In between

I'm neither here nor there, neither in the groove nor out of it, neither on the road nor aimlessly wandering. 

I am in between. 

It's an empty place - a quiet space - almost a vacuum. Between what I have known and what I will know, I am in that curious state of nothingness that begs for an answer, a voice, an activity, anything to fill that void. 

It is a dangerous place - an eerie space - more silent than a whisper, and just as elusive. It's uncomfortable. I am tempted to go back to what was, what I knew, not because it is a better place, but simply because I know it, and I know what to expect. Yet because I know what to expect, I dread moving backward in that all-too-familiar direction. Too long I have wallowed in its mediocrity and sameness. Yet the future - bright and glittering- is unreachable, shiny, taunting me with its promises of a better life, whatever that means. 

It looks as though I am stuck here - here in the present, here in the in-between. Here the echoes of what was ... are too loud, and the promise of what will be ... is too far off to provide any satisfaction. 

This is the void. This is the awkward silence, the silence of 'becoming'. 

It is empty ... and dangerous ... and absolutely essential. Here I can ask myself the tough questions from which I have been hiding. Who am I? Why am I here? Is this all there is? Is what I have known all that will ever be? Can I not hope for something more? Will I ever stop feeling so lifeless? Where is the joy I was promised? Can I ever learn to listen for - and hear - that still small Voice again? 

Other voices clamour around me to fill that silence with uplifting music, with many words, with groanings and fervent prayer, with busy-work. Yet the only sound my soul makes is that of a small, frightened child - so frightened that she dare not make a sound or she will be discovered. I hear the rapid beating of my own heart, as if I have stepped off a cliff with no assurance that anything will be there to keep me from falling to my death. There are moments of abject terror - of a panic so great that it steals my breath from my lungs.

The questions continue, go deeper, persist in spite of the pleadings of some part of me for them to stop. But they don't. Where did the Light go? Will I ever see it again? Why is it that others seem so satisfied with the status quo ... and I do not? Do I really know what it is that I am looking for? If I don't, then how will I know it when I see it? (Or WILL I see it?) 

This hurts. It's painful. I can't describe it well enough; only those who have been here will understand. I can talk to them, and they can encourage me to persevere, but it seems I can't make anyone else understand. "Why are you so dissatisfied?" I hear them say in my mind. "Why are you putting yourself through this?"

Nobody wants to hear about this place. They want me to be as I was, or they want me to be as I will be. They are just as uncomfortable with this awkward place in my life as I am - perhaps even more so. Everyone wants the finished product, something recognizable, something to point to and either pray for or praise God for. Not this. Not the transition. Not the uncertainty. Not the pain. Oh most definitely not the pain. 

I know that so many will not understand.  This fact tears at the fabric of my being, for I have spent my whole life trying to do whatever I could to make people approve of me, to like me, to hear me, to understand me. Yet I know - I KNOW - that so many people will think that I am sick, or sad, or crazy, or backslidden, or ... or whatever they will think. Yet I am so desperate for answers that I must face the monster of "What will people think?" and put it to death in my life. I must exist in this place of emptiness, of the void, no matter what people think.

This, THIS is in between. This is not comfortable. Yet it's all I know right now. Like the caterpillar in its chrysalis, I am being de-consructed; the person I was is no longer the person I am. I am being changed; into what, I do not know. It is too soon to tell. I am only beginning.

All I know for sure is that it will be different. Just how different, or what form it will take, is completely unknown to me. The only One who knows is the One who compelled me to enter this place, this space where all else fades away ... except change.

Lesson from RMS Titanic

On April 10, 1912, the Royal Mail Steamer (RMS) Titanic set out from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York, with 2227 people on board, mostly wealthy people in first-class cabins and immigrants transported like cargo toward the new world. 

The Titanic was already famous. She was touted as "the unsinkable ship" - the safest ever to be built - and so confident were her designers of that "fact" that there were only 20 lifeboats on board: only enough to carry a scant half (at most) of the passengers on that voyage. The mood was festive. Nothing bad could happen. 

