from John 15:1-17
What is your life oriented around?
There is a saying often used in the business world that states, “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.”
While your life is not an organization or a system, the same truth is applicable. If Jesus says that we are to bear fruit for His Kingdom, it begs the question: what kind of fruit are you bearing?
What if our primary focus isn’t the fruit, but what our lives are rooted in?
w/ Vern Collins
from John 15:1-11
A mark of maturity is independence. Whether it is making decisions on your own, setting your own curfew, paying rent, buying a car, owning a home, attaining a job, trying something new, or starting a career, the ability to think, act, care for oneself shows independence…which translates to this world as a sign of maturity.
The problem comes when that thinking or that value system begins to affect our understanding of life with Jesus. No matter how much we accomplish, we are all fragile people living fragile lives.
What if, your maturity in Christ weren’t about exercising your independence, but becoming more deeply dependent on Jesus? In John 15, Jesus calls that, “remaining,” or, “abiding,” in Him.
What would it look like for you to embrace your fragility, rather than try and cover it up with all that you are chasing or accomplishing?
w/ Vern Collins
from John 15:1-17
How is it that we’ve boiled Christianity, that is, what it means to be a follower of Jesus, down to NOT doing the things we shouldn’t do, and being sure to do the things we should?
The invitation of Jesus is to life…a full life to be more specific. Yet, we have somehow bought in to this idea that life with Christ is little more than behavior modification.
In this week’s foundation of Connecting, we consider that what we DO for God is simply not as important as how we are WITH God through our connection in our relationship with Jesus. Perhaps the fruit, or what we “do” comes as a byproduct of abiding in Christ as He calls us to do in John 15. Not only in relationship with Jesus, but in relationship with one another do we find that God is able to bear fruit in and through our lives that is beautiful in His sight.
Rather than focusing on, “doing and achieving,” what if your focus became, “abiding, and being?”
w/ Vern Collins
