Soul Revolution: RECONNECT

I’m not much of a gardener. In a hunter/gatherer society I would sign up to be the hunting party. Give me a spear, dress me up in a wooly mammoth hide, and I’d be good to go! I might not be very good, but I’d be good to go. But since I do love fresh fruit and vegetables, I do have a garden. Some love the process, They love tilling the soil, nurturing the plants, loving them and caring for them like little children. I just love the fruit. That’s ok, because God is more focused on the fruit in our lives rather than the process. In fact, what we learn from this passage, is that God will simply use whatever process necessary for us to bear fruit. He doesn’t have one fixed and firm way to deal with each and every one of us. He just has one goal for each of our lives- fruit. Fruit and more fruit. Fruit that will last.

Today we take the next step in our Soul Revolution- to Reconnect with Jesus.. The bible says that the principle way we need to understand humanity and the world is that we were made to be in connection to God. Humanity was birthed in a garden and in a perfect relationship with God. We were called to be fruitful, faithful people. But we disobeyed God, we severed the relationship, and have been estranged from God ever since. But God never estranged himself from us. He began a ministry or reconciliation the bible says, he began to draw us back to himself, to re-connect with us in a relationship. And this process has culminated in the way to reconnect- through Jesus Christ, the son of God.

This theme of entering into a relationship with God runs throughout the bible. So does this theme of a garden. On his last night on earth with his followers before his crucifixion Jesus once again goes back to this imagery in order that his followers would understand their lives and their purpose. It is the night before Passover, the greatest Jewish celebration and holy festival. Jesus goes to Jerusalem with his followers. They are convinced that he is the Messiah, the king, the one who would liberate them and establish a new world order through power and violence. But they had it all wrong.

Jesus begins to break the news to them. Everything is about to go to hell. I am going to be betrayed by one of you. All of you will abandon me. You, Peter, you will deny me three times. I will be killed. But you need to understand, this is all part of God’s plan. Unless a seed falls to the ground it can bear no fruit. It is a simple teaching they will soon understand.

He gets up to leave the celebration and head to a garden to pray. And the way to the garden they pass through the Kidron valley, a wine vineyard. It is highly likely that there, walking to the Garden on the Mount of Olives, passing through this valley of grapes, that Jesus leaves his disciples with this lasting image. He says, John 15:1-9…

You were created to connect with God as a branch is connected with the vine, you were created to bear fruit in life, as a branch bears it’s fruit in season. This is what you were made for. This is what you desire. This is what you need to do, and until it begins to happen, you will never feel as if you are fulfilling your intended design. You will feel like a tool that never gets used, or you might just feel like a tool. You will feel like a book that never gets read, music that never gets played, art that never gets viewed, light that never shines. You were made for this.

Jesus says I am the vine.
God is the gardener.
And you are the branches.
And you, branches, need to bear fruit, fruit that will last!

Folks, fruitful lives are not the aberration. It is the norm. It is the ways it’s supposed to be. It’s the live we were meant to life. A branch connected to the vine will naturally bear fruit. A branch disconnected from the vine will wither, and die. Jesus wants us to understand from this parable the way that we grow and bear fruit in Him. And it’s not unlike growing anything in a garden. First, there will be things in our life that are dead and lifeless, and need to be cut out. There may even be whole seasons where it seems like we are being throw in the fire and totally starting over. Second, even for healthy, thriving plants, there is the ongoing need to prune. There is always the need for proper cultivate to get the most from any plant. Finally, what is the fruit that will last, and how does is come about through our connection to Jesus, the vine?

