October 15, 2023 / The Secret of the Abiding Life

Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast. How do we know where to find answers to the toughest

questions in life? While the simplest answer is the Bible, where do we start this search

and how do we discover this truth? Today, in this teaching podcast, John Meador, lead

pastor of Cross City Church, takes a specific text of the Bible and helps us find truth

for the life we're searching for. We are so glad that you're with us this morning.

Please take your Bibles and turn to John chapter 15 today. The secret of the abiding life.

John 15 · chapter mention

John chapter 15, and by the way, we have Bibles available at doorways as you come in. There

John 15 · chapter mention

are also some Bibles underneath the seats that you're sitting on and you're able to

find one of those Bibles. And sometimes I'll announce actually a page number as well as

give you a text so that if you're new to the Bible, you can be able to find out where that

text is by looking at the page number. They'll be on the screens as well. So the secret of

the abiding life, John chapter 15, that's along about page 1079 in that hardback version

John 15 · chapter mention

of the Bible. Isn't it interesting that John chapter 14, chapter 15, chapter 16, all three

John 14 · chapter mention

of these chapters are three chapters where Jesus is teaching about the Holy Spirit. But

John chapter 15 is very different from 14 and 16 in that it is an entire illustration

John 15 · chapter mention

that gives us details about what the indwelling Holy Spirit is all about. And in this illustration,

Jesus says, I'm the vine and you are the branches. We're going to be looking at that today. And

I believe it's the secret to the abiding life. Let's stand together if you would, as I read

the first 15 or the first 11 verses rather of John chapter 15, beginning in verse one.

John 15 · chapter mention

Imagine the disciples having heard everything that Jesus said in John 14. Imagine them being

together in a room as he taught them. And now he's going to really take it outside that

room to the real elements of life. He says this in verse one, he said, I am the true

vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of me that does not bear fruit, he

takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. And this is a

command that's repeated throughout this text. It's the only command by the way, and these

first 11 verses, everything else is a result of this command. He said in verse four, 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. 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. 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. If you abide in me and my words

abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. My father is glorified

by this that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Just as the father has

loved me, I have also loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you

will abide in my love as I've kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. And then

verse 11, these things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy

may be made full. Man, that's a great target to move towards, right? That my joy may be

in you and that your joy may be made full. That's where all this is headed that way as

we look at the secret of the abiding life. Let's pray together. Father, we ask that you

illuminate this text today by your Holy Spirit so that we might know not only the theology

of the Holy Spirit but actually how you literally dwell inside of each believer in Jesus. Father,

today show us what we need to know about this life, this incredible life you've called us

to. In Jesus' name we pray. All God's people said amen. Please be seated. I love this text

because this text is really going to get us to the place where we understand we are either

abiding in him or we are not. And as we walk through this text today, you'll see that I

believe that this text refers to the average Christian life, just the regular ongoing Christian

life. Not some above and beyond kind of description of the Christian life, but the way the Christian

life is supposed to be lived out. And when we look at this today and what abiding actually

means I believe we're going to be able to tell whether we're simply acquainted with

the historical Jesus as in we've read the book and seen the movie. Or whether we really

have a relationship with him where his life is flowing in us and through us. That's a

pretty important question to answer today. So every time you hear the word abide I need

you to know exactly what the word abide means. It's a very simple word. The word itself means

to remain. That's it. To remain where you are. To remain or to dwell. It's often used

as an abode, as remaining in an abode or to stay united with someone in heart and will.

Now this is the definition of that most frequently used word in John chapter 15 which is the

John 15 · chapter mention

word abide. It's synonymous with salvation. It's the idea behind that is that we are believing

and accepting and trusting Christ and so that believing, accepting, trusting Christ produces

an abiding relationship through which everything he's going to do in our lives comes through

that relationship. It's being vitally connected with Christ. I've told you the story when

I was a kid that my dad and I had this conversation. He was a lot smarter than I was. Of course

at ten years of age you think you're as smart as your dad is and certainly at sixteen you

think you're smarter than him. But at ten years of age I wanted a minibike really, really

bad. That was the thing when I was growing up in small town Oklahoma. You needed a minibike

and at ten years of age I wanted one of those. He said, well I can help you raise the money

to buy a minibike. And we had ten acres of land outside of town. We lived in town but

we'd go out and do things on that ten acres and he said, you can plant pecan trees and

when those pecans come to fruition then you can sell those pecans and buy a minibike.

