Senior Pastor Damein Schitter continues our series, Unforced Rhythms of Grace, preaching from John 15:1-17 and the importance of abiding in Christ.
to kind of back up a moment and just give you a picture At New City, because we believe in our mission, which is to call and form and send disciple makers. We believe that we need to equip you for that work, because you are the disciple makers, and so another way to say this is we sincerely believe that everyone needs a few other people, three, four other people in their life who know them, to whom they can open up their soul in transparent trust. People with whom they can divide their sorrows and multiply their joys, people who know what season your soul is in right now. People who know the strategies to live apart from Christ
Speaker 1:Well, good morning. My name is Damian. I am the senior pastor.
Speaker 1:I am so grateful to get to continue on in our sermon series this month called the Unforced Rhythms of Grace, and so we are going to take the month of January to explore the dynamics of a rich life with God. How do we cultivate a rich walk and life with God? And you know it is our deep desire at New City that we would all experience God's grace and love more fully, of course, this year, this month, but in general, we want to continue to experience God's grace and His love more fully. And no matter where you are today in terms of if you feel like that is possible or you don't feel like that is possible, we all can be hopeful in this because we know this passage shows us that Jesus is committed to our growth and our transformation. In fact, no matter how committed you think you are, he is way more committed. He gave his life for your growth and your transformation and when we think about these things, what we might recognize is that many people, I think, have the wrong idea about Christianity. I think many people maybe some in this room, but definitely many in the world think that Christianity is fundamentally a system of morality or a set of practices by which people choose to be a part of, to help them get over a couple of really bad habits, and they just happen to call those habits sins. The idea is that once these people who choose to be Christians get over these bad habits, then it's paid off. Beyond that, they're okay, leaving the rest of their life undisturbed. But Jesus is committed to much more than that. In fact, jesus is committed to a total renovation of everything in your life. He's committed to making you a person of holiness and a person of greatness, a person who can reflect his glory, as human beings were meant to. So that desire that you have to be great, truly great, is a good desire. Jesus, in this passage, invites us to understand how that desire can actually be fulfilled. How can it truly be fulfilled? And I know that some in this room an increasing amount, praise God are new to Christianity.
Speaker 1:Some of you that we've talked to you're here because you're exploring Christianity. Many of you actually are young in your faith and I want to speak to you just for a moment as we prepare to explore this passage. I want you to really lean in because today you're going to learn from Jesus his central teaching on how to flourish in your faith. You're going to learn Jesus' central teaching on the source of joy, on the source of transformation. So I want you to lean in. If you want to flourish, pay attention. He's going to give you the key to true life and true joy. That's what he says in verse 11. He says these things. I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.
Speaker 1:Now for others who have been walking with Jesus for some time, I believe that many of us feel stagnated in our walk with Jesus. We feel stuck. We might even feel content, and that's not always in a good way. If that's you, if you're in that place even at all, my guess is that you feel overwhelmed by the realities and responsibilities of life. You, like so often I, settle for the status quo. How would you know that? What's the litmus test? If you're stuck, if you're settled maybe not in a good way Maybe you're easily angered.
Speaker 1:I mean easily angered. Maybe you're oversensitive. You take offense to everything. You take yourself way too seriously. Maybe you struggle and you're constantly ungrateful. Your mind is so in tune with all that you don't have, all that hasn't been accomplished, all that has been withheld from you, all that you've lost and everything all of your attention is brought to there. Maybe you lack patience, and I mean really lack patience. Maybe you're selfish and small-minded and you recognize that, and, as you've reflected, you recognize that everything frustrates you because everything is about you in your own mind. Some of these things can serve as a litmus test to know are you really drawing your life from the vine or not? You see what Jesus wants for us in this passage. What he wants for us, his disciples, is he wants each one of us to give up on our small ambitions for our own character. He wants us to trust him for a rich and vital life, a life that's drawn from him. This is what he wants for you, and so the reality is.
