John 15:5-12
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.6 If you do not remain in Me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.7 If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.8 This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.10 If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in hHs love.11 I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
John 15:4-12 SPIRITUALLY IN GOOD HEALTH
Springford Baptist Church: October 23,2022.
When it comes to determining if a person is sick or well physically, we consider symptoms.
Does the individual have a fever?
Is the person tired out or well rested?
Is the person able to eat and drink as usual?
Is there coughing or sneezing or a sore throat?
Is the individual able to carry on with regular activities?
Likewise, there are symptoms to consider and indications if we are spiritually healthy. These are important assessments because we need to be spiritually healthy in order for our faith in God to be evident. We want people to see that we are remaining in Jesus and that Jesus is remaining in us. The more that we pay attention to our spiritual health, the more we will exercise our faith and dependence on God. As a result, the more we will see accomplished for God. The increased strength of our faith will put us in a place of being able to witness even more happen for God’s kingdom.
Jesus clearly sets out the importance of recognizing that He is the Vine and we are the branches. He says to His followers, “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)
This season, there are plenty of grape vines growing and being harvested. I have yet to see a branch that has been cut off from the vine growing anything.
Neither should we expect that we as Christians can be healthy and exercising the opportunity to produce fruit if we aren’t closely connected with and depending on Jesus, the Vine.
Okay, so the kind of exercise we are talking about here is not lifting a large Bible up and down, up and down…
We are talking about and need to move from talking about to living out the possibility of bearing fruit. This is the exercise of actually doing something with what we have come to believe about Jesus. We know God through His Son Jesus and this needs to result in us making God known to others. This is a strong symptom of being healthy spiritually.
When we remain in Jesus, we are spiritually healthy. We are seeing things from our Lord’s perspective and we can respond as He needs us to respond to various situations. The result is that God’s work is done and lives are changed.
A key to our spiritual health and well being and wanting to remain in Jesus is prayer.
The healthy aspect of prayer is when we pray from our limited perspective and God answers from His unlimited, infinite perspective. We surrender our prayers and our lives to what God knows and chooses.
Unless we remain in the Vine, Jesus, we will be operating as independent branches and our limited perspective will cause us to miss out on the bigger plans of God.
This is not in any way spiritually healthy.
We will know how God wants us to exercise our faith only if we remain in Jesus.
Jesus continues, “This is my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:8)
We think of a healthy vine, plant or tree as one that bears lots of fruit.
Imagine an apple tree that only produced 2 apples. Certainly not what we would consider a healthy tree.
Bearing fruit means investing in people’s lives and the result is that God gets the glory. Attention is drawn to God, not to us. Then there is the potential for even more lives to be transformed by Jesus and to come to know God through Him.
Jesus maintains,“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in His love.” (John 15:9,10)
This is active isn’t it? This is not just talking about what we learn from Jesus, but doing something about it, exercising!
Jesus zeroes in on a specific command that He wants all of us to follow and to obey.
No one has a reason not to obey this command. It is something all of us can and must do. Jesus prescribes this as a necessity for being spiritually healthy,12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
This is not just a temporary remedy in our lives, this is an ongoing prescription in order to be healthy Christians.
Sometimes particular medications are prescribed, but are just to be taken for a short time. Jesus’ prescription to love as He loves, has an unlimited number of repeats.
Every day brings new opportunities to exercise this healthy activity of loving and it is the only way to be spiritually healthy.
We must not only exercise the responsibility to love when it is convenient or easy for us. That would not be realistic and we would miss out on the chance to build up our spiritual muscles.
The times when loving like Jesus really challenges us, are the times when we recognize how much we need Jesus. It is then, when we know for certain that we must remain in Him!
What would we be like trying to love with our own limited resources and hang ups? We do not have to do this. Jesus is available to inspire us to love and to equip us to love!
Isn’t it something that we can be told what we need to do very plainly, but still we lose sight of the instruction. Jesus disciples, His followers were like this too.
I believe this is why Jesus repeats it yet again at the end of that part of His teaching, “This is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:17)
When we have been physically sick, there are measures to follow to be well again. Rest is an important part of regaining good physical health. Often keeping well hydrated by drinking lots of fluids is a part of recovering good physical health. There is also a need for good nutrition. If medication has been prescribed, then that too can aid recovery.
In the spiritual realm, we need to take time to rest in God. Certainly, to be in spiritual good health we need the nurture and the nourishment that God provides from His Word and from his loving Presence with us. Then we need to follow His prescription of loving as He loves us.
Why is there such a difference between knowing what we need to do and actually doing it?
Jesus wants us to be in good spiritual health. In order to attend to our spiritual well being, we must remain in Jesus. We must take seriously what He tells us to do and that includes living into this whole matter of loving as He loves.
Receive the assurance of Jesus’ intense love for you today and be healed of the hurts of life as you choose to love with the same love that Jesus extends to you.