Now we didn't have Google back then. I didn't know it took three to five years for pecans

trees to have anything at all on them. But he was smarter than I was and he gave me a

plan. I planted one hundred pecans trees. Now I learned incredible lessons about how

to grow those pecans trees in a drought filled series of summers in Oklahoma where I would

spend the night with a water hose moving them from one tree to the next and so forth. But

one of the things I learned is that you can actually take a branch off of one tree and

graft it onto the other and it will actually take on life. It's really amazing. It's kind

of like peeling back the bark of one, peeling back the bark of the tree you're going to

plant it on and putting it on the tree, bringing the bark back up and wrapping it around it

and putting duct tape, yes duct tape around a pecan tree. Continue to water and take care

of it before long. The branch will have the same life that the trunk of the tree has.

Incredible in a few years. It's a massive branch and it actually bears fruit. That's

the idea behind this illustration of the vine and the branches. The idea is the branch doesn't

really have anything in and of itself but it gets its life from the trunk of the tree

itself and I can remember grafting those branches on and wondering will they remain, will they

take on life? Jesus is giving this illustration personified. It says basically will that person

stay connected with Jesus? And if they will stay connected with Jesus, if they will be

connected and stay connected with Jesus, if they will abide in Jesus, all kinds of fruit

comes out of that relationship but if they do not connect with Jesus there is no fruit

to come. Now as we walk into this text it's important to answer a couple of questions

that some of the more difficult parts of John 15 pose for us. For example if you look down

to verse 6 of John chapter 15 it says this, if anyone does not abide in me he's thrown

John 15 · chapter mention

away as a branch and dries up and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they

are burned and immediately this causes us some kind of a concern and maybe a little

bit of fear. We're asking what is Jesus talking about? Well Jesus is not saying that Christians

can lose their salvation. That's not what this text is about. He's also not talking

about Christians that might be able to lose their reward. He is reminding them that everyone

who's part of the crowd is not really connected to Christ. And that was true of this crowd.

Judas was not connected to Christ. The other disciples were connected to Christ. He's basically

saying a branch that is not tied into the vine, not tied into the trunk has no life

in and of itself at all. And if you go back and read John's further commentary in the

epistles you'll see he says that over and over again. In fact it might be really helpful

for you today to have the book of John opened on one hand and then on the other hand open

up first John because John is giving us commentary on some of the things he says in the book

of John that Jesus said. So let me read to you first John chapter 2 verse 19. He says

1 John 2:19

they went out from us but they were not really of us for if they had been of us they would

have remained with us but they went out so that they would be shown that they're not

all of us. I brought a branch today. I'm going to have a branch up here on the stage for

just a few moments. Now some of you analytical types are going to immediately say okay that's

not really a vine. It's not really something that has grapes on it or ever did. And I think

it's kind of humorous. I live not far from grapevine Texas and everywhere I went in grapevine

yesterday I could not find a grapevine in grapevine. Not sure how that works but several

nurseries turned me away and said now you need to plant seeds and I said tomorrow's

the message so I don't have time. I've already learned that lesson. But I do have a branch.

And I want you to notice for just a few moments that this branch is broken off from a tree.

So naturally this branch doesn't have any life left in it. Now it kind of looks like

it has life right now. It still has the leaves. They're still green. It looks like if I were

able to tape it onto a tree it might kind of look like it's alive for a while. But it's

so broken off that unless it's grafted back in it will have no life in it of itself. And

the illustration Jesus is giving us is very very important here when he talks about that

in verse 6. Basically unless you become connected to Jesus you cannot ever have the real fruit

that Jesus calls us to have because you are separated from his life and his life is what

gives us that fruit. You can't bear spiritual fruit. You can't have true joy. Not the joy

he intends for you to have. You can't understand love the way he wanted you to understand love.