Speaker 1:The reason that we need to regularly come back to this passage is because we tend to live the Christian life satisfied with God's love as an idea, but not as a personal experience. When I ask you if God loves you, you say yes, because God is a God of love. When I ask you, how have you experienced that love, you get silent. I'm convinced, though, that the foundation of any significant spiritual growth is both knowing about and experiencing God's love, not in general, but specifically for you. Yes, you need to know about it, but you need to experience it, and if you don't, you will never change. I'll say it again the foundation for Christian spiritual growth is to experience the love of God by abiding in Jesus.
Speaker 1:So the question, then, is how do we respond? Because Jesus is calling us to a life of joy and fruitfulness with him. That's what this passage is about. He's speaking to his disciples, but yet we, I'm saying, often lack that experience. Now, of course, no real relationship is always up and to the right, but what is true of every real relationship is there is a commitment to a certain intimacy and connection that brings about a vibrancy that sustains that relationship over time. And so how do we have this, this vibrant, vital relationship with our Lord, friend and Savior Jesus? Well, I want to explore that today in three headings right from the passage. The first one is the call to abide, the second one is the nature of abiding, and the final one is the life of abiding. So the call to abide, the nature of abiding and the life of abiding. First, the call to abide. This is the final of Jesus's I Am statements.
Speaker 1:Jesus says I am the true vine, and in this Jesus is speaking to a familiar image that the Jewish people would have had. It's a vine and branch. Imagery was common, in fact. A vine and branch and a leaf was on the coins that the Jewish people minted during the Jewish war in 8066 through 70. It was the thing that they put on their coin. Josephus, the Jewish historian, reports that a huge gold sculpture of a vine was fixed over one of the entrances of the door of one of the gates into the Second Temple area, and so this was a very well-known image to the Jewish people.
Speaker 1:The Old Testament, for example, israel was to be fruitful like a vine, producing fruit for the world and to God's glory. But a big part of the story is that they weren't in fact fruitful, because they removed themselves from the source of life and turned to false sources of life. They turned to other sources of life, and one of the key sources was their own wisdom. They turned to themselves instead of trusting in the Lord, and so they did not bear fruit. And so it's in this context that Jesus comes and stands up and he says I'm the true vine, I am the source of life that will bear fruit in your life. And so it's a beautiful image.
Speaker 1:But what exactly is Jesus calling us to when he calls us to abide? Well, if we look at verse four, after he says he's the true vine, his father's the vine dresser. Verse four abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. So, simply put, to abide in Jesus means to continue in a daily personal relationship with him. That's characterized by a few things. If we read the passage, this characterized by trust, by prayer, and by obedience and by joy. If you look through, you can find these things. It's characterized by trust, daily, moment by moment, prayer, obedience and joy, and what Jesus is really calling his disciples to here is to draw their very life from him. Now, theologians have come up with two words to describe theologically what's happening here in many places.
Speaker 1:When we understand our union with Christ, that is our connection to him, our vital covenant relationship with him and the two words they will use. Often we will say union and communion. So union if you've been to a wedding that I've done or others, even in a wedding ceremony, will use that language of union. And so, essentially, there's a covenant relationship that is made between, in this case, us and Jesus. In covenant relationship, jesus has committed himself to us and we have been made in union with him. That cannot be separated, that no person can separate, and that union is the very basis of the relationship. It is now, from that moment on, the source of the relationship. And so, in other words, the branch does not bear fruit in order to earn its way into the vine, but the branch, because it is put into the vine, is able to bear fruit. So, you see, in order for the branch to bear fruit, it must be united to the vine.
Speaker 1:In order for Christians, you and I, to truly pull our source of life from Jesus, who he says he is the vine, we must be in union with him. And to be in union with Jesus is all by grace, through faith. It's his doing, apart from our works. He's chosen us to abide in him, but he actually makes that connection. That's the foundation of our relationship to him.
