May 10, 2026 | You Must Abide In Me

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

If any one does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

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

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Pray with me, please.

Lord, we are desperate for you.

We need you, Lord.

We invite you to come, take your place among your people.

Be manifest.

Receive all the glory.

Speak to us today, Lord, in a fresh way that we might have ears to hear what you're saying and hearts to respond.

We love you, Lord, because you first loved us.

And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, I want to take the opportunity today to acknowledge this day that's set apart in our country.

We we call this Mother's Day, a day that's set apart to honor our mothers.

It really goes all the way back to when Moses received the Ten Commandments, and the fifth commandment is honor your father and your mother.

This is something that I say every year.

This is something that we all have in common.

We all have had a mother.

We either have a mother or we had a mama.

And mine died in 2010.

But I again I say this every year: there's not a day that doesn't go by when I don't think of my mother.

And thank God that she cared me and she gave birth to me and she raised me and she nurtured me.

We're called today to celebrate a mom's, again, to honor a mother's.

That's what God says.

Honor your father and your mother.

And always I'm reminded of the greatest agony in Jesus' life when he's hanging on the cross in the midst of bearing all our sins.

He who knew no sin became sin.

He's becoming sin on the cross and he's and he's and he's facing the full wrath of God.

What does he do?

What does he do in that moment?

He takes care of his mother.

We read in the gospel that he puts his mother in the family of believers.

He says, John, behold your mother.

John, the beloved disciple.

And then he says, Mother, behold your son.

He's honoring his mother.

All the way up to his last breath.

He's protecting her.

He's caring for her.

He is loving her.

He is honoring her.

So I encourage you, all of you, today, honor your moms.

Thank God for your mother.

Even if you had a mother that left you, even if you had a mother that you never knew, but that she carried you and she gave birth to you.

And you were given the gift of life.

Again, we all have something to be grateful for as we heard in the beginning of the service, and that is mothers.

The gospel that we heard today, read out of John in chapter 15.

This is a continuation of what we started last week.

John is writing, and he's capturing that moment with Jesus had with his disciples in that upper room.

We call this the upper room discourse.

Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 of John captures those intimate moments that Jesus has with his disciples before he goes to the cross.

And today, did you hear what he said in verse 5?

Today Jesus says very clearly, he says, I am the vine.

I am the true vine.

And you, you are the branches.

And he says, if you will remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

And apart from me, you can do nothing.

Did you hear that?

Jesus describes himself as the vine, just like he described himself as the way, the truth, the life.

He's not a vine.

He's not one of many vines.

He is the true vine.

And we are the branches.

So that as we remain in him, as we dwell in him, as we abide in him, he says, we will bear much fruit.

And he says, and this is to the Father's glory.

This is to the Father's glory that we reveal, that we show ourselves as being connected to the vine, connected to the true vine, connected to Jesus.

We show ourselves to be followers and disciples of Jesus, and this is all to the Father's glory.

What is he describing?

When he uses this metaphor, I'm the vine and you're the branches.

What is he describing?

He's describing an organic, living relationship with him.

That's what he's saying.

I'm the vine and you're the branches.

This is, you know what, this is this.

This is a picture.

This is a picture of the church.

The church is to be alive, the church is to be living, thriving, organic.

This is what Paul picked up on when Paul said that the church is the bride of Christ.

And Jesus is the bridegroom.

And the bride and the bridegroom are connected, organic, living, alive.

It's what Paul says that that the body of Christ it is a body.

It's got many parts.

But it's connected to the head.

And so that he's describing the church.

He's describing being alive in him.

Being connected to him.

So what Jesus is saying today is that we are designed to live in an intimate, dependent, moment-to-moment relationship with him.

Not a one-and-done, but a continual relationship with him.

And he says that we do this by abiding.

We do this by dwelling.

We do this by remaining in him.

And all the nutrients of life just flowing from him, flowing from his heart into our hearts.

Isn't that what he told the woman at the well, John in chapter 4?

This woman at the well, he says that I am living water.

This is what I am.

I am living water.

If you drink me in, if you take me in, you'll never thirst again.

I provide everything you need.

This is what he said in John in chapter 6.

He said, I am the bread of life.

I'm the sustainer, I'm the giver of life.

You take me in, you never go hungry.

You'll never thirst, you'll never go hungry.

All the nutrients of life coming from him to us by staying connected.

And how does that happen?

