I am the Vine

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is  cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” (John 15:5-8)

     On the Thursday before the crucifixion, Jesus gathered His disciples in the upper room and talked to them in length about what it means to be His disciple and how He expected them to live in this world once He was gone. Chapters 15 through 17  are magnificent chapters that we need to read over and over again to learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. When I taught a High School course on the Life of Jesus at Faith Academy in the Philippines, one of the requirements was to memorize chapter 15, which each of the students did. There is much to learn from this whole chapter but let us just look at the verses listed above.

     

     Jesus uses the example of at grape vine that has branches growing out of it. The branches receive life and sustenance from the vine and can only do that if they are attached to the vine. If they are separated from the vine they wither and die but if they are attached they bear much fruit. In like manner those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior have been grafted onto the vine and as long as we abide in Jesus and allow Him to control and direct our lives we will bear much fruit. If we become detached we can do nothing!

      We receive our power to live for Him by staying connected to Him, if we are obedient to what we learn from His Word, the Holy Bible, and listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, and we will bear much fruit! If we do not abide in Him, we can do nothing of eternal value.  What is the desire of your heart? Do you want to bear much fruit or are you content to just sit in a pew every Sunday so people will think you are a good person? We all have the ability to be used by God to bear much fruit if we will only abide in Him and allow Him to lead and direct our daily paths.

 

      Jesus also gives these words of encouragement to His disciples: “If you keep my commandments you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My Joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John15:10-14)

    Do you want to have Jesus as your friend? Show Him how much you love him by obeying the things He has taught you to do: To love the Lord with all your mind, soul, and strength; Love your neighbor as yourself; Forgive those who have harmed you, as He has forgiven you; Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse; Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the church; Wives submit to your husbands; Children obey your parents, Be Holy as God is Holy, Humble yourself before the Lord; Let nothing be done for selfish reasons; Look first to the interest of others, and many, many more.

    Do you want to abide with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Do you want to walk in victory and joy instead of drudgery, bitterness, disappointment, and defeat? Abide in Him. Lay down your life for Him and live for Him everyday by being obedient to what you have learned from His word. Are you in His word everyday? If not start today. Start with chapters 13 though 17 in the Book of John. You will not regret it!

  “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

PRAY:

1.     Lord, please move in the hearts of those whom we have invited to Easter service to come, and open their ears so they will be attentive to what you want them to hear.

2.     Lord, help me this day to abide in you. To allow Your Spirit to fill me and control my mouth and my actions that You might be glorified.

3.     Lord, help me to listen to You as You speak to me through you Holy Scriptures, through godly men and women, and through the circumstances you allow in my life.

4.     Lord, help me today to put the needs of others before my needs. Help me meet the needs of my spouse, children, grandchildren, coworkers, friends, and strangers that you put in my path.

Praise to the Lord!

 “David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who bore the ark, the singers, and Chenamah the music master with the singers. David also wore a linen ephod. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the horn, with trumpets and with cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps.” (1 Chronicles 15:27-28)

    After the first unsuccessful attempt by King David to bring up the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem, David and the Levites read the instructions God had given in the book of Exodus chapter 25 verse 14. They were then able to bring the ark into Jerusalem, the new capital of Israel, so that the Hebrew nation could worship God in the capital of the nation God had given to them 400 years earlier when they had invaded the land under the leadership of Joshua, the son of Nun. David rejoiced along with his people dancing in the streets as the procession entered the city, and he penned these words of praise which are found in chapter 16 of 1^st Chronicles and also in Psalms 105:

    “Oh give thanks to the LORD! Call upon His name; Make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; Talk of all His wondrous works! Glory in His Holy name; Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the LORD! Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face forevermore! Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders and the judgments of His mouth.”  (2 Chron. 16:8-12)

     “He is the LORD our God; His judgments are in all the earth. Remember His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a thousand generations, The covenant which He made with Abraham, And His oath to Isaac, And confirmed to Jacob for a statue, To Israel for an everlasting covenant, Saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan As an allotment of your inheritance,’ When you were few in number, Indeed very few, and strangers in it.” (1 Chron. 16:14-19)

    “Sing to the LORD, all the earth; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among the peoples. For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised; He is also to be feared above all gods. Give to the LORD the glory due to His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him. Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of His holiness! (1 Chron. 16:23-25, 29)

   “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; And let them say among the nations,  ‘The LORD reigns.’ Let the sea roar, and all its fullness; Let the field rejoice, and all that is in it. Then the trees of the woods shall rejoice before the LORD, for He is coming to judge the earth.  Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Blessed be the LORD God of Israel! From everlasting to everlasting! (1 Chron. 16:31-34,36)

(Read the entire chapter to get all that is given for us by King David in this triumphant psalm!)