Speaker 1:Within this other dynamic of union, there's communion, and communion is only possible if we're in right relationship with someone. To commune with someone is first you must be in right relationship with them. And so, because Jesus has grafted us in to himself, we are now in union with him. We have the possibility and the hope of communing with him, of relating with him, of growing in an insoment relationship. So, you see, if union is our status of being in Christ, in the vine, communion is our ongoing relationship with him. And so, in order to have communion with him, we do first have to be united to him and, as I said, this happens by grace, through faith and his finished work on our behalf. But it's important to know once we are united to him, we are called to have an authentic relationship with him, and this is what it means to abide, to abide in Jesus as our source of life.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, right before communion, we, every week, we will profess our faith together or confess our faith together, and you'll see the minister who's overseeing the Lord's Supper. He'll come down, ben, or I will come down, or Mike, and we'll come down because we also, like you, are of one faith. And one of the things that we'll do is we'll quote together the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism what is our only hope in life and in death? And to summarize the whole thing, this is our hope is that both in life and death, jesus is our Savior. Jesus is the source of our life, he's the source of our future, he's the source of our very standing. You see, you and I, we regularly seek other sources of life besides Jesus. All types of sources promotions, relationships, status, material wealth. Lots of sources we can find, but Jesus invites us to one true source, which is him. And some of you may not know, my wife is pregnant and she's due next week, so she's like, really pregnant.
Speaker 1:And so one of the things I was thinking about, as those babies get really big toward the end and they barely move, and you can see them move, and I thought to myself man, there is one source of life for a child in the womb isn't there, and in one sense it's very fragile. If you could cut off their connection to the umbilical cord, that source of life, their only hope for sustenance, their only hope for oxygen and life, they would die very quickly. A branch is very similar. You cut it off from its source of life. It has one source of life. It is the vine, and it dies very quickly, you know. The thing is, though, as you can see, a branch that has just been cut from the vine and it doesn't quite look dead. But give it a bit of time, not much at all, and it will prove itself dead. But you see, unlike that child, who obviously only has one source of life, you and I oftentimes confuse ourselves by thinking well, we have lots of sources of life, but in fact we don't. They're all counterfeit. We have one source of life, and Jesus has called us to abide in him as that source of life. So that leads us to a question what is the nature of this abiding, if Jesus calls us to abide, and to abide is a moment by moment, daily, relying upon him, drawing our very life from him what does that mean? What's the nature of abiding? That's my second point.
Speaker 1:When I became a Christian in college, I truly did experience deep change, really quickly. I mean, I couldn't get enough of God's word. I've heard people say this, and I certainly experienced it. One of the marks of a convert particularly maybe an adult convert like I was is that all of a sudden, almost from nowhere, there is this deep desire for God's word, and I don't merely mean to know things, although that's a part of it but rather there's something that happens when you're reading it. It's just these waves of experience of the goodness of God, his promises. Everything just almost feels too good to be true and the things that you don't understand really aren't as big of a deal, because your attention is drawn to the things that are so obvious and so clear that God has given Himself for you, that God is going to grow you, that you have eternal life, that you don't just hope in, but experience now. And I was just devouring God's word.
Speaker 1:And then I don't know how long, it was not long I begin to look around and see other people are doing a lot of stuff. I'm not really doing that stuff. It could be evangelism, it could be serving people. It could be a number of things In the college ministry I was involved in, evangelism was a big part. Inviting people to weekly meetings was a big part. But it definitely began to turn my attention to those things, those actions that were outside of me and one of the reasons that's so true for me, although I think this is true for all of us is that my mind and heart is immediately my perception even is immediately drawn to. What do I need to do in order to be perceived as excelling? What do I need to do to be perceived as competent or special? What do I need to be doing to be seen as exceptional? And it wasn't hard for me to look around and to see what those things were. But you know, about a year in, what ended up happening is that all of those things were not bad in themselves, but I made a common misstep, and I think it's a misstep that you and I make regularly in the Christian life.
