“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 NLT)
If you’ve been around church or Jesus followers for any length of time you’ve likely read or heard the above verse. If a branch is removed from an apple tree how many apples will it bear? None, right? It’s not rocket science. If you have a connection with Jesus, you have the potential to bear fruit; however, if you have no connection there will be no fruit.
What’s hard for many of us is to realize how helpless we are without Jesus. Even as believers we tend to look at a verse like John 15:5 and say something stupid like: “Oh, that just refers to ‘spiritual’ things.” Yeh, I get it, I used to say dumb things like that also. Think with me for a minute. Take a breath! Seriously, take a deep breath.
Did you take that breath all on your own? Careful, don’t let thoughtless words leave your mouth. Just so we’re clear, no, you did not. We do nothing, literally and absolutely nothing without Jesus. Even if someone isn’t following Him, they still can’t do anything without Him.
Timothy Keller wrote: “We aren’t even capable of truly wanting Jesus without His help.” Even the desire to seek Him comes as His Spirit directs. The Lord formed us in our mother’s womb even before we had a mind to think. He is with us when He breathes life into us at the moment of our birth, He’s with us in our moment of death when He enables us to express the last breath of air from our body, and He’s with us in every moment in between.
He sets in motion each of our bodily functions and nothing moves in, through, or on our behalf without His help. Very smart people who don’t walk with the Lord can toss a ball in the air or kick a rock and say: “There, I did that all by myself,” not realizing there is no oxygen without Jesus, and without oxygen there’s no life.
Even the functions of our human body are orchestrated and ruled by the Lord. If we’re ever going to do anything of eternal value as a child of God, we have to realize that it’s got to originate and grow out of our absolute dependence upon the Lord. To think we can do anything of spiritual significance on our own is to seek glory for ourselves that should only be given to the Lord.
Obviously, the Lord gives us the capacity to think, to reason, to love, to care, to serve Him and each other, but the energy to do any of that originates with the Lord. He is the supplier and sustainer of everything we need to be everything He desires us to be. However, there is one thing the Lord gives us that is independent of Him – our will.
We can choose to follow and obey Him, or to do what only pleases us or to submit to His authority and do what pleases Him. The irony is, as a human being under the influence of our sinful nature, we struggle nearly every second of every day to learn to harness our “wild side,” and to willingly and whole heartedly yield our will to God’s.
Satan is a defeated foe who is destined to spend an eternity in hell with his devilish emissaries and with each human being who has chosen to follow their (Satan’s) will rather than God’s will. So, the one area in which we exercise complete control is our will, unless and until we yield our will to God. Even then in each moment we must decide who we’ll follow; whose will, will become ours? God’s or the enemy? You alone must decide.
My prayer for you as for me is that we’ll be able to make the right choice in this minute and the next and the next.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 