Day 18 " The Vine & The Branches" (John 15)

Are you feeling lonely, rejected by others?

Do you feel yourself going through life without direction or purpose? Is your life full of anxiety and worries, mindful of the temporariness of everything around you including your own life? Then I have a personal story for you.

I was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and was heading home to Deerfield, IL, after a week snow skiing in Colorado. Along with eighty other high school students from the North Shore area of Chicago, we had come out skiing on a trip sponsored by Young Life-a Christian high school outreach organization which introduces students to Jesus Christ and helps them grow in their faith. I was one in whom I would have answered yes to all of the questions above. But my life had just changed! On April 5, 1972, I had given my heart to Jesus Christ and invited him to come into my life as my Lord and Savior. Though nothing physical had changed, I could sense something deep within me had. I felt lighter and more carefree. By faith, I came to believe that there was an eternity destination for my life and that through Christ, my destination was secured. Ever since I was eight years old (See Day 2), I had always been preoccupied with the awareness of finality and my own death some day. But I had also felt directionless, like a person set adrift on a river flowing downstream, never quite knowing which fork to take and so worried that whichever fork I did choose would be the wrong one, depriving me from the best course. I was very self-focused and full of insecurities and shame, all by-products of the dysfunctional home environment in which my brother and I grew up in. Please don't take me wrong. I am sure my parents loved my brother and I. But there was so much drama going on in their own lives that it left little time left over for the nurturing and guidance for two young boys. It took years later to come to a point in my life where I could see that my parents, too, were broken.

As I recall, it took us about a day and a half for us to travel back to Chicago by bus. I had purchased a J.B. Phillip New Testament just before leaving and started reading it as soon as I sat down in the bus for our journey home. As I began reading it, starting from the beginning in Matthew, the words seemed to leap off the pages piercing my heart and providing new ideas and thoughts for my mind to ponder. It was if I was reading a manual for living life, and I had a front row seat listening at the feet of Jesus, himself. Hope, love, acceptance, freedom, security, purpose, resonated through me. I couldn't put the book down. We stopped numerous times along the way, but I remained transfixed in my seat intensely engrossed in my newfound enlightenment. I felt as though God was speaking just to me one-on-one. How sweet and comforting his words were to my despairing soul!

The fifteenth chapter in the book of John I found particularly insightful. Jesus began teaching about his being the vine and that we are the branches. It was easy in my mind to focus in on what Jesus was trying to convey. I got it! I saw the dependent relationship. As a branch, I am supported by the vine. Not the other way around. If I was to be cut off, separated from the vine, the vine would still continue on but I wouldn't, eventually withering away. I sensed, that apart from the vine, I would fall far short from my destiny and the person that I was meant to be. The vine provides the sustenance for life.

"No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you

bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:4

"I am the vine: you are the branches... apart from me you can do nothing."

John 15:5

Jesus isn't calling us into a relationship of servitude, defined by do's and do not's. It is more liberating than that. He is calling us into a personal relationship with him fueled by love, and love alone.

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are

my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a

servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends."

John 15:13-15

Jesus answered, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father

except through me." John 14:6

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children

of God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if

indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

Romans 8:17

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know

the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his

holy people," Ephesians 1:8

"‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning

or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

"However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what

no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him" 1 Corinthians 2:9

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is

temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:18

Look around you. All that your eyes can behold is physical and temporary. Jesus invites us to see and be a part of a much greater picture. There is a spiritual world coexisting with our physical one. It takes a spiritual mindset and seeing things from God's point of view in order to recognize it.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus replied, “Very truly

I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” John 3:2-3

"For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through

the living and enduring word of God." 1 Peter 1:23

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through

me." John 14:6

The vine(Jesus) is the source of life for the branches(us)!

And, I was being set free!

See you tomorrow.