Speaker 1:It's very typical, when we either first get in to walking with Jesus, or we've been walking with Him for some time and we've experienced a season and our soul has been set of, maybe, stagnation, all of a sudden we start to move and emphasize mechanical compliance, that is, things outside of us, things that we do in order to force change. What we end up doing is getting busy serving Jesus instead of focusing on friendship with Jesus. And you see, friendship with Jesus will move us into obedience to Jesus. But that's the right order Focusing and friendship with Jesus. And I had stopped doing that. And you know, one of the things that marks the reality of stopping our focus on friendship with Jesus and focusing on working for Jesus is a few things. As one preacher said, we start focusing on serving people. Second, we start going to classes and learn a lot. Third, we get rid of the big juicy obvious sins. We're okay with the other ones that are more secretive, but the big juicy obvious ones we take care of.
Speaker 1:And then what happens, though, is that we stop abiding in Jesus and deepening our friendship with Him, and then something very, very sinister happens is that, when we stop abiding in Jesus and deepening our friendship and focusing on the external realities, we begin to infer His love rather than experience His love. You know what it means to infer something. You say well, god is love, and I believe that, therefore, he must love me. That's true, sometimes, that's exactly what we need to be paying attention to, but we can't stop there. You see, danger in the Christian life. Danger, true danger is when we start to infer God's particular love for us instead of experiencing it, instead of going to abiding in his love.
Speaker 1:But the nature of abiding, though? The nature of abiding is a vibrant, pulling from the life of Jesus, by guarding our connection with him, by pursuing our connection with him. Because, you see, in abiding there's also a particular type of agency. When the life of Jesus is flowing through us, we then exercise our agency to remain in him, instead of taking the life and then thinking we can go somewhere else to sorry, lots of S's go somewhere else to sustain it, but rather we need to draw deeply from him, we need to use our agency to remain in him. You see, the nature of abiding in Jesus is organic and relational, not mechanical and strictly moral. I'm gonna say it again the nature of abiding in Jesus is relational and organic, not mechanical and strictly moral or merely moral. Here's another way to say it what Jesus is after in your life and my life is organic change through a new internal dynamic in your life. He's after organic change, relational change through a new internal dynamic, not mechanical compliance by external force. And so many of us are tired because we've been focusing on external compliance by external force. This is a little bit about what we talked about last week, about the yoke that Jesus offers those of us who are tired. Which yoke are we wearing? You know, as I've reflected on this.
Speaker 1:I've seen I'm basically putting together a few different dynamics in this illustration. The reason that's important for you is one it's more parabolic, although it is based on true events, as they say. The second thing is it's not talking about anybody in this room, and that's really important, because there will be some of you, no doubt because of the common nature of what I'm about to say, that you'll think oh my gosh, he's talking about me. I can't believe he's doing that. Let me tell you, I am not talking about you. I'm not thinking of anyone currently who is at New City. Okay, that's the fine print.
Speaker 1:Now, as I was thinking about, what is the difference? How do we experience the internal dynamics as opposed to external change? Because the reality is is that, if we read this fuller passage, there's two types of branches, both connected to the vine One bears fruit and one doesn't. So how do we think about that? So, over the years, I've been in pastoral counseling situations with many people who come to me with family relationships that are strained and broken. Sometimes it is a spouse, sometimes it is an adult child, sometimes they are an adult and it's with their parents, but they experience true disruption in their relationship and they're coming to me because they're not quite sure how to engage it.
Speaker 1:And so imagine this imagine there were two people, and they both came to me, separate from one another, describing to me this realization that a lot of the dysfunction in their life they believed was because of the poor parenting of their parents. And I listened to them and it seemed reasonable man, yeah, that would be really hard, it would be really hard to have experienced that. And so, as we're engaging, I ultimately get, not in a simplistic way, but in a biblical way of saying, okay, I hear you saying that you feel that Jesus is calling you to move into this by way of repentance and reconciliation, and they would say, yes, yes, yes, that's what I'm saying. I would say, okay, well then, the first thing that you have to do is forgive them. You have to forgive them, you have to forgive whoever they are. In this case, let's say, it was their parents.
