John 15:1-8
What drives you? What makes you do the things that you do? What activities do you spend your waking hours involved in?
Is your driving force providing for your family? - Perhaps through earning money to support your loved ones; physically and emotionally taking care of your children; supporting a spouse as they re-train, or care for an elderly relative, or do volunteer work…?
Is your main 'reason for living' your career? - Do you live for the challenges & opportunities your work provides. Do you only feel fulfilled when you've completed a 'job well done'?
Or is work simply a means to an end? - It's how you spend your leisure that really counts! Perhaps a time-consuming hobby, or a sporting interest that really makes you feel alive?
Whatever your answer, I can practically guarantee one common element:
The things we really enjoy doing, are the things we really love doing. And the people we long to spend precious time with, are the people we really love and care about.
So where does God fit it? - Is He the focus of our attention, the thing that makes everything else make sense? Or does our attention wander, and we suddenly realise that, actually, it's been a few days or weeks since we last spent any real time in God's presence?
Well, let me tell you about an online Bible study I did recently, based on a book called The Practice of the Presence of God, originally written in the 1600's by Brother Lawrence, a Parisian Monk. It’s a collection of notes, letters and interviews that illustrates how to develop a kind of 'conversational relationship' with God, right in the middle of ordinary, everyday life.
In the opening pages of his book, which was only published after his death in 1691, Brother Lawrence declares that our driving pursuit - our reason for being - ought to be, and come out of, a determined love for God. An intentional love.
Now I know he was a monk, and the daily lives and commitment to God of monks are probably a bit different from ours, but for Brother Lawrence, “practising the presence” of God, was a part of everything he did. No matter how trivial or seemingly unimportant, he practised the practice.
Bringing God into the ordinary and everyday was a demonstration of his love and the ultimate end of all his spiritual striving. His love of God and God's love for him was what drove everything he did.
He wrote: “We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him, and [when that’s] done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before Him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.”
For the love of God. These verses from John 15 are probably a familiar ones. “I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever lives in me will produce much fruit.” While there aren't that many vineyards in sunny old England, to have as a visual reminder of what Jesus was saying here, we can get the concept. What about apple trees instead? They generally need to be well pruned in order to get the best out of them, to get the largest crops in the long term. And rose bushes, a typical English Garden favourite, have to be grafted onto hardy, strong root-stock in order to grow and flourish.
So, with those images in mind, it makes complete sense that, in order to accomplish the most for the Kingdom of God, to be the most fruitful in our spiritual lives, we must be firmly connected to the source of our energy, power and success. We, the branches, need to be fully grafted into Jesus, the vine.
But what else can we learn here? What else can we glean from these words of Jesus? Depending on your focus and how you're feeling, you might be tempted to concentrate on verse 6: “Whoever doesn’t live in me is thrown away like a branch and dries up. Branches like this are gathered, thrown into a fire, and burned.” We can pile the pressure on ourselves to conform and perform, constantly striving to be worthy of the Name of Jesus, and to avoid being chopped down, cast aside and thrown onto the fire.
But I beg you, read on. The very next verse, verse 7 says: “If you live in me and what I say lives in you, then ask for anything you want, and it will be yours.”
Jesus doesn't ask us to 'live in him' for what we can strive to achieve or accomplish; He wants us to 'live in him' for all the love and good gifts He can give - bestow - on us.
Only when the branches are truly grafted into the main vine can the water and nourishment be fed all the way through from the roots. The end result is a bounty of good, healthy fruit.
Brother Lawrence put it like this:
“This King, full of mercy and goodness, far from chastening me, embraces me with love, invites me to feast at his table, serves me with his own hands, and gives me the key to his treasures. He converses with me, takes delight in me, & treats me as if I were his favourite.”
Isn't that an amazing thought?! I love it!
Paul, in Ephesians Ch3 saw the wisdom of this 'love relationship'. He wrote:
“I pray that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love … so you may be filled with all the fullness of God … who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
Rooted and grounded in love. That's the key.
Life isn't easy nowadays, there are so many pressures on our time, our activities and our relationships. And, in my mind, there's only one way to get through: Jesus. If we allow the pressures to control us, to continually drive us in ever-decreasing circles, then there is no time or space for us to be 'filled with God's fullness', with all the love and good gifts and blessings he longs to lavish on us.
But if, like Brother Lawrence, we can 'practise the presence' of God in our day-by day lives, then only God Himself knows - beyond anything we can ask or imagine - what love we can enjoy and what fruit will come to bear!