Sermon Tone Analysis

Ken Hess Interview:

I’m going to invite Ken Hess up…

We are in a sermon series called “Abide” through , and our goal for this series is to learn how to remain in constant awareness of, connection to, and dependence on the power and presence of our loving Savior.

And to help us make this tangible, we are doing some interviews with people in our church who are in different stages of life… who have different day-to-day experiences… but who have the same pursuit in their lives: to abide in Christ…

And today I’ve asked Ken Hess if I could interview him...

Ken, you are a dad… you also are a supervisor at Scenic Ridge Company… overseeing the fleet services… the trucks and drivers there… you have a lot going on… but most importantly you are a man seeking God...

1) So what are some challenges that you face in your everyday life to abiding in Christ?

Staying Christ Like and patient with my Family

Everyday pressures of balancing work and family, providing for our physical needs

The world around me, Easy availability of temptation in advertising, news, society in general.

2) Are there any particular habits that have helped you face those challenges and abide in Christ?

What helps you remember and depend upon Christ’s power and presence with you?

Time in the word, What I found works really well me on my 25min drive to work I have been listening to my Bible app read through the bible.

Friends who are Christ followers, I am blessed to work with a group of guys who are also actively pursuing Christ, along with gospel community times.

Good music, for example worship music on Sunday mornings before we leave for church helps me prepare my heart for time together with other believers.

3) How have you seen Christ produce his fruit in you?

How do you know personally when HE is doing a work?

Through my Children when they talk and present a biblical world view it certainly wasn't from me, had to be Christ working through me.

When I am able to provide encouragement to someone.

Those times I am able to remain patient with my family, and love them with the love of Christ.

Ken, I’ve appreciated seeing Christ produce his fruit in you… so thank you for sharing some of your own experience with us...

It’s so important that we see this invitation to Abide in Christ as the central focus of the life of every believer...

There is no other focal point in the life of a believer than abiding in a real… vital relationship with Jesus Christ…

And I think it’s also important to recognize that there are real challenges to this…

it’s not a default setting for our hearts to remain constantly aware of Jesus and connected to him and dependent on him...

And so we need some life habits that help us with that…

We all have habits that we run our day by… we all have morning routines… and activities we do when we have some downtime… and ways we prioritize our schedule...

And even if you don’t think you have habits… even if you think your life is completely random and chaotic… then your HABIT is to be random and chaotic which will not promote focused dependence upon Christ.

We all have life habits… and we need to direct those habits toward a heart posture of abiding in Christ… and we can be motivated by the fact that HE is going to produce LIFE and FRUIT in us as we look to him…

So when we think about habits that fuel that a heart posture of abiding... we sometimes call them “spiritual disciplines””… we really can think in three general categories: word habits.... prayer habits... and fellowship habits.

The heart posture of abiding is fueled by three primary categories of habit: word habits.... prayer habits... and fellowship habits.

We are going to talk about the first two today because Jesus shows us just how closely related they are, and then we will talk about the third one, fellowship, next week.

word habits.... prayer habits... and fellowship habits.

Be in the word… pray… and gather with God’s people… and all three priorities are right here in .

We are going to talk about the first two types of habit today… the word and prayer... because Jesus shows us just how closely related they are, and then we will talk about the third type of habits, fellowship habits, next week.

Except that we can sometimes forget that those things are

We are going to talk about the first two today because Jesus shows us just how closely related they are, and then we will talk about the third one, fellowship, next week.

Be in the word… pray… and gather with God’s people…

And maybe you’re like… really?

That basic?

I KNOW I’m supposed to be reading my Bible and praying and gathering with God’s people…

In fact, my five-year-old has learned that this is the answer to how to grow in your faith… “read your bible, pray, go to church...”

It’s become a guess to most questions I ask him because it’s right so many times…

And so... YES… we are really going that basic… because if you are anything like me, those basic habits can quickly become so familiar and so mundane that I forget WHY they are important.

They become MERELY habit… they can even become a type of man-made law… and they start to lose their focus and purpose for fueling an ongoing relationship with Christ…

and they lose their the wonder that I get to express my relationship with the God of the universe through them… and from there they lose their priority in my life...

Have any of you ever experienced that?

Reading the Bible starts to feel like a chore... or a law that I fail at maintaining… and praying starts to feel like talking to a wall… and being in relationship with other followers of Jesus starts to get messy and hard and I can think of other places that I’d rather be...

And when that happens… what is really going on is that we’ve lost sight of the purpose of those heart habits: abiding in Christ.