Speaker 1:And the two people, these people that I'm thinking of again, not actual people, a bunch of people combined. One of them tries really hard and does, they do a lot of work, and they do forgive them. The other one tries really hard and just never can quite forgive their parents. And you see, what ends up happening is that as they're engaging these family relationships, one struggled and did forgive, and the one that did forgive was actually in the more severe disruption. It was the one that I thought, wow, this will be harder for them to forgive the other one. I thought this is pretty common, but they couldn't. You see, what ended up happening is they both had the same pastoral counselor, they both had great professional counselors, they both had great Christian friendship.
Speaker 1:But in the process of this invitation to repentance and reconciliation, one of them drew from the vine and the other withdrew from the vine. One drew deeply from the vine and was able to forgive and work through it and actually come out bearing fruit. It wasn't perfect, but it was true growth. And the other one refused to draw from the vine and withdrew from the vine and ultimately fell away. They didn't reconcile with the family, they left the church, they're no longer walking with Jesus and you see, the nature of abiding is that at first it looked the same, but then what I learned, what became obvious, was the one who was able to forgive and draw from the vine. They were actually connected to Jesus in such a way where they were drawing their life and their source of change from Jesus and they began to change from the inside out. They began to experience and delight in Jesus in such a way that the relationship with this person no longer defined their life. Jesus defined their life and they learned it even more deeply. And then, as that happened, they begin to not only be able to forgive but to be grateful for certain aspects of that relationship, because now they no longer were in mesh, they no longer put their entire identity on this relationship, they were free.
Speaker 1:But the other person, their whole identity, their whole identity, was in the rightness of this particular relationship. And you see, what drove them in their desire to change was a little bit of fear and a little bit of pride, both external mechanisms for change. You see, they were afraid that if they didn't reconcile this relationship, they would be seen as a failure, they would be seen as a bad spouse, they would be seen as a bad child, and so it was fear that was driving them towards wanting to change. It worked for a little bit, but it stops working. The other was pride. They didn't want to be the type of person who ended up divorced, so they were gonna make this change. They didn't want to be the type of person who is estranged from their family and siblings, and so they were gonna make this change. Both of those were external forces, and when we submit to external forces that are mechanistic instead of internal, drawing from the life of Jesus, change never is sustained and it's never ultimately transformational.
Speaker 1:Here's another way to think about it. If you're not tracking, think about the way that you bend metal. There are two ways to reconfigure metal. One is that you can heat it up, and when you heat it up, it begins to become soft and it's pliable and you can bend it. You can make it into the shape that it needs to be. You can change it and then, when it cools, it's actually changed. The change lasts, but there's a way that you can change it. But there's another way to try to bend metal and that is just to, by sheer strength, bend it, and two things are gonna happen Either it's gonna break, it's just gonna crack and shatter, or it's going to flex and it's gonna start shaking and then, as soon as whatever's forcing it to bend, let's go. It's gonna snap back exactly to where it was before. You see, when you and I try to pursue change or transformation, apart from Jesus pulling on His source. We're like that metal that bends and bends and either breaks or bends and bends, and then once we think, oh, my spouse isn't gonna leave me, we kind of slide back into our old ways. We just snap back to where we were.
Speaker 1:The nature of true abiding is organic and relational. It is not external and mechanical. And so many of us are stuck in the Christian life because we actually don't live that way. We live as though Jesus demands our obedience and then maybe we might experience intimacy. But no, he says abide in me, abide in me relationally. And so the nature of abiding is relational and organic, not mechanical and moral. Jesus is inviting us to intimate friendship with him, which is secure in its source and transformational in its power. That leads me to the final point, which is that Jesus doesn't only call us to abiding, he doesn't only tell us of the nature of abiding, but we also get a picture of the life that abides, the life of abiding.
