jesus the source of life
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Bulliten
Add Jeremy’s mens study the 23rd of this month @7pm
We have started Prayer ministry @7pm tuesday nights
Assemblies of God update Next week we need our members to stay after for just a few minutes. If you are a member please let me know so i can make sure we have enough people here to be in quorm for a Buisness meeting.
Last Weekend Make a wish hike
The people that helped me.
We need people in our lives to push us,
We need more than that…and today were going to unravel this open your bibles with me to John 15..
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
2 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.
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
i wish we could unpack today but the main focus of this message is going to be a simple word REMAIN
To remain in some translations is abide. to abide in HIm.
Hebrew: Dwell: Inhabit
Greek: Stay, remain, continue
ABIDE- to remain in a place of confidence in Christ and fellowship with His Spirit.
Listen this message is significant for us. this is significant for this church.
I need us to get in a mind set of Ready. Not for anything new not for anything crazy..but for different.
Amen… Let us pray
I posted a Fb post this weekend saying
“state an emoji of how your day has been.”
We had alot of response considering on that one.
I posted a tornado....you ever had a tornado day?
My friday consist of attempting to get alot done while not getting anythign done. Me focusing on a million little things but never obtaiing any of them. IM telling you being at home with the kiddos i have learned they have a super power. I think when im not in the room or just not paying attention they can clone them selfs. I would pick up…not clean but pick up who knows what i mean? there is a differnece
I would pick up one mess and it was 10x worst when id turn back around lol.
Many peoples lives are like this tornado effect.
Some of our lives are get up scramble out of the house, take the kids to school, hurry to work at work push push push, attempting to perform the impossible in a day because the boss is making you have this done by 5 or youll have to work overtime. Then you have to leave that mess and rush home to get the kids and make dinner. When the kids are asleep you have to take care of things at the house because if you dont do it nobody will.
Or maybe you spend your day at home, Not a lazy day but a day where you are taking care of someone else. A kid or a family member with health issues. You work hard to meet all of there needs, anytnme you leave them you are in a hurry to get things done and you are constantly thinking of them, worrying if they are okay did you forget to do something to ensure they are taken care of. When youre home you do your best but it never seems like its enough.
You are giving everything you can to meet the needs of your kids or your loved family members while attempting the best you can to balance everything else that you need to do for you. Which never seems to take priority, so you wind up feeling like youve gotten too many task and by the end of the day you crash.
Come on we all feel the burn out.
Listen when we get to a burnout area in our life we tend to crash and burn. And we tend to attempt to push our blame on someone else dont we.
Listen if you dont believe me thats okay lets open up to Luke 10 40-42
40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things,
42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
When we get to a place of exhaustion…when we get to aplace where we literally cant take another step without screaming.
Our response shouldn’t be get out the house and go see a movie to distract us.
response shouldnt be or lay on the couch and forget our Responsiblities.
Our response should be……I need to sit at the feet of Jesus.
We need jesus
But our response is to be disconnect ourselfs from jesus we begin to run all of our resources down to the ground…
Every time we feel depleted burned out worn down or like we have nothing to give, it leads to unhappiness, a lack of joy and purpose and sometimes even depresssion. And when we look back at these times we can find that we lack our compassion to stay connected to Jesus.
Jesus compares this staying connected as a branch.
See without being attached to the vine the branch begins to wither away and die. Just like Martha if we choose to be doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen when we need to be at the feet of Jesus we will surly die. Come on you hear me today.
There are four things that we need to see here in this scripture to ensure we Continue to Abide in Him
Its critical too see so its critical to discern them Because if we cant see them then we cant Remain in that place of connectivity and bear fruit.
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
Jesus sets up some clarity in this passage by adding a word into here. He says i am the True vine...
why does he do this? It tells us that there will be false vine.
So whats a false vine.
Anything that you look to other than God for your ultimate source of satisfaction or identity, value or purpose...
See we are created in the image of God. So no matter how important you are to the eyes of this world. To the eyes of your classrooms, the eyes of your boss, the eyes of your secretary, the eyes of....come on…
With these things you will never be fully alive, or fully satisfied untill you have the source of Life that is God himself...
See its easy for us to drift away from Jesus our creator as our main vine. our main source...
COme on think about it in your own life...
Youve met someone in your life. a new relationship begins to form and you begin to drift toward that person.
After all youve been hoping to find someone. God must have sent them. But you drift from the Life to the Satisfaction.
Little by little by little you begin to transform or transfer your source from God to the new relationship, the new responsiblity, the new obligation, the new happiness, the new sport, the new hobby....the new replaces the old.
Or maybe come on now its okay to talk with you this morning?
Or maybe you have been waiting for approval. When your boss comes to you and approves of your work.
When your kids come and approve of your decision of letting them watch tv till midnight.
When your spouse, mom, dad, grandfather, approves of something it makes you so happy you begin to rejoice in the acceptance, And then
uh ohhh you make a choice do some work and those people disapprove of what you are doing and have done.
It devastates you it drains you it nearly kills you i wonder if you have been growing from a false vine.
Listen there is a multitude of vines we can talk about here. people do this with drugs, sex, bank accounts, relationships. We have this longing for to draw from something. we tend to just pick up on the things that don’t produce real life in us.
Forgetfulness: don’t lose sight of who christ is to you
we lose sight that Jesus is the True Vine.
2 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.
Listen i wanna add to this Romans 5 1
1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
Some of us have been christians for a long time and we understnad we have be Justified by faith alone. But faith isnt alone.
Faith produces Fruit.
Faith creates Christ Like Character. Through this it bears fruit so that it can always be seen.
We do understnad that the Jesus who comes to reconsile His people back to who he has created us to be…he whom has come to restore us…He isnt doing that by himself. Its through him its His power but he has passed that mission to the church. To the movement of believes that love and follow him.
