Day #80 - I AM the True Vine

The Presence - A Devotional for Living in Thanksgiving, Worship and Wonder

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser… I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

‭‭John‬ ‭15‬:‭1‬, ‭5‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash

Do you have a green thumb?

Or in other words, do you know your way around a garden? Are you good at planting and tending to flowers, plants and trees? We are learning our way into gardening rather slowly as we have owned various homes. Our current home has a beautiful wisteria that grows at the front of our home. It requires regular pruning or it starts to grow pretty wild and take over our front porch. Sometimes it grabs ahold of the outdoor furniture and starts to pull it out of place. The garden has a lot of useful metaphors for the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus tells us in the last of his 7 I AM statements, I am the true vine. He explains that the father is our vinedresser. We learn at the beginning of John 15 that God prunes us to help us grow. If we are in the vine of Christ we can expect some pruning from time to time so that we might be more fruitful and not grow wild.

The main thing we learn in John 15 besides the reality that Jesus is the true vine, is that we are to abide in Christ. This instruction to abide is repeated three times in John 15:1-8. That is how branches receive their life, they stay in a place of abiding in the vine. This is the Christian life, be connected to the vine of Jesus and draw your life as a branch from him. This is how we bear fruit, we depend fully upon him.

The word abide speaks of the reality of remaining. To abide in Christ is to stay in a close fellowship and dependence where you remain in a place of union and connection with the reality of who He is. Jesus promises this is the place where you bear much fruit and later in John 15 how you glorify the Father.

The Christian life is about the fellowship we have in the presence of Jesus Christ. This union causes us to flourish unto fruitfulness. To be a person that presses into his Divine presence, you must confess that without him you can do nothing. But the one who if fully dependent on the Vine and enjoys this union with Christ will experience true joy and satisfaction.

The abiding life is the life of “the Presence.”

Christ Jesus, I abide in you. You are the true vine. I welcome the pruning of the Father that I might be more fruitful. Thank you for your loving discipline. Thank you for the Divine union between me and you. I draw my very life from you. You nourish my soul and my spirit. I can do nothing apart from you. You are my source and I love your presence. In your name Jesus, amen.