Late on the night of April 14, at 11:40 pm, the ship struck an iceberg, about 400 miles south of Newfoundland. April in Atlantic Canada is far from springtime. 

To one eye-witness, the sound of the ship hitting that iceberg was like fabric ripping. The passengers who were awake felt the ship shudder, and many just lay back down and trusted the "safest ship ever built" to take them to their destination. Some asked members of the crew if there was a problem. They were told that as far as they knew, there was none. 

There was a problem. The problem was that the ship had struck an iceberg, and the pilot of the ship believed the propaganda that the ship was unsinkable, and so delayed his distress call. The passengers - confused and disbelieving - were not warned early enough, and when they were warned, the crew started calmly handing out life-preservers to the passengers.

While most passengers got a life preserver, many more people died than needed to die, because of (1) the arrogance of the designers (2) the implicit trust people had in the media hype [in other words, they believed what they were told], and (3) too few lifeboats and too little instruction on their use (based on reasons one and two). 

Photo "Titanic Ship Sinking At Night" by
Victor Habbick at |
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Again, from eye-witness accounts, the RMS Titanic sank bow-first beneath the waves, looking much like an incredibly slow-motion dive that a duck might make, eventually at a 65-degree angle as the stern slipped beneath the waves. The sinking took two hours and forty minutes. 

Those left on board during that time with no life-boats left to save them, huddled near the stern, still clinging to the vain hope that the great ship would not sink. More and more of them let go, unable to hang onto the railing (or each other) any longer, faced with two realities: the cold numbing air of the North Atlantic and the force of gravity that pulled them sharply downhill. The icy water killed over 1,500 people in mere minutes from their entrance into the water - those who had their life preservers but who were too late to get into the lifeboats. 

Those in the lifeboats could barely believe that the ship was doomed and so they lingered near it until it became obvious that the media hype was wrong; they rowed away clumsily because most of the crew had gone down with the ship and they had no instruction on how to navigate the huge rowboats, each holding about 35 people. 

Over three hours they stayed in the lifeboats in the freezing cold, pressing close together for warmth, calling out the names of their loved ones out over the dark water ... for answers that never came. As twilight turned to dawn, they could see the outline of a ship, a proven ocean liner whose captain had heard the delayed distress call and was waiting to pick up survivors. The Carpathia took aboard 705 survivors that morning. The rest of the Titanic's passengers and crew had died - one thousand, five hundred twenty-two people. (*)  The enormity of that loss was unprecedented: nothing like that had ever happened on such a large scale.

The only ones who survived were the ones who got off the ship and into a safe place, at great personal and emotional cost. 

We are aboard another Titanic - the religious system we call the church (notice I use the small letter c??) - and we are so caught up in the hype of the gates of hell not prevailing against it (in other words, indestructible) that we forget that the real Church isn't about the system or the vehicle (so to speak); the Church is about the people: real people with real lives. Unfortunately, what we settle for is being lulled into a false sense of security by the propaganda and the ritual and the expectation that the deck beneath our feet will hold and stay steady ... we are settling for doing church instead of being the Church. 

What we have called the church (the building, the religious system) is waterlogged and already beginning to tilt, and it has been on its way down for decades. It was never indestructible; it is man-made!! The real Church is created by Jesus - and besides, when Jesus said "the gates of hell would not prevail against it ... He was talking about the Rock upon which He would build the Church - that Rock being the truth that He is the Chosen One, the Son of the living God - the Good News, ... not the vehicle.  

"And we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." (2 Cor 4:7) WE are the Church. WE carry the Good News, this treasure, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. We don't need to go to a special place, or say certain words, or do certain things in a specific way or order. The building, the organization, panders to the control freak in us, the need to feel that we are in control of something ... when the truth is that there is nothing that we can do to make God love us more OR less than He always has. 

Photo "Couple Having Breakfast"
courtesy of Ambro at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

If WE are the carriers of the Message, if we are the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God (and by faith in His Word we ARE) then the structure (seen or unseen) is not important and may actually detract from what God is doing. What matters most is our willingness to listen to His leading. 