How does that flow from him to us?

It flows by the power of God, the Holy Spirit.

It's the Holy Spirit that flows into us.

And Paul says it this way in Corinthians that when we are in Christ, we are a new creation.

The old is gone and the new is come.

This is what we say in the Nicene Creed every week: that he is the Lord.

The Holy Spirit is the Lord, and he is the giver of life.

Flows into us.

And the key to this, Jesus is telling us today, the key to this life is dwelling, abiding, remaining in Him.

Very simple.

But here's the truth.

The truth is we abide, we remain, we dwell in something.

And for a lot of us, we abide or dwell in fear.

Or we might we might remain in bitterness.

Or we might abide in unforgiveness.

Or we might dwell with compromise.

Or we might remain in discouragement.

Or we might abide in offense.

And what Jesus says today, that when we do that, we aren't connected to Him.

He says, apart from Him, we can do nothing.

And we find ourselves drifting, unattached to the vine.

And what maybe began so well.

Maybe for us we can remember a season in our lives when our relationship with Jesus felt so alive.

It felt so vibrant.

There was a hunger for the Word of God.

The Word of God was alive and active in our lives.

There was worship.

Worship was genuine, life-giving.

A time when we remember that prayer was powerful and it was intimate and it was effective.

A time in our lives, a season in our life when the Holy Spirit would convict us and we would repent and return to Jesus.

Maybe we can remember that.

Maybe we can remember beginning so well, being connected to the vine, drawing all the nutrients from the vine.

But then something happens.

Something happens in our life.

We get distracted in life.

We begin to lose our focus.

We get entangled in lesser destinations.

And what started out so well has become something that it's less than.

Our journey becomes something that it was never intended to be.

You remember that game we used to play when you would speak a word or a phrase to the person next to you, and then that person would speak the same word and phrase to the person next to them, and it would go, you know, all the way around the circle until it finally comes back to the original person, and the last person would speak to the original person, and it's nowhere close to what he began with.

That's what can happen to us.

Something can get lost in translation.

We begin well with Jesus, He's our all-in-all, but in our journey, we get things get muddy in translation.

And our journey becomes something that it was never intended to be.

What do I mean by that?

I mean our lives now become all about keeping rules.

Our lives become all about following practices and not following Jesus.

Our lives, our journey becomes all about a code of conduct.

Our lives become more about law.

What I ought to do and what I should do.

And what we do, we take Jesus and we equate him with being good.

That can happen.

You know what I call that?

When we take Jesus and we equate him to being good, and life becomes all about laws and rules and following a certain pattern.

Life becomes, church becomes all about churchmanship, doing the right things at the right time.

You know what I call that?

I call that dead religion.

That's what I call that.

And Jesus says nothing good comes from that.

You are you're detached, you're not you're not drawn from the vine.

And the branch looks like it's alive when it's over time, it's just dead and withered.

We take Jesus and we equate Him with being good.

And the reality is the Bible says that our goodness is as filthy as rags before a holy God.

The reality is that we are undeserving, we are unworthy, we are completely bankrupt without Jesus.

So we flee to his mercy to receive his grace.

So that Jesus says, abide in me, remain in me, dwell in me, because we are either abiding in him with all his redeeming love, or we are dwelling someplace other, and we're withering and we're dying.

St.

Paul's Church.

We are meant to be a living, organic, growing organism alive in Christ.

This is what we are meant to be.

A place where God shows up.

Because you see, this is what the world is crying out for.

A place that they can come and they can actually meet and encounter God, the real God, the true God.

Maybe y'all have read and you know that the UFO files have been opened up.

And isn't it amazing how how people are clamoring?

Do they want to know?

Is there life beyond life?

Are there real extraterrestrials?

Are these real UFOs and people are clamoring to know?

Well, I want to say, in a greater sense, the world is crying out is God real?

Can I actually meet with the living God?

Just show me a place.

Show me a place where he shows up and I'll be there.

I'll meet with him.

I'll come.

You do realize this is the basis for all the revivals in history?

This is the basis for the great revival, the great awakening we talked about with with uh Whitfield?

That God would show up, and people would know it, and lives would be changed.

Well, you say, well, what does it look like?

What does it look like?

What does it look like to be a place where God shows up?

What does it look like to be a place where people say, you show me God, and I'll come and I'll be there?

Let me tell you what it looks like.