In my first home that I owned we had a row of boxwoods in the front that had grown wild and out of control. They looked scraggly and woody. They were do far up off the ground that the soil underneath was now full of weeds. I knew something needed to change if I wanted some curb appeal. My neighbor, Henry, a widower well into his 80’s was the neighbor everybody wants. He new everything about everything, had nothing to prove to anybody, and was just willing to help. I asked him what I should do. He said the first day of spring take a saw and cut those suckers down to the ground. I thought he was crazy. Down to the ground? He said, if you want lush green boxwoods, you have to take them back to the ground. So the first day of spring, I started at them. I ended up pruning them with my chainsaw- no joke. I just took my saw, said whatever, and took them off at the dirt. I figured I’d end up buying some new bushes. But it was within that month that fresh green shoots started springing up. By summer I had nice little boxwoods, and by the fall I was actually pruning them to the nice boxwood shape I desired.

FIRST: Sometimes things in our life are so bad that we need God to come with a chainsaw and hack us to pieces. When our lives are completely dead and fruitless, God’s greatest gift to us is taking us back to square on, back down to dirt, back to a fresh beginning. Every branch that bears no fruit he throws into the fire.

Some have the misconception of God as an angry hateful, malicious being who takes delight in cutting us down. Others have the idea that God is so harmless and pleasant and nice that He would never do anything that would hurt us. But the bible is very clear that God loves us enough to sometimes take drastic measures. God wants fruitfulness in our lives so much that he will do what is necessary to bring that about. And that’s what we have to know about our God. Whatever he does he does out of a burning desire to accomplish his purposes, and his purposes are accomplished through us and the fruit of our lives. The gardener doesn’t take joy in cutting off or not cutting off branches. The gardener takes delight in the fruit of the harvest. And everything he does is simply directed toward that end.

Many Christians have rather dead and fruitless lives. And so, if there is dead wood in your life, and if you feel God is cutting you down, the wonderful promise and hope is that new growth, new life is around the corner. And with that new growth will come fruit. A fruitless life is not a hopeless life Jesus teaches. No boxwood is too out of control. No life is so far from God that with so radical intervention, it can’t bring forth fruit. But those branches that bear no life, we have to get rid of them.

SECOND: In fact, God is so directing our lives to that end that even the fruitful branch will be pruned. That is the second part of this movement, and of the life we have in Jesus The vine. Even after those dead parts our lives are hacked away and throw out, even after those very harsh seasons of starting over, of learning some hard lessons, of experiencing some harsh discipline, there will still be the need to constant attention and pruning. A branch that is fruitful one year, left to itself, will yield less the next year, and less, and less and less until it is dead and useless. For it is impossible for a branch to reach it’s full potential without pruning. All of us need pruning. All of us need the constant care and attention of the gardener. Sometimes he will come by and simply water or feed us. But other times, he will have to intervene, He will need to remove a damaged stem. He will need to tie us back to the support of the trellis.

In fact, left to itself it will follow a natural course towards the ground, seeking soil. What the gardener does is to take those young branches that naturally bend down, and he lifts them up toward the sun. There’s something in us that says we need to seek our own soil. We sometimes don’t trust that Jesus, the vine, can provide all of our water and nutrition. The gardener says trust in Jesus, and reach for the sun! Trust in Jesus to provide all you need, stay connected with him, and reach for the sky, and there you will enter into an abundant and fruitful life.

Many people turn their lives to Jesus, expecting the blessings of King. The disciples made this mistake in following Jesus. And many still do today. They want the Christian life to be all pleasure, no pruning. They come to follow Jesus through the promises of health and wealth. The name it and claim theology that says, well, you decided to believe in God, so now god owes you big, and so you will be rewarded in life. You’ll get what you want, when you want it, how you want it, as much as you want it. What a bunch of bull. No really, it is a giant load of bull that misrepresents God, the bible, the church and life. It screws up people and screws up lives. If you’ve come to connections expecting this kind of theology, I am not you man, and this is not your church. And you, you are far to precious, far to valuable to God, far too wonderful to him to be told this lie and to be fed this misrepresentation of life and God’s plans.

There will always be pruning that needs to happen in our lives. You will suffer. There will be hurt, pain, brokenness. People, good, loving, caring people who deserve better will lose their jobs, will lose loved ones, will be betrayed. But, the bible says, you will also be fruitful. You will be fruitful when you are connected to me, in a relationship with me, when you abide in me and I in you.