You can't have any of those things unless you are vitally connected to the vine who

is Jesus Christ. Remember he said I am the vine and 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. I'm going

to leave this branch up here today because I want you to keep looking at this branch

and I want you to realize this branch will never have life and neither will we if we

are not connected vitally with Jesus Christ. Man keep that foremost in your mind because

that connection is everything about this illustration that we have here. In John 15 we learn how

we abide and what it looks like when we do. And again the only command in these 11 verses

is the command to abide. Everything else that comes out of this text comes because you abide.

You bear fruit because you abide. You love because you abide. You have joy because you

abide. Everything else comes out of this one command. And three times Jesus uses the word

abide in connection with a specific way we do that and that's the secret to the abiding

life. There's three things. Number one abide in him. Abide in him. Obviously this is the

big one. Abiding in Jesus Christ himself. Back to verse 4 abide in me and I in you.

If you read John 14 you have all this great great theological teaching where Jesus is

introducing the Holy Spirit to his disciples. If you jump over to John chapter 16 more of

John 16 · chapter mention

the same and even more practical application. But if you really want to know the secret

of what the indwelling Holy Spirit really does in our life it's found right here. Abide

in me and I in you. Abide is his picture. Abide is his illustration. The vine and the

branches help us understand what it means for the Holy Spirit to be inside of us, dwelling

in us, living in us and the power that that brings us and the life that that brings us.

That's the illustration Jesus uses for us to understand it. And I absolutely love it.

Everywhere you look there are branches and vines and trees and trunks and everywhere

you look there's green and life and you understand all these things are connected. It's part

of our everyday life. It should be part of our everyday spiritual life as well. Abide

in him. Now we'll jump back to John 14 and look at something that Jesus said. John 14

John 14:20

verse 20. He said in that day, that is in the time, in the future when he gives the

Holy Spirit, in that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.

The future event he's pointing to was his departure and the coming of the Holy Spirit

at Pentecost. That's Acts chapter 2. Now for you and I as believers in Jesus Christ

Acts 2 · chapter mention

post Pentecost, when you and I invite Christ into our lives, we don't have to wait for

some subsequent experience to receive the Holy Spirit. We are born again, that is born

of the Spirit and we have the Holy Spirit of God in our lives from the moment we surrender

our lives to Jesus as Lord and Savior. We sometimes use these terms like accepting Jesus

into your life or receiving Jesus into your life. What we really mean is you trust in

and believe in what Jesus did on the cross and you receive the Spirit of Jesus into your

life. You receive the Spirit of the living God in your life. So once you come to faith

in Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit. If you are a believer in Jesus today, you have the

Holy Spirit of God inside of your life and you should be attached to this vine and he

is in you. In chapter 14 verse 23 he said it this way, if anyone loves me he will keep

my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

Man this is strong stuff. This is the key, the secret of the believer. We will make our

abode with him. Now I want you to notice in this illustration something very interesting

is that this is not a two way street. The branch doesn't give anything to the vine.

The branch only receives from the vine. This branch didn't give anything to the trunk of

the tree it came off of. Only the trunk gave life to it. And in this illustration it is

important for us to realize we do not contribute to who Christ is or to who God is. We don't

make God better by being present with him because God is not going to be made any bigger

than he already is. He is already awesome almighty God amen. But all that we receive

is what he gives to us from abiding in him. It is a one way thing. He gives us love, he

gives us power, he gives us wisdom by our abiding in him. So we abide in him. Someone

defined the idea of abiding and said it like this, they said abiding basically is where

we just simply trust, we simply have confidence, we simply savor that interaction with him,

we receive from him. I've summarized it this way, abiding is dependence upon Christ instead