It looks like a place where the word of God is boldly proclaimed, where the truth of the gospel, the truth of the gospel is proclaimed.

The world says, show me that.

Show me that.

Show me the how I can connect with God.

And the truth of the gospel is proclaimed, and people hear, and they hear in such a way, it's so plainly proclaimed that they hear and they must respond.

They connect to what's being said.

Do you know what that is?

That's what happened on the day of Pentecost when Peter, Peter in Acts in chapter 2, he's proclaiming that Jesus Christ, He lived, He died, and He rose again.

That Jesus Christ came to seek and save the lost.

Jesus says, This is why I've come.

This is my purpose, to seek and save the lost.

And he's proclaiming the gospel.

Peter, in the day of Pentecost, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

And you know what the people do?

They hear and they cry out, brothers, what should we do?

And Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.

God showed up.

And people are compelled to respond.

Repent, turn to Jesus, turn to the vine, and be baptized.

Be born again.

Wash away that old life, live into the new life.

And we're told that 3,000 people were added to the body.

What does a place look like that God shows the gospel, the truth of the gospel, the truth of Jesus Christ, not a watered-down gospel, but the truth of Jesus Christ is boldly proclaimed.

What else does it look like?

It looks like a place where there's genuine fellowship.

Genuine fellowship happens.

Where people love God and they love one another when people come in and they say, Oh my, look how they love one another.

It's not fake, it's real, it's genuine.

God shows up.

What does it look like to be a place that God shows up?

It's a place where worship takes place.

Worship, it's what we do and we gather, we worship.

We worship in spirit and in truth.

We worship in spirit and we don't compromise the truth.

That's what it looks like.

God shows up in that place.

What does it look like to look like a place where God shows up?

Signs and wonders are taking place.

The very power of the Holy Spirit is moving in and through the body.

People are given gifts, they're using these gifts to bring glory to God.

People are healed.

People are reconciled.

People are forgiven.

That's what it looks like.

It's a place where power and awe just is revealed.

The very power of God, the awe of God, and all we can do is bow before Him.

This is what we're called to be.

And Jesus says, Abide in me.

Abide in me.

Remain in me.

Dwell in me.

And you know, there might be some of us here today that remember when we were closer to God than we are now.

Maybe we remember when we prayed with passion.

Maybe we remember when we worshiped with tenderness.

Maybe we remember when we love the word deeply.

Maybe we remember when we sense God's presence so clearly, but now there seems to be distance.

He seems to be so far removed.

Hear.

What he's saying today.

He is not saying try harder.

He's not saying try to get another merit badge.

Be gooder.

He's not saying that.

He's saying, come, come closer, come, come to the vine.

Because when you are reconnected to the vine, then you experience life.

Maybe there are some here today that have never really been connected to the vine.

Maybe there are some here today that know dead religion.

I go through the motions, I do.

What I do, I mumble and I sing and I show up.

That's dead religion.

Maybe there's some here today.

And Jesus says, Come to me.

The truth is that he died for you.

And he rose again in power.

And he invites you into a living relationship with him.

Not an empty religion, not a performance program, but a real relationship with him.

The invitation is abide.

Come, dwell, remain in me.

St.

Paul's Church.

We will only remain healthy if we stay connected to the vine.

Because that's how God shows up.

And this is what the world is crying out for.

Show me where God shows up.

And I'll be there.

I'll come.

We only stay healthy when we're connected to divine.

Not just informed about Jesus, not just staying active, doing stuff for him, but abiding in him, connecting in him, dwelling and remaining in him.

Because when we do, when we do, lives are changed.

I love the quote from one of my mentors, the greatest witness to a dying world is a transformed life.

You see, when we abide, God shows up.

And people see and they want, they want to connect with them.

This is our call, St.

Paul's Church.

Remember this.

This is why we're here to seek and save the lost.

It's the mission of Jesus.

This is why we're here to manifest the glory of God in the power of the Holy Spirit through the gift of the Son divine.

To God be the glory.

Amen.

Father God, we thank you and we praise you.

That you are the vine.

You're the Lord, you're the giver of life.

That life flows from you, Lord, and thank you that you came to seek and save every single one of us.

And those, Lord, that aren't even here, and those that are here that don't know you, Lord, because you love us.

And your invitation just come, come to me, abide in me, dwell in me, remain in me.

Oh Lord, we need you because without you, we are dead.

In the mighty and powerful name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.