Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. John 15:4
As we continue to study the various ways our relationship with God is illustrated throughout the Bible I pray that we are are growing in the understanding of the reality that the Faith of the Bible is a relationship indeed, and one greater than we could ever imagine. This week we get to look at the image that Christ gave us proclaiming us to be branches connected to Him, the vine. The reality of this is easy to understand, as God commonly uses the physical world that He created to display spiritual realities to us.
As we imagine a branch attached to a vine we see that it gets all of its definition from the vine to which it is attached. The branch can only become stronger by being more firmly attached to the vine. The life, energy and power of the branch to produce fruit rest solely, wholly and completely with the vine. Christ speaks so clearly that apart from him we can do nothing, why do we question Him? Why do we waste our energy and spin our wheels trying to produce love, joy, peace, patience, etc. When we really can go only to the source. If those qualities and characteristics are missing from our life we don't need to "try harder" we only need to turn our eyes with Christ and abide, once again, in Vine apart from whom we can do nothing.
It's a great image. I love you.
ReplyDeleteThis is a Scripture that I come back to time and time again. Change in our character or behaviour only comes when we ask the Lord to do the changing, as you have said in this wonderful post. I strived for years, "trying", but finally realised that change would only come by prayer and trust. I still need reminded, and this post was very timely. Thank you. :)
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