Daily Devotional

A Ministry of the Kerwin Baptist Church

January 27, 2018

by Pastor Hawtree

I AM PERSUADED THAT HE IS ABLE:

TO MAKE ME FRUITFUL (part 2)

John 15:5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

Now that, as we learned yesterday, Christ has established the “roles”, He now moves on to establish the “requirements”. Christ states that He must abide in us, and that we must abide in Him, in order for us to bear fruit. So if I understand correctly, He has a responsibility, and we have a responsibility. Christ has the responsibility to abide in us. Our responsibility is to abide in Christ. That strict scenario is guaranteed to bring fruit. The verse says “bringeth forth much fruit”. No “may”, “might”, or “possibly” is mentioned. It is guaranteed. So for those of you that enjoy teaching, here is a natural outline in verse five:
5a- THE ROLES
5b- THE REQUIREMENTS
5c- THE REWARD
5d- THE REMINDER

I know I am getting ahead of myself, but I get excited about truth. Let me get back on track discussing the responsibilities. The same problem always seems to show its ugly head. Christ always fulfills His responsibly, but we fail to do ours. The first requirement is that Christ must abide in us. When Christ ascended back into glory, He promised to give us the Holy Spirit. When we put our faith and trust in Christ, the Holy Spirit indwells us at that very moment. We are told later that the Holy Spirit is the “earnest”, or down payment, of our inheritance. All of which proves that Christ is fulfilling His responsibility. He is abiding in us.

Our responsibility is to make sure that we are abiding in Christ. This word “abideth” in the Greek means to stay, or be present. So Christ is always present with us, but are we always present with Him? Ouch! How often do we attempt some area of service for Christ without spending time in prayer with Christ? How much do we do every day having made no attempt to communicate with Christ? How many problems have we tried to fix without asking Christ for help? How many decisions do we make having not asked Christ for Godly, Biblical wisdom?
How ignorant and arrogant for us, as incapable branches, to overlook, ignore, and bypass the vine. Don’t we realize how totally dependent we are on Christ? Don’t we realize how useless a branch is without being connected to the vine?

May the Holy Spirit convict us today with the realization of how totally dependent we are on Christ. If we understand that, we will make it a priority today to abide in Christ!