God's word has to become a living part of our lives

The past few weeks we have been learning about the importance of bearing fruit for God.

There are some fundamental things that we have discovered in God’s Word together.

Thus far we have learned that God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches if we have accepted Christ as Saviour.

We also gained the understanding that to get from no fruit to fruit… God lifts us up.

To get from fruit to more fruit, God prunes us so that we can reprioritize our lives for His glory. 

To get from more fruit to much fruit, we must spend more time with God… in His Word and in prayer.

Let’s look at our passage this week...

If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. 1 John 15:6-8.

Here Jesus teaches a powerful lesson of ineffectiveness. 

A branch that does not remain in the vine becomes fruitless. Such branches are thrown away, wither, and are picked up and thrown in the fire.

The reason why is because they have become useless. This does not teach that a person who has accepted Christ will be thrown in the “fire”, rather it teaches that branches that do not remain in the vine become good for nothing. 

Here is an encouragement to remain in the vine rather than taking up our own agendas and purposes.

The next part of this passage reminds us that if we remain in Christ and if His Words remain in us, then whatever we ask of Him will be given to us. 

It is important to focus on what Jesus is teaching here: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you…”.  In order for the words of Christ to remain in you, it means one must not only hear the Word of God, but must accept it and put it into practice. We must receive it and act on it. 

I recall when I had a cold some time ago. I knew it was the touch of the flu and I knew if I did not act on it, I would probably be in bed for about a week.

So what did I do?  I made a call into my doctor to ask him for a prescription in order to recover from the flu. I heard of a Z-Pack, a strong dose of antibiotics that consists of five pills that helps you to bounce back from the what could be a bad case of influenza.

Now at that time, I could have kept moaning about how terrible I felt, or sat at home and felt sorry for myself, but it would have accomplish nothing. 

Or, I could have taken comfort that I called my doctor and he had acted upon my request and called in a prescription for me. However, if I only took comfort in this, but did not actually act on it, it would have accomplished nothing. 

I actually had to leave home and get in my car and go and pick up the prescription. Now, if I went in my car and picked up the prescription that my doctor called in for me, but did not actually take the pills, it would have accomplished nothing. 

This is how many of us approach God’s Word. We can only hear it, but keep moaning about the state of our lives; or we take comfort that we have received the Word, but unless we actually apply it to our lives it will accomplish nothing. 

This is what Jesus is referring to. It is not good enough for us just to hear the Word, we must actually remain in it, which means to allow His Word to become a living part of our lives. We must abide in Jesus and also in His teaching. 

In fact, when we live like this we will be so in line with God’s will that whatever we desire we will have. His desires become our desires. On top of this, we will do many works for God (bear much fruit) and bring glory to God, and therefore we will prove that we are true disciples of Jesus Christ. 

In other words, if you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough working evidence in your life to prove it?