“Remain In The Lord”

We have heard the parable of the vine and the branches many times. (John 15:1-8). The message is pretty clear. You and I can do nothing without the Lord; therefore, we must stay connected to him…we must “remain in him”. It’ such a straightforward message, you would think that we would pay close attention to it. “Hey Dave, you can do NO THING, NADDA, ZIPPO without me.” 

When I find myself in a mess, it’s basically because I have not “remained in the Lord”. I have tried to do it on my own. I have cut myself off from the vine who is Christ. In these 8 lines from John 15, Jesus repeats 4 times, remain in me:

• maybe you didn’t hear me the first time, remain in me ….
• O were you on your cell phone, I said remain in me….
• Dave I’m serious, you can’t do it on your own. With me, you can bear much fruit…without me , you can do nothing….remain in me.

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” (John 15:1-8) It’s really “all or nothing” ….. we remain in Christ and bear much fruit and our prayers are answered, or we don’t and we can do nothing.

So an important question is how do we remain in Christ? It’s essentially doing what the Lord tells us, allowing his words to remain in us, doing the will of God. In a nutshell, it’s loving God and our neighbor. When we’re in relationship with the Lord, we bear much fruit; we stay in this relationship by paying attention to what he tells us and actually doing it. And he gives us the grace to be able to do it. If we fail to do this, the Lord gives us an opportunity to be grafted back onto the vine thru our repentance. 

We can do this!  It’s not easy, but we can do this. When we find our self out of peace, it can be a sign that we’re trying to operate on our own. This can be a sign that we need to repent and be grafted back to the vine…the source of our life. Our life depends on us “remaining in the Lord”.  When we do this, we will bear much fruit…. “we can ask for whatever we want and it will be done for us”.(ibid) This is very good news.