of ourselves. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to live the Christian life, I mean fully

live the Christian life? You ever notice that? If you were being transparent and I was saying

on a scale of one to ten how easy is it for you to live the Christian life? And ten being

the greatest effort and one being the easiest, you're probably going to say it's a ten on

a scale of ten, that's how difficult it is to live the Christian life. And you would

be correct, it's not easy to live the Christian life. But what is the price for me to say

to you, Jesus never said you could live the Christian life. He never said you could. But

he said he always would. He said he always would live that life through you. Therefore

we need to be really connected with him for him to live that life through us. It's not

about what we do apart from Jesus, it's what we do because we are in Jesus Christ. So abiding

is dependence upon Christ instead of ourselves. It's realizing and knowing that we can't do

it on our own. And then there's a surprising statement that I love because it reminds me

of where I really need to be in my mind about living the life he's called me to live. It's

in verse five. Jesus said I'm the vine and you're the branch. As he who abides in me

and I in him, he bears much fruit. And then there's this last line. For apart from me,

you can do nothing. Let me suggest to you that that's one of the greatest prayers or

greatest verses you can pray back to him. Lord, I need your help today. Because I know

that apart from you I can do nothing. Lord, I need your wisdom today because apart from

you I can do nothing. Lord, I need you to give me the joy that I don't seem to have

right now because apart from you I can do nothing. I need your wisdom. I need your love.

I need your insights because apart from you I can do nothing. I really can't. I'm just

like every other human being apart from abiding in the power of the Holy Spirit, abiding in

Jesus Christ. There's such a huge emphasis on this kind of connection. Abiding is paying

attention to the connection we have with Jesus instead of trying to do things by our own

effort because you know you can't and you know he can. That's what abiding is. That's

what abiding is. It's paying attention to the relationship that we have with him because

we know we need him. Because we know we need him. Abiding. See, if you stay focused on

the connection the sap will flow and the fruit will come. The sap will flow and the fruit

will come and you'll see your life change. Not because you're trying hard to make a change

but because you're vitally connected with the one who can change your life and you may

even be surprised by the character that comes out of your life. The fruit that shows up

because you're connected with Christ. You'll be able to see love and kindness that come

out of you when it wouldn't normally naturally come out of you. You'll see he takes the edge

off of anger and the anxiety out of stressful situations. He takes the hate out of disagreement

and division. He influences the fruit that comes out of us. If you will pay attention

to the connection you have, the relation you have with Jesus Christ, all kinds of fruit

will come out of you. But if you don't pay attention to it, you can do nothing. Abide

in him. That's the umbrella over everything else he's going to say today. So let me just

pause for just a second and say, are you connected to him? Abide connected to him. I don't mean

just one moment in time where you said, yes, I trust Jesus. I'll pray and ask him to forgive

me if I sin. But are you connected to him relationally? Often for many people it begins

with a moment like that and then they grow into this regular ongoing relationship because

they've trusted him. But it's not just the moment of praying and accepting what he did

on the cross. It's a matter of entering into that relationship that connect. Are you connected

to him? Are you abiding in him? Do you have a reliance on the Lord who brings all this

good fruit and apart from him, you can do nothing. Abide in him, Jesus said. That's

the first secret. The second you'll find he attaches the word abide with something else.

Abide in his word. Abide in his word. Look at verse seven for a second. It says, if you

abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for

you. Many of us really get zeroing in on that prayer promise. Okay. Whatever I ask in his

name he'll do for me. But really the emphasis is that first line. If you abide in me and

my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. I promise you

when you abide in Jesus and his words abide in your life, you're going to be asking different

things than you would otherwise. That's an important part of our prayer life is to know

that we're flavored by the relationship we have with Christ and by the word in our life.

