowing our lives to be harmonized with God. But when we allow the love of God to come in and accept that love without having to earn it or merit it, it disarms many fears and anxieties.
This is not a matter of strong will. Some people are very strong-willed. They determine to do a thing and they do it. Others say, “I do not want to do it, but I will do it anyhow,” and they grit their teeth and try hard.
But I do not believe that is the kind of abiding our God is looking for. It is an abiding that results from receiving God’s love, allowing that love to work in us, and allowing that love to affect everything else we do.
It goes all the way back to the beginning, when God spoke to the children of Israel and said:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
The issue is still love. It is not a regimented, legalistic attitude which says, “God, I do not really want to do Your will, but I will do it anyhow.” He wants to bring us into a relationship with Him that is one of love.
What motivated our Lord Jesus Christ to give Himself? Because of the perfect love relationship between Himself and the Father, He looked into the Father’s heart and saw that the only way the human race could be redeemed was for Him to give His own life.
That is why He did it: not because of some legalistic pronouncement in heaven, but because He saw the Father’s heart. Out of love for the Father and love for what the Father desired, there was a spontaneous, natural giving of Himself to do the Father’s will at any price.
We need to lift this matter of having our wills, our minds, and our beings harmonized with God out of the realm of the mechanical and the religious, and into a realm where the whole issue is saturated in love: His love for us, our love for Him, and our love for one another.
Jesus said, “This is My commandment, that ye love one another.” It brings us back to 1 Corinthians 13. We can have all kinds of things going on in our lives, but unless love is there, they amount to zero. They do not count for anything with God.
Let me conclude by calling attention to what our Lord Jesus says concerning the result of abiding. In John 15:11, He tells us why He has spoken these words:
These things have I spoken unto you,
that My joy may be in you,
and that your joy may be made full.
Have you ever stopped to think about what went on in the heart of our Lord Jesus as He carried out what He understood to be the will of His heavenly Father on earth? He did it with joy.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that, for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
There is an incomparable joy, an incomparable experience of inward gladness, that comes into the heart of every person who finds himself doing the will of God. It is not mere excitement, like the excitement of a football game. It is not merely happiness in the happy, happy, happy sense.
There is a deep joy inside of you, inexpressible and full of glory. You cannot explain it. You may not even know how to express it. You simply know that it is there.
Jesus says, “I have spoken these things to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Of all things, brothers and sisters, our God would have us to be a joyful people.
We do not need to manufacture this joy. It comes as a result of our abiding in Christ and Christ abiding in us. When the fruit of our lives becomes the will of God, the natural and spontaneous outcome is joy—full and overflowing.
Each of us, in our own unique way, will have to discover a way of giving expression to that joy. For some, it is being in God’s presence and doing nothing but weeping because that is all they can do. They are overcome by joy, and tears are the only expression of what they feel.
For others, the expression may be more outward. Brother Lance was telling us about a sister from the Bahamas who went to Jerusalem and came to the empty tomb. She shouted at the top of her voice, “Hallelujah!” and did a cartwheel.
That is not the way I would have done it, because I cannot do cartwheels. But in our own unique ways, we can give expression to this joy which comes as a result of God’s will and our will, God’s mind and our mind, becoming harmonized.
I think we are going to be wonderfully surprised when we enter the age to come, stand and look back, and see what God used as a means of bringing His will to pass. We are going to be very surprised.
I would like to encourage us this morning to understand that our Lord Jesus has called us. He has chosen us; we have not chosen Him. He has chosen us.
I do not understand it. I guarantee you that, if I were Him, I would not choose me. But He has. It is only a matter of mercy, but He has chosen us.
This invitation is given to everyone who believes in Jesus. The option is open to every believer: to be a branch in the vine, to be one who is abiding in Christ and in whom Christ is abiding.
This is not some kind of super-Christian experience. This is to be the normal Christian experience for every believer. It is in the Father’s heart. It is what the Lord Jesus wants to bring into being. It is what the Holy Spirit is committed to accomplish.
In a simple way that is real to us, we need to respond to the Lord’s heart in this matter and say, “Lord, I want fruit. I want more fruit. I want much fruit. I want abiding fruit. I want the will of God to be accomplished in me and through me.”
If we do that, I think we will find within a twenty-four-hour period that the Holy Spirit will begin to bring opportunities into our lives for this to become a reality.
What a word of encouragement it is that our Lord would bring this to our attention and help us understand that He is the true vine, the genuine vine, and that we are a part of it. Through Him, God is accomplishing His will.
In the age to come, we will see this more clearly than we see it today. But we must learn to respond in such a way that we understand God is bringing this all into being, and we discover for ourselves the reality of the joy of which our Lord Jesus speaks.
What a privilege. What an honor. What a responsibility we have been given. May the Lord help us, and may the result be that much fruit would be produced in our lives to the glory of God our Father.
Lord, it really is something beyond our ability to understand—how this can take place. But, Lord, we want to come in faith this morning and respond to Your Word and to Your will.
Bring us to a clearer understanding and a clearer experience of abiding in You and You abiding in us. Lord, we want to be those who would say from the depths of our hearts, with all sincerity, “Thy will be done in our lives.”
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.