Thats you and me. and by faith we bear this fruit.
We are just branches there is no real sustaining power within us. On our own we will run out of steam and ultimately become useless.
Jesus is the vine. Thats where the real power comes from.
Branches don’t work harder to produce fruit, in fact they don’t work at all.
They just let the vine work through them to produce fruit.
Now when im talking about fruit im not talking about what we can sometimes think of as materalistic items.
ITs not the larger bank accounts, its not the nice new mercades, its not the home you can finally claim as yours…listen to me God is deeper and knows us more so than to bless us materalistacly alone.
Well what is fruit..if not the outward things?
Its the essence of life. Real fruit is your heart loves more, you grow in joy. Not just a happiness on the outside a real deeper joy on the inside. Real fruit is a revelation of God’s peace in your life.
Tidy(up)
Just because you bear fruit doesn’t mean you dont need to tidy up.
2 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.
every branch that does bear fruit he prunes....listen the process of pruining is just that its a process. Nobody just produces fruit.
Nobody in the Kingdom of God is just producing fruit. Do you understand me church. God whom is the gardner comes in and prunes.
Our core values here in this church
Loving People
Moving Forward
Elevating the Next Gen
Being Authentic
Moving forward
We believe all have another step
We take responsibility for our Spiritual growth
We are always learning with the H.S.
Pruning, the process of pruning is to reduce the size of the plant above ground without messing with the size of the plant under ground.
So when you prune a plant you limit what people can see so what cant be seen can grow stronger, and the result of this is although the outside may look smaller the inside is growing healthier and able to produce more fruit.
This is why we say in the church it dont matter what the world things of you.
See we get a custom to how important the world thinks we are, We get satisfied by the eyes of this world and we transfer this into our relationship with christ.
If im growing with Christ which should look like love than the world should love me
Big OHHH No
See its not about the perspective of Christ we put off its about the authentic body we become.
It doesnt happen without loss and dislike from the world around us.
The church has missed this. We are in chaos because of it.
We will be persecuted just as christ was
12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
The process of pruning is God coming in at the right time the perfect place according to His will. He will cut something in your life.
Yes this means everything in your life may not always be there. Don’t let that come between you and God.
We have to stay focused on remaining in Him. For he is life. Instead of becoming disconnected because we don’t understand why we are loosing something in our life.
Don’t be disconnected because you don’t understand The loss of something in your life.
Yet understand this God is up to something in your root system.
See you have the person on the outside that you see but you dont see the person on the inside. God is all about the growth of that inner person so that your outer person can produce the fruit God is looking for.
Next thing were going to look at is
first we have to not forget who he is. then we have to allow ourselves to be pruned now we have to listen to what he says about us.
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
See when God is working on you, the devil is scheming against you. God is cutting you into shape while the devil is saying you havent grown. God is picking up the fruit you have produced in your life and the devil is reminding you of the bad choice you made years, months and days ago.
The enemy doesnt want a product to be produced he wants the branch to fall to the floor, So he will use shame to come against you.
But God…But jesus said
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
What i have spoken over you.!
So the third thing we need to do is focus on His voice.
Focus on His voice
Which we find in the word of God amen.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
We have to let what Christ says overrule how we feel about ourselves at times.
Last thing were going to unpack today is found in
4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Maybe you havent felt the devil whispering that your nothing, or reminding you of your past mistakes,
Maybe you fall into the category where you are remembering how good you are at everything.
Before you met God you had a successful buisness, you had good relationships.
Then we hear a passage of scripture like this....apart from me you can do nothing. and we get to this place where like come on Jesus its not that i cant do nothing without you.
Really fast i wanna tell you a story and then were closing.
Worship Team please come up
I remember living with my mom, and im sure this will come back to bite me in the butt when my kids get older but i could’nt wait to move out. Not just because of the rules, not just because of the curfews but for the self suffiecency of life.
To be totally dependant on myself.
Thats what we want right, when we work these hard jobs, When we stay late at the office or we work weekends to make up or to get ahead. Yet are we really doing that or are we just saying ima trust in myself. Im going to get what i need and where.
See one of the biggest things for us as people, Men and Woman alike are we want to be able to be in control
We want to be financially stable and to stop living pay check to pay check. We want to be able to have the family time we needed for good development for our kids.
We want to have enough money to put our parents in the pool house so we can hire a nurse to help take care of them.
We want…we want we want.
WE want to be in control
See the biggest problem in us staying attached to Jesus....is our pride.
Jesus wants us to be dependent on the King.
Rely On Him
Listen we must confront our inability to produce what matters for the kingdom of God. We just simply cant do it without Jesus
We must remain aware of our need for Jesus.
according to this passage people who remain in Jesus....money no money hard work no hard work.
people who remain in christ will bear much fruit.
So if we dont want to lose sight on God, For us to continue to have life in christ we must Remain in Him.
Dont forget who he is.
Allow him to tidy you up
Remember what he has said about you
Drop The Pride
Let us pray.
Look were talking about church growth today and notice how we start with YOU.
Its not the mission first, its not who our community is. It starts with you. God’s primary purpose for the church is to go into the world and proclaim the gospel we know that but he cares about you. The individual. So he equips you. This is equip-ing materials guys.
Holy Spirit Lead us in this time.
Ending ending.
I pray you’re faith is encouraged and lifted up today and that you invite someone next week as we dive into our vision more in dept. Amen.
Let us pray.
i dont want anything but you
youre more than every dream come true
all of the things i thought i wanted dont come close to knowing you
now that I’m yours and you are mine
Our love is the secret that i find
ill spend forever in the pleasure i found looking in your eyes
Give me jesus, Give me Jesus
You can have all this world
You can have all this world