But why did Jesus make such a direct connection between abide in me and my words abide in

you? I'm going to try to explain that over this next couple of minutes because it's so

important. Imagine having the most wise and powerful person in the world with you yet

ignoring what they say. You're facing a massive decision to ask your help or you're facing

a big challenge about something in your financial future or you have some challenges in your

relationships and you know what you want to do but you have someone right there with you

who knows everything about relationships, everything about the future, everything about

your own life. What are you going to do? Listen to them or are you going to listen to you?

And if they're saying to you don't do what you would normally do, don't do what you want

to do but do this instead, go this way. If you trust them, if you know they're wise,

if you understand that you don't know everything then you'll yield to them and do what they

say to do instead of your natural inclination. That's about the closest I can get to describing

what it means to abide in the word. And it's tough to do sometimes because we're talking

about things that are bigger than just finances or health or relationships. Sometimes things

that really rock us to the core of fears and panic and heartbreak and everything else is

going on inside of there. But here's what I want you to see today. It is your response

to what the word says about your life that reveals the level of your abiding with Him.

How you respond to His word is everything. Abide in my words. Now John also comments

in 1 John chapter 2 about what it's like not to abide. And here's what he says in 1 John

1 John 2 · chapter mention

2, 4. He says, the one who says I've come to know Him and yet does not keep His commandments

is a liar and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word in Him the love of

God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him. The one who says he abides

in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked and that word's consistent with

His word. So our response to His word is incredibly revealing. Here's what it ought to look like.

It ought to look like this. Over time you become more and more dependent upon His word

than you do your opinion. Over time it becomes our go to to see what the scripture says about

a thing instead of think this is what I want to do. This is what I feel like I ought to

do. Let me describe it again this time on the screen. Abiding in the word means that

we allow His word to fill our minds, to direct our wills, and transform our emotions and

affections. It gives shape to our life but it only happens if we're connected to His

word constantly more so than another person with us. It's like being present all the time.

It's like you allow it to just absolutely fill your mind and life. I was trying to think

of a way to illustrate this the other day and I really was coming up with blanks. Then

something happened to me. Yesterday my iPhone broke and it didn't work anymore. People

couldn't hear my voice anymore and the camera broke as well. The whole back side of the

phone broke. I went to four different places before they finally said go back to the Apple

store. I'm in the Apple store yesterday afternoon not far from here. They said we can fix your

phone but we kind of have to overhaul it. It will be three hours before you get it back.

Do you want us to do that or do you want to mail it off for about two weeks? I said three

hours. We'll do three hours. They took my phone. Before they took it away I was able

to text my wife and say I'm up at this place not far from us. I said I'm going to be here

for three hours and I'll be out of contact with you and everything else. She said great,

where do we meet for dinner? I said okay. Meet me at this restaurant not far from the

Apple store. I texted all that on my watch and I said now this is the final word. I can't

communicate with you anymore after this. Show up at this time so we make the agreement.

I went to the restaurant and at that moment I was completely out of communication with

the world because my phone was broken. I waited in that restaurant for the 30 or 40 minutes

it took for her to get there, whatever that amount of time was. When I was sitting there

I realized I am completely disconnected from everything I'm comfortable with knowing. I'm

sitting there drinking my tea and water. I don't know anybody in the restaurant. I can't

check the weather even though I know what it is outside. I can't check football scores.

On Saturday afternoon there's some important information I need to have. I can't tell what's

going on in the world. I can't look at all the pictures I've taken while I'm waiting

for my wife to show up. I can't do anything I normally do and I'm thinking I do not know

how to live without my phone. I've come to that conclusion. I don't know how to live

without my phone. I can't Google anything. I can't look at YouTube videos. I can't check

my Facebook friends. I can't do anything without this phone. At first I was embarrassed and

then I thought you know what a perfect picture of what we need to be in the sense of connected

to Jesus. We really need to be that connected to Jesus. In fact abiding in his word and

abiding in him means that we're more connected to him than we are anything else in our lives.

Even our phones. Even our phones. Moment by moment we need to be checking in with him.

