I have to admit that I don’t know a whole lot about gardening, but my family has had blueberry bushes on our land since the ‘80s. We don’t do a lot to cultivate the bushes, but they’ve been productive most years. By this time in the summer, we usually wind up with more blueberries than we know what to do with.
One thing I do know is that to grow blueberries, the limbs at the ends of the bushes have to be connected to the bushes themselves. The roots and trunks of the bushes are where the water and the nutrients come from, so connection is essential for life.
Jesus said the same thing to His disciples about living in connection to Him. Using the metaphor of a grapevine, which the disciples would have easily understood, Jesus told them:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:1-5 (ESV)
He added:
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
John 15:8-10 (ESV)
“Abide” is a weird word that we don’t use all that often, but it means to stay or remain. The Apostle Paul reminded the Colossian church, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7, ESV, emphasis added).
Keeping our roots in the Lord is vital to a faithful life. Just as the blueberries can’t grow if they’re not connected to the bushes, we’re useless if we aren’t connected to Jesus. As D.A. Carson puts it in his commentary on John, “The ultimate alternatives are set out with simple starkness: one either remains in the vine and is a fruit-bearing branch, or one is thrown away and burned.”
In Psalm 80:8-17, Asaph recounts how God cultivated His Hebrew people as a vine and asks Him to restore that vine by guiding His Son of Man:
You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.
It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River.
Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.
Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine,
the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your face!
But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
Hudson Taylor, the missionary who served in China for 54 years in the 19th and 20th centuries, said, “Union with Christ, and abiding in Christ, what do they not secure? Peace, perfect peace; rest, constant rest; answers to all our prayers; victory over all our foes; pure, holy living; ever-increasing fruitfulness. All, all of these are the glad outcome of abiding in Christ.”
Without our connection to Jesus, we’re not going to bear fruit. We abide by reading God’s Word, praying, and regularly taking part in Christian community — when we do those things, the fruit that we bear shows up in every area of our lives.
“If you are a believer, you have been crucified with Christ, your sin and desires can be filled with the spirit such that you live in obedience to God,” a recent BetterMan devotional reminded me. “You live and show others the fruit of the spirit which is love, joy, peace, and more. You show that you’re godly by how you live daily.”
“To bear much fruit you must abide in Christ, you must be connected to the vine,” the devotion concluded. “In your strength, and apart from Him, you will come up empty every time.”
Are you connected to the vine? If so, how will you bear fruit in your life? If not, I encourage you to connect to that rich source of life.
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