Speaker 1:Look at me in verse seven. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love, so rich, so powerful. And some of you are thinking, okay, but how Well, I'm gonna build a little case. That's not gonna take long to do that. Back in verse four, which is where we started, you can look I'll read it again.
Speaker 1:Jesus says abide in me and I in you. That second part of the sentence it sounds a little strange and once it sounds normal because we're used to the passage. Many of us abide in me and I in you. But what does he mean by an I in you? So commentators will point out that that phrase lacks an explicit verb. But it probably is an abbreviated way of saying, when he says abide in me and I in you, of saying see that I am, abide in you, or that is, safeguard your relationship with me so that I continue to abide fully in you. So the reality is, is we're getting back to that union-communion dynamic? So we're getting back to that union-communion dynamic.
Speaker 1:When we commune with God and in this case, when we draw near to Jesus, we exercise our agency. So by faith, we believe we're in union with Christ and we lean into it, we draw from it. And Jesus gives us a particular way in which doing that. In verse seven he says if you abide in me, or we could say, if you safeguard your relationship with me, if you continue to abide in me so that you can pull your life fully in you and you can pull your life fully from me, my words abide in you. This is a way, this is a way, a primary way that you and I experience our abiding in him, that we exercise our agency to draw our life from him, is that we meditate and dwell in his words, in his commands, in his teachings. Why? Because there are various teachings of where the source of life is, but Jesus says I'm the true vine, I'm the true source, and so all that he has taught us, we dwell in those and we plant them in our heart.
Speaker 1:As Peter and others say, what we see is that when we have Jesus' words abiding in him, it leads to this dynamic of both word and prayer. That's what he says. Next Ben will talk about prayer much more next week. But he says ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. And so you see. Word, prayer and obedience all go together. My words abide in you, he says. We must allow the words of Jesus to abide in us through the scriptures.
Speaker 1:This is part of the life of abiding and this is one key reason, this passage, why one of the daily practices in New City's common rhythm is scripture. It's because in order to draw from the life of Christ, we need his words to abide in us. It's another reason why we don't just say scripture, but when we define scripture we say we want to hear God's voice in scripture before any others. So sometimes you've heard us say scripture before screens, but then it freaks some of you out because you're like well, I read my scripture on a screen. Is that okay? We're like, yes, it's fine.
Speaker 1:The point is, the point is is that oftentimes, these glowing rectangles in front of us, many voices come at us through those. It could be all types of media, it could be work, it could be text messages, it could be a number of problems presented to you that if you don't put out that fire, you will not succeed. You will fail. And all of a sudden all these stories and narratives start filling our minds and then we go to put out the fire instead of being sustained by the life of Jesus and then letting that move us to all that he would call us to in that day. So we need first to dwell on Jesus by letting his words abide in us in this dynamic of word and prayer, and so we commune with God through word and prayer, and his spirit is the one that engages us and creates this dynamic.
Speaker 1:Now I want to speak a moment to obedience, because when you commune with someone, when you are in vital relationship with someone, it delights you to do what pleases them, doesn't it? In other words, when you are obeying out of a life of intimacy, it's not a drag, it's not extra, it's a response. Now, the reality is that you and I often experience obedience as kind of a drag. We experience obedience even as fear inducing. We experience obedience in all types of negative ways, but it shouldn't be that way. So while I probably deserves a whole sermon, let me say this Would we really dwell in John 15?