Moment by moment we need to be remembering what he said in his word. Every decision we

need to make we need to make based on what we know he's already said to us. We need to

be at least as connected to the word as all the other important things in our lives. It's

so incredibly important that we do that. In 1 John chapter 3 verse 24 John said it like

1 John 3:24

this. He said the one who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. We know by this

that he abides in us that the spirit whom he has given us is present. This is why thousands

of believers gather hundreds of thousands even millions of believers gather every Sunday

to seek under the teaching of the word. It's why we listen to podcasts and read Christian

books. It's why we have devotionals in quiet time. It's why we pray and read the word.

It's why we want you in a small group talking about the truth of God's word because that's

the only way you can really abide in the word by having it around you all the time. It doesn't

mean you don't have the presence to know how to live in this life. It means you do have

the spiritual presence to know how to live in this life. We want you to abide in his

word and abide in him because that's the key to life. Paul said in Colossians chapter 3

Colossians 3:16

verse 16, let the word of Christ richly dwell in you. Richly. Let it be overflowing in your

life and in time. You learn this dependency. You learn to rely on being connected to the

word. We learn to discover that all the earthly wisdom out there and all my natural wisdom

just is not enough. In fact they will steer me wrong often. I need to be connected to

his word and that's progress. Put another way, you cannot bear fruit if you're more

connected with other people and other things than you are with this vine. You can't bear

his fruit. You can't bear his life unless you're connected to him. So abide in him.

Abide in his word. Then the third one, your life. The third time he uses the word abide,

he says abide in his love. Abide in his love. He says this in verse 9, just as the father

has left me, I have also loved you. Let this sink in. Abide in my love. I want to remind

you this is not a two way thing. It's a one way thing. The branch is receiving everything

from the vine. In other words, Jesus is saying I want you to continually feel and understand

and know and believe the flow of my love into you and through you. I want you to never have

a moment where you don't know that I love you. I want you to remain in my love and the

stress is not where Jesus is saying that he wants us to love him, but the stress of the

whole conversation is I want you to let me love you. Abide in my love. Remain in my love.

Don't disconnect from my love. Abiding in love means you come to know and believe that

God truly loves you. Now I read those words in the English and I think that doesn't really

communicate as powerfully as I want them to communicate because knowing something and

believing something are kind of tepid words in the English. But if you take a step back

and just let those two words sink in for just a moment, to know experientially, to know

by way of experience, to fully know and grasp that he loves you is a really, really big

deal. They can come in one experience or can come over a variety of experiences and gradually

you become convinced and really believe, believe to the point where you're absolutely convinced

that God absolutely loves you even when you're at your worst. For you to know and believe

that is part of what it means to abide in my love. Now why do I know that? Because John

says it in 1 John chapter 4. Here's what he says, he said, whoever confesses that Jesus

1 John 4 · chapter mention

is the son of God, God abides in him and he is in God. We have come to know and have believed

the love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God

and God abides in him. Why is this such a difference maker? Why is this such a big deal?

Why does it even matter? It matters because if I actually believe that God loves me and

I realize the depth of his commitment to me, I have no reason to distrust him, no reason

to run from him, no reason to disconnect from him at all. I have come to believe that his

word for me reflects the best interest that he has in my life and even in the toughest

of choices, the toughest of time, I can have confidence he'll never leave me, he'll never

abandon me, he'll never desert me because he loves me. We say this all the time in John

3 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and now Jesus is the

one who gave his life is saying to those disciples, abide in that love, remain in that love, let

it keep flowing into your life. It radically changes how you live life. John again in 1

1 John 4:18

John chapter 4 verse 18 says, there's no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear because

fear involves punishment and the one who fears is not perfected in love. That's a pretty

big deal. When I know that I'm loved by God, I don't have to fear him. He has done everything

necessary to remove the barriers I put up between myself and him and he's cleared them

out of the way and I can have a real relationship with him, I can really stay connected, stay

attached to him because he loves me. Beyond that, when I abide in his love and I'm confident

in it, loving others is risk free. You know you can love someone and not really risk anything

because even if they reject you, you will never be rejected by God. You'll always be

loved, you'll always be valued, you'll always be the apple of his eye, you'll always be

one that he comes to and helps in every way. When we love people, we're afraid of being

rejected but all that fear should go out of the window because you are fully loved in

God. Get it this way, no human being on this planet can possibly love you to that degree.

