Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 28

January 28;   John 15:5;   83/260(VI);   ‘Bearing Fruit’

John 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

In Ephesians 1 the Word teaches that the Lord Jesus is the Head of the Church and we are His body.  In essence making the Lord Jesus and the Church one.  Now in this teaching the Lord tells us that Jesus is the Vine and we are His branches.  Just like in Ephesians 1 with Jesus the Head and the Church His body, the Vine and branches analogy makes it clear that we, the Church, are ‘hooked up’ with the Lord.  We are eternally united with Jesus in our relationship with Him.  Here, in this verse, Jesus tells us we are to abide in Him. How do we abide in Jesus?  By fellowshipping with Jesus through the Word, prayer and worship.  Abide means to dwell with, to spend time with, to tarry with. The more we abide in Jesus, by spending time with Him, the more our character and nature will reflect Him.  What flows through the Vine, flows into the branches and produces the fruit of that Vine.  The fruit we bear, as we abide in Jesus, is His character – love, kindness, caring and courtesy.  If there is anything the world needs, it is the Church becoming a living duplication of our Lord Jesus.  Those who do not know the Lord cannot ‘produce His fruit.’  By studying the Word we see that the fruit of the Spirit, given to us by the Holy Spirit when we become Born Again, are different that what unsaved can produce because God’s fruit is not in them.  God’s love, joy, peace are different than secular love, joy and peace which cannot affect others as the Lord’s fruit does. As Christians, how much fruit we bear is totally dependent upon how much time we choose to abide in Jesus.  Time with Jesus is worth it.