The safest place for us is not on board a sinking ship. We don't have to "do" church; we never did! We ARE the church - and that truth makes Jesus' words come alive: "Wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst." (Mt 18:20) We don't have to have two hymns, announcements, offering, a sermon and a prayer. We can be who we are, share what God is doing in our lives, and lift one another up without the benefit of clergy, a building, or even singing if that's not where the gathering goes. I've been in such gatherings - in coffee shops, living rooms, restaurants ... they are amazing, energizing, and precious.  The moment we legislate such a living thing with the word "should", it is re-infected with the cancer of man-made position and influence ... and dies a painful death. 

Why would I want to participate in that? 

The way I view "what the Church is" ... has been undergoing a transformation lately. I'd been seeing it as the narrow (so narrow you can see through a keyhole with both eyes), traditional definition for so long ... that the idea of informal, unstructured gatherings any old time with other believers had to be called something else - like visits, or sharing, or whatever else happened. The reason for this was that (obviously) there was no pastor or worship leader, so it couldn't be church, right?  Really though, what I experienced in those impromptu get-togethers in random places ... was the Church. I just didn't recognize it because I was so used to the Sunday-go-to-meeting kind of ritual gathering where it feels 'safe' - (like the Titanic was for those four days...) surrounded by the ornate trappings and beautiful music and such, playing on the emotions and relying on manipulation to get people to respond. (Oh of course you've heard it and seen it happen: "Can't I get an Amen?" or "We'll sing that verse one more time and sing it like you mean it!"  etc., etc.)

I've since realized and been able to recognize the Church at work even when my husband, my daughter I have breakfast on a weekday morning and end up (as we usually do) talking about God. He's part of our lives, our everyday. Such times are when we feel most encouraged, in a safe place with each other in our relationship so that we can be honest about our feelings and help each other to grow in our faith. 

And I find myself less and less willing to board the ocean liner. The luxury accommodations just aren't worth it. 


(*)   -  Information retrieved from http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/titanic.htm 

Prove it

"I love you."

"Yeah? Prove it." 

This is a conversation that takes place hundreds of thousands of times a day in western society.  We expect that if someone loves us, he or she should do something to prove it, to back up the words. (That's a whole different post.)

We say that a lot to God, too, perhaps without knowing it. The attitude is, "Yeah? so what have You done for me lately?" We get so caught up in our insecurities and in the lies that the enemy whispers into our minds that we assume that God is unaware or unfeeling. Nothing could be further from the truth. At such times, I find that a simple review of the facts can take that cynicism and put it in its place.

Hmm. Let's see. Let's start with the basic facts, shall we? 

• He delivered us from sin - past, present and future - once for all (all people and all time) when He died for us on the cross. He rescued each of us that day and has been rescuing us every day since, and will continue to rescue us for the rest of our lives. Not because of anything we have done or not done, but because HE WANTS TO.
• He made it possible for God to show His mercy and grace to us freely, to lavish His love on us just as He lavishes it on Jesus. 
• He gave us the gift of His divine presence within us from the moment we believed, onward. Not just upon us (as it was in the days of King David who asked God to not take His Holy Spirit from him) but IN us - permeating us, part of who we are.
• Because of Him, we can be in an intimate relationship with the Divine, access His power, speak to sickness and pain of every kind and watch it leave. All because of those three hours spent writhing on the cross. 
• He defeated death. He not only spoke to it and reversed its effects in others, He actually went there Himself and conquered it, exploded it from the inside, making a public spectacle of it, and taking its sting away even for those who must endure it. For those, He waits on the other side with arms wide open, to welcome them. And - omnipresent as He is - He also comforts those of us who mourn the hole left in our lives where the physical presence of our loved one used to be.
• He prays for us. He believes in us and He encourages us - and sends people who encourage us - to press in and increase our intimacy with Him. 
• He listens to us. He cares about what burdens our hearts. When we are sad, He cries with us. When we are happy, He is turning cartwheels in joy! Nothing is too small - or too big - for us to bring to Him. He loves to hear us talk to Him. He loves to talk to us and loves it even more when we are quiet enough in our hearts to hear Him. 

