Cut Off or Taken Up

God continues to teach me from John 15. In verse 2, Jesus says this, "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." I always struggled with this verse because this sounds like those Christians who aren't producing fruit are cut away from the vine and it is thrown away. If that was the case, how then do Baptist's reconcile our "Once saved, always saved" belief?

During my devotional time this morning, Bruce Wilkinson's book shed some excellent light on this. The Greek word that is translated "cut off" or "take off" can actually be better translated as "to take up." It is the same Greek word that was used when Jesus told the lame man to, and I paraphrase, "Take up your bed..."

The idea here is that the branch is not actually cut off and discarded. It is far to valuable to do that. Instead, the idea is that a branch that has strayed off the trellis and gotten down on the ground where it has become dirty and diseased is gently lifted up by the vinedresser, cleaned us and reattached to the trellis so that it can become a productive branch again.

We are the branch. We have a tendency to stray away from God and get caught up in the world where we become spiritually dirty. But instead of God cutting us off because we've strayed away from Him, He gently reaches down and encourages us to return to Him. When we return in repentance, He gently cleans us up and moves us back to His "trellis" where we can begin to produce MUCH fruit, as I talked about in the last post.

Aren't you glad that God never gives up on us? The world will give up on you and Satan will try to convince you that you have messed up to bad to ever be productive again. But God always allows us to return in repentance and He restores us and encourages us to be productive in His Kingdom once again.

Welcome Back!

That's kind of how I feel since I haven't had a post on here in over a month. But I'm back-not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Gone through a lot of things over the last few weeks-learned a lot of things along the way. Just want to share some of those with you. Going to be a little transparent here so don't laugh.

I spent 15 years in full time ministry and have been teaching a Sunday School class for the last two. I used to always tell my students that they need to have a Quiet Time everyday. Talk is cheap! It's easy for me to tell them to do it, but I've struggled with it for years. Just recently, God really drove home the need for me to be spending time with Him everyday. I'm currently using "Secrets From the Vine" (I think that's the right name) by Bruce Wilkerson. The whole book is written around the teachings of Jesus in John 15-you know "I am the vine and you are the branches..."

I've read that passage numerous times and have even taught on it a few times. Yet I missed some really important things in there. The biggest thing that I've learned in the last week is that God expects each Christian to produce MUCH fruit. Why? To bring glory to Him. Fruit is not for us, but so that others will see God at work and be attracted to Him. To produce MUCH fruit we must be attached to the vine, because Jesus said any branch that doesn't produce fruit will be cut off and thrown away (that's my paraphrase, by the way). And to be attached to the vine means that we must totally surrender ourselves to God, holding nothing back from Him.

That's where I have failed. I've put up what I thought was a good front and did all the "Christian" things. Yet as I stepped back this week and looked at things, I haven't been totally surrendered to Him at all. At best, I would say that I'm actually about 50% surrendered. This drove me to my knees (figuratively-if I get to my knees I'm not sure I could get back up again). Then I heard this song echoing over in my head:

Lord I want more of You
Living water rain down on me
Lord I need more of You
Living breath of life come fill me up

Lord I want more of You
Living water rain down on me
Lord I need more of You
Living breath of life come fill me up

We are hungry, We are hungry
We are hungry for the more of You
We are thirsty, oh Jesus
We are thirsty for the more of You

That's my prayer from this point forward. Lord, I want more of You. How about you?