SESSION 6: FRUITFUL!

WELCOME
If you were writing a book about your life, what would you like the next chapter to be entitled?

I am a branch of the true vine, Jesus, a channel of His life. I choose to remain in Him so that I can bear much fruit.

WORD
Focus verse: I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).
Focus truth: If we want to be fruitful, our focus needs to be not on bearing fruit but on staying close to Jesus.

How can we bear fruit?
In this session we’ll be looking at how walking in God’s grace is the key to living a fruitful life and we’ll see that, like just about everything else to do with grace, it works in precisely the opposite way to how we naturally expect it to.

Our responsibility is to remain in the vine
¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ²He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. ³You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. ⁵“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Two laws of the vineyard
Branches don’t bear fruit because they try really hard. And neither do we.
Branches that are not attached to the vine do not and cannot bear fruit.
Christians who focus on their need to bear fruit put themselves into a law-based system of fearful, anxious performance … with the resulting guilt and shame if they fail, and pride if they appear to succeed.
But Christians who focus on simply abiding in Jesus enter into a life of “grace-rest” where, paradoxically, they beard much fruit.

We need to go through a progression in our understanding of who Jesus is. First we know Him as our Savior. But we need to come to the place of surrendering to Him as Lord. Even that is not enough. We then need to understand that He is our very Life. See Colossians 3:3 which says For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Jesus modelled this: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does (John 5:19).
Even though He was God, Jesus made it clear that He was not operating out of His “God-ness”. He was modelling how God wants us to live too.

Rest in Him
Jesus made an offer, specifically to people who felt overwhelmed by the demands of trying to live up to a certain set of expectations.
²⁸“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Yet the picture Jesus gives us of two oxen ploughing a field looks more like hard work than rest. The rest we’re talking about here does not mean lying around doing nothing. It’s an internal rest that is based on faith and dependence upon God, which comes from walking close beside Him, yoked to Him and relying on His strength.

Principles of rest

Rest then work
At creation, God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh day. Adam was created on day six, so the first full day of Adam’s life was the seventh day when God rested. Everything was already done. Everything he needed was on hand. There was nothing whatsoever to worry about. So he rested first and then God put him to work.
And that’s the principle God wants us to work to. We rest, then we work. It’s not meant to be that we work hard and then rest to recover. I’t the other way around. Out of rest comes fruitful ministry.

Now, watch the 20:37-minute DVD video.

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT 1

In what ways did Jesus’ life on earth demonstrate His complete dependence upon His Father?

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