Remain In Me and I Will Remain In You

“Remain in Me and I will remain in you. A branch cannot bear fruit by itself; it can do so only if it remains on the vine. In the same way you cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me.” John 15:4-5

The book of John mentioned two disciples who are following Jesus, asking Him where he was staying. Jesus replied, “Come and see” (John 1:39) so they tagged along with Him. So do we need to do the same to be with Jesus? For us to enter into the presence of God, I believe we need to. The question is how.

The answer is through prayers. Do we benefit by constantly praying? The answer is “yes”. This is one of the requisites in order to connect with God; we need to set aside our busy schedule for a while (ouch, this is me) to rekindle our relationship with God. This is really my problem; I guess I am really weak to discipline to myself in terms of exercising my quiet time for praying and to be able to continue feeding myself by reading the Bible whenever I am not occupied. Most of us, if not some, fail in these categories. I am not singling us; I am just mentioning in general. Many of us have alibis.

The crux of the problem may be that we are afraid of what might change in our lives. We all know being with Him, abiding in His words, and frequently communicating with Him through prayers will substantially affect the rest of our living. His spirit will gradually make us more aware of God’s presence in the everyday world around us. Inevitably, our previous lifestyle is completely altered.

If mankind will just open their eyes and acknowledge He died for us because of His unconditional love to us, maybe there will be no wars and everyone will say, “peace be with you”. That word “love” was poured into our hearts and can do amazing things if we just emulate God’s example of love. Again, God’s love was poured into our hearts may kasama pa- we receive strength and confidence and become open to the Holy Spirit working in us, using the wisdom and abilities to affect others’ lives in some manner.

Let me go back to the point of the original verses. Branches, fruit and vines were mentioned in the book of John 15, which comprise parts of a tree. Without the vine, walang branches ang tree (tree has no branches). Without branches, hindi ito mamumunga (will have no fruit). We are like trees; we need to remain attached to the vine for us to grow and prosper, not only nourishing others in the sense of imparting the knowledge, wisdom, understanding we gained by remaining in Him. In the same token, we can also receive nourishment by understanding life events of others (hindi tsismisan ito ha). Because wisdom is defined also as accumulated knowledge of life by experience and sharing and expressing one’s life events. Does it make sense?

“Remain in Me and I will remain in you.” That is His promise and involves a lot of sacrifices in our part. The bottom line in John 15:7 says, “we should remain in Him and His words will remain in us” Because He said a branch cannot bear fruit by itself; it can only do so if it remains in the vine. Also, in the same way we cannot bear fruit unless we remain in Him. It is very clear Jesus stated apart from Him we can do nothing.

Looking at the big picture, the positive note in remaining in Him benefits the nourishing of others with the WORDS of Christ while also nourishing ourselves by understanding others’ lives.

Let’s pray: GOD ALWAYS HELP US TO FIND WAYS TO PRODUCE FRUIT SO THAT WE MAY GLORIFY YOUR NAME. IN JESUS NAME, AMEN.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Devotions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.