What is the abiding life? Imagine a branch which decides that it can produce grapes just fine on its own—it’s doesn’t need the life from the Vine. And then it gets even worse as it believes that the Vine has required it to produce fruit, and there is pressure associated with trying to meet this requirement with only its own strength as its source. You can see the branch will get frustrated, blame the Vine for putting this standard on it, and finally grow completely discouraged that it can ever live as it created to live—fruitful.
This picture describes so many Christians who have received Christ and His incredible love for them, but then have decided it is up to them to live according to the standards He has set. The pressure mounts, the frustration grows, and no fruit is seen. So, they find plastic fruit and decorate their leaves with it, hoping that it will look like the real thing. We try to please God with all sorts of obedience and commitments, while He is offering to empower us to live with real fruitfulness. Instead, we decide it is up to us on our own, and continue to put out the plastic fruit. Eventually, hopelessness and discouragement follow, but we must also hold others to the same standards we have set for ourselves in order to keep up the charade.
Believe me, this isn’t to beat up on those people. I have been one of them. I played the performance-for-God game and lost. I grew into discouragement, bitterness and anger. Because I now thought that God required something of me but that He didn’t provide a source. It was all I could do to try to keep up with the plastic fruit.
But this isn’t the abiding life. This isn’t the life union with Jesus that is promised in Scripture.
I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from me you are powerless. John 15:5 TPT
Imagine again with me this same branch, who finally decides that it needs to recognize the union it has with the Vine. It sees that its attempts at fruitfulness have been disastrous, and it longs for something more. As it lives acknowledging its union with the Vine as its source, fruitfulness starts to stream from within it. Suddenly, there are delicious grapes, sweet with the beauty of the lifeblood of the Vine flowing into the branch. The branch is not trying harder to bear fruit, or beating up on itself more to try to criticize itself into fruit production. It is resting. It is allowing the fruitfulness of the union with the Vine to stream from within to be enjoyed by all around it.
We are not called to a life of greater performance. We are not called to a life of comparison. We are not called to a life of discouragement and condemnation.
We are called to a union, something we crave so deeply. We get to live in union with Jesus through His Spirit within us, who provides all we need for fruitfulness to stream from within us. He brings us to Himself, gives us a new Life and then provides everything we need to please Him in living it!
What’s my job? To refocus on my Source as many times a day as I need to. To allow a renewing of my mind so that I start to recognize my union with Jesus as what I need for life regardless of what I am doing throughout my day. This doesn’t mean I live with my head in the clouds, but rather as I walk with my feet on the ground, I see Jesus in everything. I ask Him how He is going to handle whatever task is at hand, and get excited to see what He will do. I approach each situation with an empty bag, knowing that my tools won’t work. And I watch Him fill that bag with all that I need, even things I never thought I needed. I can be free in any circumstance because nothing can take away my Source.
And when I forget? I use my discouragement, my anger, my bitterness, my hopelessness, as warning lights that I am trying to rely on my own resources to fight my battles. When I feel these things, I allow them to push me back to focusing on the One who is my Source. I move into dependence, not away from it. I move into weakness, not away from it. It is the opposite of what makes sense sometimes, but in the dependence and weakness, I get to see Him spring forth a jungle of amazing fruit—stuff I could never dream up on my own. And I don’t have to get out of the circumstance to see it. He can stream fruitfulness from within me anywhere.
What beautiful rest is this? Live in union. See Him as your Source for all of Life. Put down the standard of living “for” Jesus and instead live from Him. And watch the fruit grow all around you.