The lie is that God has to prove anything. He's already proven it - to the utmost.

The truth is that He loves us, period. The truth is that because He wants to, He's been 'proving it' every second of every day for years and years. That we don't 'get it' is not His fault. 

How about, instead of saying, 'Prove it' .... we thank Him for already proving it, and ask instead for our spiritual senses to be awakened? 
I'm just saying.

Wave after Wave

For a couple of hours today, I watched one of those all-day-all-nature channels - some have underwater scenes, some have campfires, and others have ocean beaches and such. I was watching waves come in on the shore of some exotic cove.  

I was thinking about nothing in particular, just watching the waves come in. Every one seemed different, but they all had one thing in common: not one wave failed to reach the shore. Not one. 

That started me looking for photos of ocean waves coming to the shore and the thought formed as if it had always been there and I had never noticed. No matter what kind of shore it is, whether it is sandy or rocky or a cliff - the waves come in. Always. 

Photo "Sea Waves Splash Rock"
by 9comeback at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

It's such a powerful picture of the constancy and unfailing nature of God's love and grace. 

It doesn't matter if you are the kind of person who - like the sand - can let the waves of His love sink into you, wash away the blemishes and start fresh every time... or whether you are more like the rocky shore where the water seems to bounce off you ... the waves keep coming in anyway, over and over, wave after wave after wave. It's - that is, God's love - God's grace - is endless, unstoppable, and relentless. Whether we want it to or not, whether we feel it or not, whether we are the sand or the rock or the cliff - they still come. No matter what we throw into it, the waves come. They can't help it because HE can't help it. He loves us. Not because of anything that we do or don't do. They come because He IS love ... and he can't shut that off because if He did, He wouldn't be God; it's His nature. It's Him.

I get it. I finally get it. At least I'm starting to.

The Sky is Falling

I saw something recently that made me do some thinking about an old fable I grew up with. What I saw doesn't matter, but the thinking I was doing started to turn into a blog post (as often happens) .... so here I am.

The tale of Chicken Little is the story of an alarmist young hen who one sunny day, got bopped on the head by a falling acorn and thought that the world was coming to an end: "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" She told everyone she knew about it (Hmmm. Some people would call that "witnessing" - but I digress). Her alarm caused mass hysteria among all the fowl (duck, goose, turkey), and they all ended up being part of a smorgasbord menu for a fox who took advantage of their desire to go tell the king something they'd convinced themselves was something to be afraid of. 

Photo "Chestnut" courtesy of olovedog at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

This kind of thing happens all the time in denominations. Some perceptive (if unenlightened) person gets it into his or her head that such-and-such a belief is something to be focusing on. The word spreads like wildfire, and soon everyone is all in a dither about it, leaving us vulnerable to be the victims of deception - possibly even harming our spiritual lives in the process. We get our eyes off how the Son shines and gives everything life not only around us, but in us. We focus on the circumstances and base our belief on them instead of what we know to be true. We gad about and spread panic and havoc in our own lives and in the lives of others, over things that really just don't matter at all. 


And we put ourselves in danger. We add to what God says by creating rules and restrictions ... and then judge those who don't do the same. We feel threatened by someone who lives his or her life in liberty without feeling the need to toe the party line.  We judge that person: we like knowing what the rules are and that we're following them, so we limit our own freedom and aren't satisfied until everyone else is as uptight as we are. If they refuse to get uptight, we judge them because we feel threatened by a lack of structure, a lack of control. 

And control is key...  because we like to be in control, to have a say, to not feel at the mercy of something that is bigger and more generous and more powerful than we can imagine. We like to either put limits on it, or put requirements on ourselves to access it.