Speaker 1:The relationship between abiding and obedience is something like this. Jesus is saying obedience is what happens when we abide in him. So I would say to you, whatever your anxiety is, or whatever anxiety you have around your fruit of obedience. Let that anxiety, that fear, let it not drive you to harder work, but let it drive you to focus not on the fruit but to abiding. Let that fear, if it is there, if you want it to be banished, let that desire, that anxiety, let it rather move your attention to abiding in Jesus and his goodness and not to the fruit. And this is why the fruit is not your job. The fruit is not your job. You know this. I mean, this is the image. This is the image. If I were to say that divine produces fruit, that wouldn't quite be accurate. What it does is it bears fruit. You see, it has no agency over the production of the fruit, but rather it remains in the vine, in the life of the vine, comes into the branch and it produces fruit. And you and I are the same way. You and I can staple fruit on us if we want, but it's not real. You and I must use our agency to abide, to remain, to drink deeply from Jesus' love for us.
Speaker 1:Some of you are really hardcore and you have live Christmas trees during Christmas and I mean it truly amazes me, to be completely honest with you, I just think they went down to that place in College Park and bought a real tree. That is quite remarkable, and some of you cut it down with your very hands, and that is all the more impressive. But either way, what you've done is you've cut it from its life source and so you have to put it in like a fake life source. Right, at least? I'm honest, my tree is not alive, so I don't have to worry about it. I put it in a box, take it down. But if you have a tree that you've removed from your life source it looked good, it looked good Then you cut it down and, in order to keep it looking kind of good, you put it in water and then you put decorations on it and it looks even better than it did in that little tree parking lot in College Park, and maybe you've even looked even better than it did on the actual farm that you cut it down from. But give it three weeks, give it four weeks, give it five weeks. No matter how many decorations you put on that tree, it's going to look dead, because in fact it is dead, and it doesn't matter how much you focus on trying to put more decorations on the tree. What it needs is more water. What it needs is more of a life source.
Speaker 1:And so for you and I, as we're dry, the focus is not on obedience as much as it is on abiding. And as we abide, abide, obedience will come. And I want to leave you with this verse nine. Jesus says abide in my love. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Speaker 1:Right now, if you're like, how much does Jesus love me? Just reflect. Just spend some time reflecting today. How much does the Father love the Son, how much does the Father love the Son, how much does the Father commit to the Son? That's how much Jesus loves you. He says abiding my love. And when you read the tense of this, this is a love that has been completed, it's a love that's done, abiding my love. And you say well, how do I know that without knowing Greek? Just read verse 13. He says abiding my love, verse 13,. There is no greater love than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. You see, what is the love that Jesus calls us to abide in Is his self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-pouring out love, because Jesus himself, the ultimate fruit bearer, was cut off so that you and I would be engrafted in. And so this is the call of the unforced rhythms of grace that you and I would abide in him. Jesus has secured your place in him. He secured your place in the vine. He's inviting you to abide. The abiding life of Jesus is in us as we abide in him.
Speaker 1:Let's pray, father. We know that this message is actually counter to everything that's naturally in us. Our hearts are so counter to grace. We wanna earn, we wanna prove, we wanna strive for our place, for our status, and yet the proper response to you is to abide. Abide in your status that you give us. Abide in your works that you have done on our behalf. Abide in your finished work and not the strength of our striving. So I pray for all that I addressed at the beginning all who are exploring Christianity, all that are new to Christianity, young in their faith, with this message, this moment even mark a trajectory in their life where their focus remains on friendship with you, jesus. And I pray for all here, like me, who've walked with you for some time, and maybe in a season of dryness, would we leave today, reminded, called back to your invitation to abide in you, to focus on friendship and to let that change us from the inside out. I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Next, it's my opportunity to invite you in a prayer of response, and recently we've made a transition from the liturgists to the preacher. To do that for many reasons, but one is because the prayer of response is not, then the next thing separated, but rather it's a natural movement to respond directly to what you just heard, to respond in specific ways, to give us a moment of time to reflect on what the spirit might have impressed on your heart, and so what I would invite you to consider is where is it that you are prone to try to change by external force? Where do you rely on your own strength and your own means instead of abiding and drawing your life from Jesus? Ask Jesus to show you that and then repent, turn from that and seek to abide in his love. Now, and I'll give you a few moments to reflect.