Lena's Journalin' to Cindy's earlier Post of John 15

~ Lena’s Journalin’
When we want to understand the Bible, we cannot merely read it strictly from our cultural ideas or only the understanding of our known language. True disciples of the word of God, will dig deeper, do historical research, and use tools that open up the language and the meanings of origin to pull out the treasure of understanding that can be opened, but not by just a causal reader.
This passage in John 15 is a magnificent jewel in the life of a kingdom seeker.
The #1 idea I’d like to bring out is the seriousness of our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have to ask ourselves, when we received Him was He just the most giving and lavishly loving person we’d ever met, and so we realized He was worth the acknowledgement of being Savior in our lives? Or did that same knowledge of Jesus as Christ cause us to make a covenant exchange with God the Father through the shed blood of Jesus as our Savior, who is the true and only way to God?
If we did the first scenario, we need to make an adjustment to the Christianity we’ve labeled ourselves with and go ahead and make that covenant exchange with God. Go for the 2nd true salvation scenario, the scenario of a covenant life. It is a life, for a life. He gave the life of His Son, who loved Him so much that He consented to be sacrificed for us, so He could have full rights to receive us and present us before His Father God as saved, redeemed from a life of sin, with a penalty of death nullified.
Now that we actually can be saved without 1st having to be made physically and mentally perfect, and perfected by doing every law of Moses perfectly or we die; we can receive by faith the redemption paid for through the shed blood of the perfect Son of God and we now have all the strength we need to serve Him the rest of our days and give Him the rest of our lives.
Now let’s go back just a little bit, before Jesus died.
Man who fell into sin was doomed by an eternal death penalty and could not be saved except by doing everything right before God. It took a tremendous amount of righteousness to get that much right and really no man could do it, though he’d have to strive his whole life to try. Now after Jesus, we don’t have to die because of a penalty of sin, we can actually die to sin’s power over us while we are still alive and we can live unto righteousness and unto God and His will for the earth, as a demonstration of the great love of Jesus reproduced, because we also love the Father as Jesus did. Jesus gave us a great revelation of His Father, enough for us to see Him as He is and love Him with as much love as is in us and more. Enough to be thankful, enough to live as He’d like us to with His strength inside of us right now to live eternally, enough for us to want what Jesus did to be worth everything to us, so we cannot stop sharing it with this world until our time here is over and we die, having lived for Him our whole lives long.
So that brings me to idea #2, which is, who is our source?
Is it happiness in the earth, satisfaction, success, relationships, popularity, security, etc?
Or is it God?
See, many of us will say it is God, while we go and live our whole lives seeking one natural physical relationship after another, never ever seeming to find the happiness or security we need. Or maybe we go from one job to another and spend our whole lives on studying to make ourselves more successful, climbing corporate ladders or being unhappy in certain job situations, so we change the type of work we do or who we work for, all the while we spend our lives this way and never seem to “succeed”.
Maybe we go to church on Sunday and the other 6 days we look to find happiness in doing fun things and we work, spend money and go from one fun thing to another fun thing to another fun thing, while we spend all we’ve worked for on “fun things”, but still feeling somewhat unfulfilled and empty, not feeling we’ve done the “fun nest thing” yet, and needing to work harder, and make more money to do the ultimate “fun thing”….
Is God truly the source of all of that seeking? Did you find Him, at work, in those many relationships, or while doing the fun things?
When/if you found Him did He ever ask you to do anything for Him? Did He ever ask you why you were in certain places with certain people working for certain things?
Today He’s asking this to any who will hear.
Is He the source?
Jesus says, I Am the true vine. Do you know what that means? Can I tell you?
It literally means, I’ve connected with My Father God’s will so intently that I lay down my own life , all of My own interests and goals for whatever it is God the Father wants of Me. It literally means, I go lay my self-life down on the threshing floor!
That just does not initially sound like a whole lot of natural fun, now does it? Ew WEEEE, let’s Go there? Ok?
A threshing floor is where grain has been harvested and it gets beaten and separated from all it ever grew up to be known as out in the field, it gets beaten into a product, in different form, to be taken through another process and is mixed up with other unfamiliar and incompatible ingredients to become palatable to a world of hungry people. That product is called bread.
So, are we as Jesus is? I mean we call ourselves “Christians”, right? Christ-likens? One’s who are like as Christ is. He said, “I Am the true Vine, you are the branches…” Branches bring forth fruit, a vine is as a stem, it supplies the nourishment to the branches. It abides in the dirt, stays there, digs roots deeply, hangs on as long as it has life for the sake of the fruit, for the will of the gardener.
Here’s a definition of what bringing forth fruit means:
to gather fruit (i.e. a reaped harvest) into life eternal (as into a granary), is used in fig. discourse of those who by their labours have fitted souls to obtain eternal life
to seize, carry off by force
to seize on, claim for one's self eagerly
to snatch out or away ( I ask, “away from what or whom?)
Hell’s eternal death grip is that answer.
In seeking after your happiness, or working 60 hours a week to gain success or provide security, or in having all of that fun in life, did this happen? Did you rescue people from hell? How many?
God will never ask you how much money you made, what part of town you lived in, how much fun we had, how much security we built or what kind of car we drive or if we felt at all uncomfortable doing anything He’s asked of us. He’ll ask us, while we were living in this world doing all of this, did we live for Jesus, His Son, did we save any souls? Did we reproduce eternal life in a lot of people, and if not, then why not?
If we say we were not well physically, He’ll ask why not? If we say we’re depressed, He’ll ask why? If we say we were shy or scared, didn’t have time, or we were bitter and hurt, or any other excuse, we’ll have none to give, as we stand before God. His Son made every provision necessary to overcome all of these obstacles and more at the cross.
One thing we have to realize is we are all standing before God right now. BUT are we abiding in the vine now? Have we born or are we bearing or even planning for bearing any fruit?
I often wonder if the very reason we are not able to be healed, or become happy, or overcome depression or feel secure is we are seeking the security, the healing, the love, etc, but are not seeking God, 1st?
Do we trust God enough to lay the other down and with a strong self will, lay it all down on the threshing floor of change, seek Him 1st and make Him our one and only, at first?
Not earthly success, security, relationships, fun, etc, until we get the God first thing going?
The first fruit of love is obedience. Are we presently obeying God? How do we know? We can only know and be known by and only in His word. We have to seek and find Him in His word, and then do what it says. So it says love your enemy. Ahh, well, God knows how bad that person treats me and how I can love them without being kind to them or giving them the time of day. I can just ignore them and pray for them and God knows that’ll be ok, right? No, not right! Love, is kind , does not seek it’s own soulish comfort and its own wayof going about things…
A huge sign of growth in the Lord is we are no longer as servants who are told what to do and made to do everything the Master wants us to do, but we as friends agree with Him and desire all He desires us to do. Same actions, different attitudes. Both matters of the heart.
The servant only listens and obeys the commands, life to him is a bunch of do’s and don’t’s. He hears a command and here he goes again doing what was asked, ew boy, what fun…The friend, asks what he can do to help the Lord, wants to do that and more, can’t wait to hear what’s next, knows it serves the King, loves the king and wants to please him with a joyful heart. The king knows him and brings him in closer, the servant stays back and out of the way of the serious relational talk, because the king cannot trust his attitudes and heart, his attitudes gave him away as one who cannot be trusted with the king’s business. He’s angry, frustrated, doing his job for Jesus.
If his attitude does not come to a place of change, he may actually begin to hate the father and the son and the children and the family. On he goes as he’s been, serving himself, seeking what pleases himself 1st. Empty, never getting filled, cursed, outside of the will of God.