Such was the case with Eve (yes, Adam's wife.)  She wasn't aware of all the reasons God said not to eat of that fruit. She didn't think about how marvelous was His wonderful love toward her. She just knew the one rule of the Garden: don't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eating it would make her "die" - whatever that was - and that didn't sound good. So she felt that she had to add to that rule - and adding to it was her downfall. She figured that in order to not eat the fruit, it would be best not to touch it or to even go near the tree. Eventually she came to believe that even those things were forbidden and carried the same punishment. Along comes Foxy Loxy (the serpent) and says (in essence), "Look. I'm on the tree. I'm touching the fruit. Am I dead?" He planted that seed of doubt - and then came the clincher - "Maybe God's been lying to you all this time. Maybe He's holding out on you." It wasn't so much that Eve was convinced by the serpent; it was that she had allowed herself to get caught up in the trap of swallowing tradition as gospel, and made herself easy pickings for the deceiver.

It's no different today.  Just like the Pharisees of Jesus' day whom we all-too-quickly condemn, we add burdens and place restrictions on ourselves and on other believers... and even on unbelievers! I remember hearing one well-seasoned (pickled? stagnated?) believer express amusement at the zeal of a new convert, commenting (in an "isn't that cute" tone) "That's okay, this will pass." (Really?!)  Yet that same believer will be one of the first to sign a petition and/or carry placards when some politician tries to grant equality to all people (even the ones with whose lifestyles we don't agree) calling it an "attack on the sanctity of marriage."  Or object when there are too many "street people" in the church (whatever that means).  Or some such thing.

Seriously? 

I was brought up in the church from my infancy. And I've closely and seriously examined the teachings of Jesus ever since I was sixteen years old - nearly forty years ago now. Nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE, did He ever judge or condemn anyone who wasn't religious. Over and over again, He ate with and enjoyed the company of the dregs of society: tax-collectors, prostitutes, even non-Jews (Samaritans, Romans!) and never once did He condemn. He saved His scathing condemnation for those (like the Pharisees and Saducees) who used their religion like a weapon instead of a magnet, or for those who used their power to oppress (like Herod, and even then, only once!) instead of to protect the innocent. His teachings were more about living a quiet life in faith and love, rather than brandishing a spear and shield and tackling political and societal ills like some holier-than-thou Don Quixote. 

I've also examined our modern society at some length. We can say all we like about how it is broken and so forth, but it's pretty accepting of most types of people.  However, among the things it can't abide are dogmatism, hypocrisy and elitism - three things the church has historically been famous for, ever since 300 AD. It's one of the top criticisms that unbelievers have about the church. It's probably the main thing that keeps them away by the hundreds.

Photo "Sun In The Sky" by
graur razvan ionut at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

We're too busy yelling "The sky is falling!" in their faces ... and - unfortunately - in each other's faces as well. We run all over the place trying to get each other to be concerned and passionate over the same things we are, when God has clearly created each of us different from the other. And we burn ourselves out in the process of our search for sameness. 

We wear ourselves down and worry about keeping hold of things He's already bought and paid for. His yoke is easy and His burden is light - but you'd never know it to look at us. 

Maybe, just maybe, He allowed the acorn to fall from the tree, not to alarm us into trying to convince each other that we're right, or to warn us that we're doing something wrong, but so that we'd think to look up to the Giver of all things, realize that He is right here with us and loving us. Maybe we'd figure out that the Son is still shining, and just say "Thank You."

Moved with Compassion

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how God's intent is to conform us to the image of His Son, and that THIS is the "good" that all things work together for: Romans 8:28 must always be read with verse 29 to understand what that good is! What got me to thinking about that was the valley that a friend of mine is going through, with sudden and serious health problems going on in two different generations in her immediate family. (To read that blog post, click here.)

Friday past, that same friend got a frantic phone call from one of her grown children in a different province. Their sister (her daughter) had taken a bad turn. The message was to the point. "I think you'd better get over here." 

She contacted me right away and told me the news - the way any mom would tell a close friend that kind of news - in tears. My immediate concern was how I could help. She asked for us to look after her cat - I instantly agreed. The hospital was a 3-hour trip away, not cheap due to having to take a ferry to get there. But there was no question in her mind; she was going.

To make a short story even shorter, when she got to the hospital, she heard the news for herself. Her daughter had died while she was traveling to be with her. 