These habits… these disciplines… are not end goals in themselves… they are a way of experiencing the end goal: a real… vital connection to the living God.

And so here’s the big idea as we focus in on these first two types of habit:

Big Idea: Abide in Christ through a constant conversation of receiving his words and responding in prayer.

Your Bibles are open to …

Jesus is walking with his disciples from the upper room where they just shared one last meal that they would have together before his death…

And John emphasizes that in that room, he grabbed a basin and a towel and did what none of them had the humility to do: he washed their dirty, grimy feet… and he showed them what it was like to serve one another and love one another…

And in that upper room, he washed twelve sets of feet… the feet of the twelve who had walked with him so closely for the last three years...

and he said to them that they were clean, but not all of them...

Because now as they walk out of Jerusalem and to the Mt. of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, there are only 11 sets of feet...

Judas has now left the group to betray Jesus to the religious leaders.

As they walk, Jesus continues teaching them about how they are going to get along without him… after he has gone to the Father...

We are going to mostly focus on verses 7-8 today, but I want us to pick up the whole parable again starting in v. 1...

Read

Before we get to the habits of the Word and prayer, I want us to start where we were last week:

1) Concede your absolute need for Jesus as the only source of life.

(v.

1-6)

Explain: This whole first point is review from last week by the way… because it is so vitally important that we understand this foundation: Jesus is the Vine… we are the branches who only can receive life in relationship to the vine… and the Father is the vinedresser...

If we are ever going to pursue life habits that help us maintain a posture of abiding in Christ, we must be CONVINCED of this point: Jesus is the only source of life who can produce the fruit the Father seeks.

As the vinedresser, the Father is actively tending the vine seeking fruit… Jesus says in v. 2 - “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

(, ESV)

The Father has planted the choicest of vines… he has sent his own son into the world…

He has planted the choicest of vines… he has sent his own son into the world…

And like any farmer in his right mind, he expects to find fruit on the vine he has planted… Inward character, Outward obedience, and multiplying ministry… that Jesus produces in us and through us...

We talked about how we tend to read this passage and think about just one part of biblical fruit…

But the Father is seeking all parts of fruit… everything that your life is producing should be the FRUIT… the OUTCOME… the EVIDENCE... of an abiding relationship with Jesus, the Vine...

But we need to make sure we think about three broad elements of biblical fruit… Inward character, Outward obedience, and multiplying ministry...

The in

At risk of pressing the illustration: You could think of it like the seed of the fruit (the inward character)… the meat of the fruit (the outward obedience)… and the reproduction of the fruit when it falls off the vine (multiplying ministry)…

At any rate, we need to be thinking about all elements of biblical fruit… not just the one we want to emphasize or has been emphasized for us...

The Father is seeking all of it… he wants to see MUCH fruit produced from our lives…

I don’t want us to lose sight of that fact… because it is a huge part of our motivation for abiding in Christ.

And I want you to understand this: God is not seeking fruit so that he can take something from you… but so that he can give life to you.

Fruit is the EVIDENCE and PRODUCE of the life of Christ that is nourishing us and producing life in us.

If our lives are attached to the vine… we MUST be… we WILL be… producing the fruit of the vine.

If our lives are attached to the vine… we MUST be… we WILL be… producing the fruit of the vine.

And every branch that does not bear fruit he destroys… verse 6 says that he gathers up those dead branches and throws them into the fire…

there is eternal conscious torment in hell because without Jesus, we are dead in our sin, incapable of bearing fruit.

But every branch that DOES bear fruit… every branch he has united to Christ through faith and made clean… Jesus says that the Father prunes.

He actively tends to the vine removing the things that would draw life away from the fruit he wants to produce… cutting off the things that would keep us from relying upon Christ alone…

so that the life of Christ can flow through us to produce more fruit.

The Father is actively tending the vine seeking fruit… we have to know that and believe that…

But a problem arises when we start to focus more on the fruit that God wants to see than on the thing that will actually produce the fruit… abiding in Christ.

The problem comes when think God wants us to produce fruit apart from the vine.

The problem comes when we try to produce fruit without the vine.

We end up getting so focused on the fruit… that we start to worry…

What if I can’t produce the fruit the Father is seeking???

What if I’m not producing the right fruit???

What if I’m not producing enough fruit???

What if I don’t have enough… faith… or energy… or resources… or character… to produce the fruit that he’s seeking…

What if this pruning in my life is just God being mad at me and he’s going to ditch me with the other dead branches?!?!?!

And instead of turning to Jesus Christ in faith in those moments, we turn to ourselves and other people to tell us what we need to be doing.