    What excitement! What joy! What rejoicing we can hear from the lips of King David, ‘a man after God’s own heart.’ Did you see how many exclamation points are given to give emphasis and to help us imagine the author shouting with joy in his voice as he proclaims the greatness and faithfulness of God, our Creator, our Savior, and our Redeemer! Would you like to sing praises to our King right now? Open Psalms 105 and read aloud with enthusiasm and thankfulness for the God of our salvation!

PRAY:

1.     Lord help me to rejoice in You today. To remember that you have “hung the earth on nothing” and have provided everything we need to live and to enjoy the beauty of this world.

2.     Lord I praise you for you have made me in Your image and have adopted me as your son or daughter that I might be a witness to you where I am planted.

3.     Lord I thank you that I am a member of the “royal priesthood’ (1 Pet. 2-9) and that I have the opportunity to proclaim your greatness to those I come in contact with today.

  

   

    

    

God uses the weak

      “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of this world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”  (1 Corinthians 1:26-29)

    Australian missionary Dick McClellan tells this story about a young man named Fanta (not the soft drink) from Ethiopia, who felt God’s call to be a missionary himself and take the gospel to the unreached tribes of his country. It was during a district convention among the Wolaitta people that the challenge was made for men and women to volunteer to take the gospel to the many unreached tribes of southern Ethiopia and 20 people stood up, including Fanta.

    The elders of the convention told Fanta to sit down. Two years earlier he had volunteered also but they had told him he was not ready. Dick could see why the elders had told him to sit down. He was a cripple and could only walk by leaning on a stick and hopping forward on his one good leg. Dick talked to the young man after the meeting and told him that he could be a powerful prayer warrior for those who were going. Fanta interrupted Dick. “ ‘That is what the elders said two years ago when I asked them. They told me to go to Bible School and learn. So I went and completed the course. Now I am ready to go. God’s Word burns in my heart. I want to go to the cattle herders along the Bilate River near Lake Abaya. I know they are enemies of the Wolaitta people but they need Jesus too. God has called me to go to them. Please ask the elders again to send me,’ he pleaded.

    I found out later that Fanta had graduated at the top of his class.  Now he pointed with his chin to the hot lowlands and said that the Lord wanted him to take the Gospel of Christ down there to the cattle herders. When I told him that the Oromo clan killed all outsiders- they had murdered the evangelist Omochi…. Fanta was undeterred and seemingly unafraid. He couldn’t run away, nor could he stand and fight either!  ‘God has told me to go, so I must obey,’ he said. He asked me to pray for him, and also to intercede for him with the elders on his behalf. Then slowly he hopped away on his stick.” (Warriors of Ethiopia by Dick McClellan, p 145)

   Fanta then decided that he would go to these dangerous warriors even without the approval of the elders. What was a two-day walk for normal people took him five days. As he approached these people who were known to kill any strangers who approached their area, he was unafraid. If he were to die, he would go to see Jesus and he was being obedient to the call he had received. Fanta discovered an amazing thing about these cattle herders that was different from all the other tribes in the area; they honored cripples! Guided by the Spirit of God, Fanta had found the only tribe where he could safely go, that no other person could go to!

      The people welcomed him and accepted him into their tribe and he was able to hop from camp to camp telling the gospel story. After a year there, he had planted churches in five villages and over 250 people had accepted Christ as their Savior! Many of them came with him to the next convention and as they came singing praises to Jesus Christ, they were walking slowly to keep pace with their leader. The Elders then accepted the rejected candidate at last and sent another national missionary to go back with him! At the publishing of the book, Warriors of Ethiopia, in 2006, there were 20 churches in the Oromo clan, and Fanta, now with a wife and family still serves the Lord faithfully there.

   What has the Lord called you to do? To be a witness to your family, to teach a Bible Study, to minister to prisoners, to teach in AWANA, to tell your neighbor about Jesus, to forgive someone who has wronged you, to serve in the nursery, or even go to a foreign land? Whatever it is, God will equip you and He will go with you! In fact, He will do all the work! You just have to do your part, and obey.

   “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)

PRAY:

1.     Lord help me to be obedient the things you have taught me in your Word. To Love the Lord with all my heart, to forgive, to love my enemies, to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and much more.

2.     Lord help me to listen carefully for your direction and to be quick to obey when You call on me to minister to others.

3.     Lord, thank you for loving me and adopting me as your son or daughter and to never forget what you did for me on Calvary.