I got a three-word text as I was getting in the elevator at work to go home. "She is gone." 

I felt the earth sink a little beneath my feet. The room that I was in somehow had a hollow, "fish-eye" lens quality, and although there were people in it, they seemed to fade to the background. All that mattered was that my friend was hurting in a way that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

That set into motion a flurry of texts and communications back and forth with both her and the church family, along with vivid flashbacks of the day in October 2013 when I learned my own daughter had died. 

Photo "Sadness Woman In Friend's Arms"
courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I knew some of what lay in store for my friend now, and the one emotion I felt (and still feel) was compassion. That compassion only deepened as she discovered the following day that her aging mother (96 years old, recovering from a broken hip and hip replacement surgery) was failing badly and unable to return to her home. Basically, she was put in palliative care. It's just a matter of time, and she's not sure how much time her mom has left. Probably not much.

One devastating loss, and another one looming. My heart broke for her.

The word "compassion" literally means "to deeply feel alongside" - one feels another's pain, or sorrow, or joy, alongside (or with), the other person. 

When Jesus was on earth, one of the most common emotional states He experienced was compassion. But in every case, the Bible doesn't just say He felt sorry for people who were hurting. It says that Jesus was "moved with compassion" ... meaning that he did not just feel the emotion; it meant that He did something about it. He was moved. His compassion put Him into motion. He helped. He healed. He met needs. He visited. He comforted. He prayed.

He also said that He did nothing on His own, but only as the Father directed Him. So, operating in the Holy Spirit, He felt that feeling of compassion, and expected God's direction as to what to do, how far to go and when to stop. He got that, and obeyed it.

We have the exact same resource at our disposal as Jesus did, the same Holy Spirit that empowered and led Him to do all those amazing things. As He relied on the Holy Spirit (for leading and for empowerment) we can too. How amazing!! We can depend on the Comforter, the paracletos (Greek: the One called alongside to help - wait - that sounds a little bit like uh, the definition of compassion!) to lead and strengthen us to do His bidding. Every moment, every day, that same energizing power is ours. 

And we can use God's dynamite power, His own person (the Holy Spirit) to reach out to people as He leads. Why would we reach out to people? Well, I have a news flash for you....it's not because we're "supposed" to!!!! It's because He loves us. Period!! Listen to Paul, "The love of Christ compels us..." (2 Cor. 5:14) It's because He loves us, because we've experienced that love for ourselves, that makes us want to be that "hand extended" - not because it's our duty but because we love Him in return for loving us first, and that spills out all over everyone with whom we come in contact. In short, compassion for others (the lost, other believers, whatever) is a natural overflow of His love for us!! 

Which brings me back to my friend. My prayer for her is that she is able to sense and experience that divine, unconditional love for her, and that (even in the midst of her pain) she can spill out some of that love into the lives of the people with whom she comes in contact....that she continually knows that "peace that [sur]passes all understanding" surging through her. 

And not only will I will pray for her and for her family members ... I will make myself and my resources available as God leads me.

Through the Grapevine

Today I thought I'd take a well-known passage of Scripture, a passage which has been misinterpreted and warped into a club to keep people in line, and debunk the fear-based myth surrounding it. I am using the NASB which most scholars agree is the closest readable translation of the original Greek. 

John 15 || 1I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. ³ You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. ⁷ If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

The very first thing that must be clear is that there is a divine order in this analogy. We are branches. We have NO life in ourselves. He is the Vine; He has life in Himself and we have grown out of Him. He has begotten us (birthed us). We are (in this analogy) grape branches. If separated from the Vine, we do not become apple branches. Or weeds. We only become useless. Our life source is Him. We are part of Him.

Second, He says that the vinedresser (gardener, husbandman) is God the Father (remember this for later), and that "every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away." Hmmm. Every branch IN ME, He says, that doesn't bear fruit... so it IS possible to be IN HIM and not "bear fruit." (More about what that fruit is later.) And if that is the case, "He takes it away." God removes people who are born-again and who are not producing any fruit in their lives. The meaning is clear. He moves them to a place where they will abide in Him and bear fruit - or He takes them to Heaven. 