That is the promise of Jesus. Not health and wealth, but fruitfulness. And it is fruitfulness that we universally long for and desire in life. It is a fruitful relationship with God into which humanity was born. It is a fruitful relationship with God that Jesus teaches to his followers on his last night with them. It is fruitfulness with God that Jesus promises to us.

THIRD: What is fruit that will last? Everything said and done and though and dreamed that brings glory to God. What was the fruit of Jesus’ ministry that he pointed John toward last week? The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the sick are healed, the dead rise the good news is proclaimed and lives are being changed!

God loves his good news proclaimed. He loves us to tell the story of his love for us in Jesus Christ, that we can be healed, that we can be whole, that we can have hope, that we can have life. He loves this fruit that comes just from sharing his good news. I am still amazed by this. Sometimes I take a step back from my life and I’m like this is crazy! I tell people about a God that loves them and that we can know this love through Jesus. Not just his story, but him. They can have a relationship with him by simply through faith, by believing. And they do! They believe. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that it’s that easy sometimes. That is the fruit of simply sharing the good news.

But fruit isn’t just bringing people far from God into a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. Fruit is anything and everything done for his glory. Fruit happens when a mother cares for her child in the quiet of the night. Fruit happens when someone in the spot leverages their voice and influence to make system change for the common good. Fruit happens when a young persons discovers their calling and sets their path toward God. Fruit happens when a retiree begins to go on those mission trips they always dreamed of. Fruit happens when we go to our neighbors and share our lives with them. Fruit happens when our neighbors comes to us in their hour of need because they already know we are a safe place. Fruit happens when our lives seem to come together in one grand moment, a perfect storm of opportunity. Fruit happens every day when we simply says Jesus, give me eyes to see, ears to hear, a voice to share, and the spirit to lead.

RECAP: We were made to be connected to God through Jesus Christ in a relationship with him. IN that relationship we are designed to bear fruitful lives of service to God. In order for that relationship to grow and fruit to be harvested God, the master gardener, will tend to our lives.

There will be dying and dead branches that need to be cut off and thrown into the fire, gone forever. There are addictions, habits, hang-ups, relationships that need to be cut off and thrown away. There are feelings and memories that need to be throw away- bitterness towards a person because of something that happened ages ago that is poisoning your life. Hurt that is bleeding you out and draining your life. Let God take those branches and get rid of them. Throw them in the fire. Invite him right now to cut those branches off and throw them in the fire.

Then there will come the pruning. Even in the fruitful life there will be pruning. But pruning is still the loving care of a master gardener who wants nothing but the best for us. And so when we start to go our own direction, he will bring us back in step with him. The longer we go in that wrong direction, the more resistance we’ll probably put up. But he will redirect our path. He will take a who section of our life that was fruitful in one season, and he will cut it out. The choice is between that those nice leaves, or that cluster of grapes, and he wants the fruit. Invite him right now to prune you life into the shape it needs to take.

And this is to the father’s glory, this is the gardeners plan, that you bear much fruit! Not a bit, not a season, but much fruit. Year after year after year to be fruitful for his glory. And this happens through our continuing growth in Christ. Our connection with Him. Our abiding in him.

That’s what this is all about, this reconnection. It’s about abiding in him and bearing the fruit he grows in us. There are some people who we would look at and simply say wow, they have a fruitful life. Behind that life is a lot of dead branches were throw out and into the fire. Behind that life a lot of pruning has happened, and continues to happen. They have struggles, they have pains, they have sickness, and they have lost loved ones, they have suffered in this world. And yet they have fruit. They are abiding in Christ.

There’s a reason why the fruitful ones that make it look easy. It’s because the stopped working harder a long time ago. They stopped trying to be the gardener or the vine. They just decided to be a branch, to abide in Christ, and let him grow fruit in their life.