    

    

Pilate's question

"Pilate said to them, 'What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?' They all said to him, 'Let Him be crucified.'" (Matthew 27:22)

   I assume that like me you have heard a sermon or two about Governor Pilate's question to the Jewish Priests and elders, who desired to kill our Savior and Lord. It is really the central question of life which all men and women have to answer during their lifetime. For many of us we have heard about Jesus all our lives in church and Sunday School. Some of us are just recently finding out about Jesus, but the real question is not what we have heard or been taught; the question is what are we doing with Him personally?

    Ravi Zacharerias in his book "Jesus Among Other Gods" gives this quote from Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor responsible for the deaths of thousands of French, English, Austrian, Italian, Prussian, and Russian soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s in Europe. He was speaking to Count Montholon, while Napoleon was in exile on the island of Saint Helena.

    "Can you tell who Jesus Christ was? (The count declined to respond, so Napoleon countered;) Well then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him....I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these men, and I am a man, none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than a man....I have inspired multitudes with such enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me...but to do this it was necessary that I be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts....Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it has become insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all it's powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience the remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust it's strength nor put a limit to it's range. This is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ." (Quoted from the Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharerias, p149 and footnoted to Henry Liddon, Liddon's Bampton Lectures 1866.)

    Napoleon understood something that many of us don't really grasp today. Jesus Christ has demonstrated that He is totally God and totally man. Only the fact that He is who He claimed to be, the Son of the Living God, can He have the followers that He commands today all over this planet called earth. Have you completely surrendered to the Lordship of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords or are you just sailing through life looking for what Jesus can do for you? He demands our unconditional love and obedience and it is our "reasonable service."

  "I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:1-2)


Pray:
1. Lord I give you my life completely to be obedient to your teaching and commands today and for the coming days ahead.
2. Lord Jesus I love You. You are my Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, and I thank you for saving me and adopting me as your son or daughter.
3. Lord help me today to be faithful to spend time in Your Scriptures so that you can teach me the way I should go and to guide my every thought and action.

Are you a seeker of God?

“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

     We read about Dr. Richard Harvey in a previous post. He was a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance church for many years. In his autobiography he tells the story of a man he once met who lived in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in Africa. When he was a young man of 21 this man went before the elders of his village, dumped out all his religious paraphernalia and fetishes and proclaimed: “I have no confidence in any of these. There is someone up there (pointing to the sky) who made the sun, moon, stars, trees and animals. And He made me and I want to worship Him. No one had told me about Him, but I am sure He is up there.”

   Thus for ten years, he would go each morning into the tall grass outside the village and lift his hands to the sky and say, “ Oh You up there, whoever You are, I worship You.” Eventually a Muslim teacher heard about him and came to tell him about Allah and to read to him from the Koran. After a time, the man turned to the teacher and said, “You can leave. This Allah you are praying to is not the Man in the sky I am praying to.” After a few more years a Catholic priest came and told him about the God who had created the universe and Jesus who had died on the cross for our sins. The man liked the story of Jesus coming into the world and the words of the Bible but after two weeks with the priest he said. “Somehow I believe it may be true but I don’t like the things you do, things I would not do, if I believed in the Man of the Book as you say you do.”

    Five more years went by until a missionary from Pastor Harvey’s denomination came by and told him about how Jesus had died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected on the third day. The man asked, “Oh, this Man in the sky is alive now?” The missionary replied yes, and went on to explain the ascension and His promise to return. A few days later the seeker of God for many years opened his life to Jesus Christ.

   When Dr. Harvey met him he was very old, partially blind, and he was sitting out in front of his hut on a mat with a roof of banana leaves to protect him from the sun. He pulled Dr. Harvey down close to him and placed his hands on Dr. Harvey’s head. Then he began pray and Dr. Harvey said, “Never have I felt God’s power so real as when this elderly African saint prayed for me. There seemed to be a current flowing from his body into mine.” (70 Years of Miracles by Richard Harvey)

“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search with all your heart.” (Jer. 29:13)

Am I seeking God today? Do I have a burning desire to know the King of the universe intimately? He knows you already and He is just waiting for you to know Him better.  

 Pray:

1.     God help me to spend more time with you today and every day. Give me the desire to spend time with you in a special and intimate way just like this African saint.

2.     God You are all I need. You are my one desire today and for the days to come. Help me to be more faithful in spending time with you.

3.     Lord Jesus use me in any way that you choose today. Help me to be sensitive to the needs of those around me and to have compassion for others as you do.

Lord continue to help our pastor and staff to be the spiritual leaders of our church and to be with them daily as we prepare for the future you have designed for us.