If our lives produce any of His fruit at all, He prunes us (the Greek word - and you can see this because it's used interchangeably - is one of "cleaning.") And He tells the eleven that "you are already cleaned (pruned) by the Word i have spoken to you." (vs 3) The pruning is hardly comfortable. God removes things from our lives that are hampering our growth in Him. He looks after us, and His desire is that we receive life from Him unhindered. Not so He can punish us for our sin (He has already redeemed us from that curse!) Not even so He can keep score of how much fruit we produce, but simply this: because He knows that this kind of life will bring joy to us (vs 11). 

That is abiding. That resting in His life, that utter and total dependence on Him ... that is life, that is living. That's why He said "Abide in Me, and I in you." It's a total intimacy, one that cannot escape the fact that He is the life source and we are His well-beloved offspring, continually dependent on Him. It isn't a conditional statement. It's a love-statement: a mutual resting, a mutual staying. We are one with Him: us in Him,  He in us. We have been forever changed because of having been born into His family through Him rescuing us. 

Here is where the misconceptions start. We read, "Abide in Me ... As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me." And we think - foolish humans stuck in religious thinking - that it is up to us to stay connected to Him. We are already connected to Him!! He has given birth to us! We are His!! What Jesus is warning us about is thinking that we have to "stay saved" in order to maintain that life-connection to Him. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Here's where the error creeps in: we think that once He saves us, we need to "keep ourselves in Him" so (not wanting to "fall away") we "do" things to ensure that we don't find ourselves in the fire: we pray, we read the Word, we go to church, we tell others about Him (whether that is a co-worker or someone in another land). I'm not saying that those things are wrong in themselves. I AM saying that if we are operating out of fear (a fear of being separated from Him) then we are trying to do these things in our own strength in order to stay in the position that He has bought and paid for us to be in!! Can we not see the futility of this? He has said, in concluding this thought, "...because without Me you can do nothing." (vs 5b) 

Photo "Ripening Grape Clusters On The Vine"
courtesy of satit_srihin at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

We need Him to abide in Him and to produce fruit (vs 5). WE don't do it. HE does through us! Does the branch TRY to produce fruit? Does it TRY to stay in the Vine ... or does it just rest and draw life and strength from the Vine and the fruit just grows naturally, automatically?

Okay so what IS this fruit anyway? When I was a child, I was taught in Sunday School (and later in church) that the fruit was new Christians. "Producing baby believers" was the work I and every believer was called to do. (What about "No one comes to the Father except by Me"? (Jn 14:6) What about "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (Jn 6:44)?) I later came to understand that the fruit that He was talking about here in John 15 was the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus was providing a final teaching for His loved ones. In chapter 14, He tells them He's going away and not to be sad because He was going to come back. In chapter 15, He tells them that remaining connected to Him in the meantime, would help them to lead a fully joyous life (leading to the question, "HOW?") and in chapter 16, He tells them (and by association, us) how: by His Spirit. By HIS SPIRIT. NOT by our own efforts! ("Without Me, you can do nothing."vs 5b)


Think about this: it does absolutely no good to "go into all the world and preach the gospel" (Mk. 16:15) if the Holy Spirit of God does not lead us. It is actually counterproductive. It does HARM to the cause of Christ to speak of His love and His grace if we ourselves have not experienced that love and that grace so much and on such a continual basis that it can't help but overflow into every facet of our lives. If that is not there, nobody will listen to the message. This is precisely what is happening today, when people in our society listen to Christians talk and can't hear the good of what they are saying ... simply because of the rigid lifestyles of the Christians who are speaking the message. Our unloving and ungracious attitudes, our unhappiness, our intolerance, our joyless spirits, our commitment to duty before love, pervades everything we do when we are so busy trying to keep ourselves in the Vine. It's a religion based on fear and duty, not a relationship based on love and gratitude. If we fear excommunication, we are not operating in love - because there is no fear in love.