No human being can possibly fulfill your need to be loved like God fulfills that need to

be loved. That means we can love irregular people who may throw stuff back at us who

may not treat us well. We can love them anyway because we've been loved by God. In 1 John,

it goes on to say, brothers we love because he first loved us. And that's how we love

unconditionally. Do you have any irregular people in your life that sometimes you struggle

to love? Anybody have irregular people? Some of you don't want to raise your hand because

you're sitting next to the irregular person that's hard to love. That's got to be why.

Got a lot of glances being exchanged in this room. It's threefold secret, abide in Jesus,

abide in his word, abide in his love. I don't have time to talk about all the great results

of all this but let me summarize them really quickly. This passage says that when you abide

you bear much fruit and prove to be his disciples. That's where the fruit comes from. I'm

not going to give you ten steps to bearing more fruit but if they didn't include as the

top step abiding in Jesus it would never happen. When you abide you bear much fruit and then

when you abide you find the love and joy that's found nowhere else. Nowhere else but him.

I was watching a guy talk about this subject recently and he posed the question, he goes,

how is it that the son of God seems to be begging his disciples to stay, to remain,

to abide? Why would Jesus be saying it like that? Because he says it so many different

times and the plea is very obvious. If you were to use your own language about abiding

it would be remain attached to me, let my word dwell in you, let my love flow through

you, stay connected to me. I'm strong enough to help you with everything. You're not that

strong. I'm able to love more than you can love me. You're not by yourself able to love

other people. Abide in me, stay in me. Why is he pleading with the disciples to do that?

And the reason he's pleading with them is because it's the only way to live the life

he calls us to live. Apart from that, we're this. No hope, no promise, no future, no joy,

no love, none of that. Abide in me and I in you. That's his invitation to you today.

There may be today that you've never come to the place where you've ever trusted Jesus

for what he did on the cross. That's the starting point for abiding. Abiding means coming to

him in the first place. He has done everything necessary for you to come to him and put your

faith and trust in him. In fact, the gospel, the good news is Jesus died, was buried, rose

again the third day. And as a result of the resurrection offers the life that he alone

can give. He overcame death, he overcame sin and in his resurrected state he said, I've

come to give you life. It's accepting that. That's the beginning of abiding. That's when

you start that grafting in. And then day by day, week by week, you begin to depend and

abide and remain. Maybe today you've never, you've realized you've never made that decision.

Today at the end of our service, I invite you to stop by a decision station. There are

two different places on the way out. There'll be counselors there that would love to talk

to you. My first invitation to you today is stop on the way out and say, I need to know

what it means to start this relationship and we can help you. My second invite is to come

out of the worship center into our guest reception room. I would love to visit with you personally.

Kind of hard to do that in a big room. I'd love to do that personally. For about 10 minutes

we have a guest reception time together out the center exit doors just across the hallway.

A glass 10 room is there. My third invite is when you come next week, bring someone

with you. We have invite cards out there. We're looking at the second half of John 15.

More about what it means to abide in Christ. And I want to encourage you to bring someone

with you. People need to hear what this is all about. Would you stand with me as we close

out in prayer today? Father, thank you so much that you have done everything necessary

for us to bear fruit, to experience love and joy. And Father, today I want to ask you that

you allow each of us that needs to stop, stop our movement from here to anywhere else until

we settle the question of our salvation. Have we made this decision? Have we begun abiding?

Father, help us to have the courage to ask those questions and to get those answers.

And Father, as we leave today, I pray that we will enter into this abiding remaining

connection with you so that we can see you live through us in a way only you can. Thank

you Lord Jesus for inviting us, even pleading with us to do this. I ask this in Jesus name.

Amen. God bless you.