Day 6 – John 15: 1-17

We would love the mission of the Church today to be effective and successful, to be able to ‘catch’ people for Jesus as easily as an angler can catch a salmon for his supper in the River Tweed.  We would love our friends to recognise Jesus as the Son of God as quickly as Nathanael appeared to do.  We know that Jesus called sinners to repentance, and that the twelve went to the villages bringing the good news and curing diseases.  Yet ‘a life of mission’ can seem daunting to a Christian in Britain today.

In today’s passage Jesus uses a gardening parable to teach the importance of staying close to Him.  He is the Vine, God the Father is the Gardener, and we, his disciples, are the vine branches.  The purpose of the branches, of course, is to bear grapes, and it is the gardener’s task to make sure that happens.  It will take time – perhaps three years for the first grapes after planting, and five before you can expect a good crop.  Thankfully God is a patient Gardener!  And His patient tending includes some pruning so that the branches can eventually bear even more grapes.  For us that can be painful when it feels part of our lives is being cut back.

“Live in me.  Make your home in me just as I do in you … you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me” (v 4, The Message).  As we stay firmly rooted in our relationship with Jesus, we will gradually – it won’t happen overnight – grow to bear fruit, the fruit of the Spirit in individual Christians, and deep growth in a Church.  Such growth is sometimes difficult to measure – not necessarily ‘bums on seats’ or ‘decisions for Jesus,’ but always “fruit that will last” (v 16).

Lord, apart from You we can do nothing.  Please live in us, that we may bear Your fruit, fruit that will last.

By Peter Beal
Bede Circuit
Local Preacher