THIS is what Jesus warned about when He said, "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away ... and withers..." (vs 6) Thinking that we can produce fruit in our own strength is as ludicrous a ventriloquist's dummy (if it could think) thinking that it can move its mouth without the ventriloquist's hand inside, and insisting that it can talk and make people laugh without its owner. It can't be done. Abiding isn't straining and grunting and striving to keep God from casting us out. THAT'S NOT ABIDING. THAT IS SEPARATING OURSELVES FROM THE VINE, trying to do it on our own. We abide in the Vine when we realize that there is absolutely NOTHING we can do to keep ourselves there. We are totally dependent on Him. TOTALLY. Remember He said that GOD is the Vine-dresser - it is God who looks after our spiritual life; all we need do is rest in Him, receive life from Him. The fruit will take care of itself. It just will.

And this is how: The fruit of the Spirit (that fruit that we bear when we abide in Him) is love, first and foremost. The rest of the fruit (joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control) are the different facets or expressions of that love. Pure and simple. Nothing complicated about it.

If you think that isn't enough - that we have to get out there and fulfill the Great Commission - let me tell you that unless and until we abide in Him (i.e., let His life infuse us, empower us, love us with an inexhaustible Love), the fruit of the Spirit will not be showing in our lives. Therefore, all that will manifest to the very ones we are trying to reach is how rules-based, how full of fear we are. They will prefer their own lifestyle to a life lived from a place of fear and duty.  NOBODY will be attracted to that. NOBODY. Not only that, but we will approach mental and spiritual exhaustion, and crash and burn in disillusionment and bitterness. How many people I have heard say (referring to what passes for Christianity in our society), "I tried that, and it didn't work." When I questioned them, I found out that they were desperately trying to do-do-do and didn't understand or experience the grace and love that is the motivation and the strength for all the doing.

Once we depend on Him and draw our life-source from Him, those fruit will automatically appear in our lives. We won't have to work our tails off to keep from falling in the mud or falling off the Vine; we will be happy and free and energized, and people will WANT to know what's different when tumultuous things happen to us and we face them with faith and peace and yes, even joy (recognize the fruit of the Spirit?) in the midst of circumstances that would just make them shut down. 

I can still hear some objections. I can still hear you say, "But what about the burning? doesn't it say that we'll be cast into the fire and burned?" 

Okay, let's look at that. "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and they gather them up and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." First, if we interpret "not abiding in Me" the way that I have mentioned above, that means He was talking about those who are trying to live the Christian life in their own strength, trying to follow all the rules so that God will be pleased with them. These are the ones who are [already] cast away, "fallen from grace". (Read the book of Galatians for more information on that, especially chapter 3:1.) But look. Even though they are cast away, "They are 'cast away as a branch'..." Those who are cast away don't stop being branches. NOT ONCE. And then look at who gathers the branches for burning. "THEY." The KJV says, "men." The implication here is that these are people who are not part of the Vine (otherwise they'd be branches.) The world will destroy you and rip you apart IF you are fear-based and rules-based. Your 'great' testimony, your brilliant words will fall to the ground and the ones you want to reach the most will not respond to you, starting with your children. You'll be treated like firewood ... useless twigs fit only for fueling their rejection of the Message. 

Then He makes the most amazing promise. This goes over and above what anyone could expect. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." (v. 7) So, if we let ourselves be loved by Him, if we let ourselves experience the wonder of His grace, we will want to know what He has to say to us because we love Him in return (not because we are commanded to do it, but because He rescued us from certain death!) ... From such a grateful heart, can any request that is out of His will and contrary to His heart be possible? Of COURSE the request will be granted, because we would not ask for something that was selfish after He gave up all that He had and all that He was just to be near us! 

Can we get our hearts and minds around that kind of unconditional love? Can we?

Can we grasp the supreme fulness of His grace, the awesomeness of His care of us, and let Him flow in and through us unhindered by our own efforts, dependent on Him for everything? Can we begin to lay hold of that simple truth that He has done it all? that nothing we can do can make Him love and accept us more than He already has?

I often wonder what would happen, how our world (both inside of us and the world with which we come in contact) would be transformed, if we really could "get that."