Abide | Wednesday Night Service

Well, thank you, Pastor Steph, for the opportunity to get to share tonight. You guys doing okay? Everybody enjoying the warm weather and the pollen?

I was calling it demon dust the other day.

My. My eyes. Like, have you been crying? No, it's just the pollen. It's so bad.

But excited to get to share tonight. If you have your Bibles or your phone or iPad or whatever you like to use, we're going to be in the Book of John, the Gospel of John tonight. John 15.

John 15. Going to be looking at verses 1 through 17. I'm reading from the NIV version. I'm going to read this to us tonight. A pretty good chunk of scripture.

Just follow along as we go. Here we go. So John 15, starting in verse one, says, I am the true vine. Now, this is the words of Jesus. Keep in mind, I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. Why? Every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain in you.

No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

But apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me. You are like a branch that is thrown away and withers, so the branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

Verse 9. Here it says, 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. And just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in him, may be in you.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me But I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you.

This is my command. Love each other. You guys pray with me. I know we just prayed, but before we really jump in, let's just pray one more time together. And Holy Spirit, we just ask that you would fill this place tonight.

Lord, I pray you would speak through me as I share. Lord, I have very little to offer. But you have a lot to offer. And so we just ask, Lord, you give us ears to hear. We love you, Jesus.

Pray these things in your name. Amen. So just a little context to kind of bring to the scripture. Context is important when you're reading scripture because say that I just called a person an idiot and you don't know what's going on. You would say, Trent, that's horrible of you.

Why would you call that person an idiot? But if that person had just hit me with a hammer in my head, you would understand. Okay, now I know why you just called that person an idiot. So we need some context when reading scripture. John 15, this is part of what scholars call like Jesus final discourse.

So he's about to be arrested very shortly after this. And that kind of runs from like chapter 13 through 17. These are very intimate, personal words. If we look back in your scripture, chapter 13 is where Jesus washes his disciples feet. He also predicts his betrayal.

He predicts that Peter's going to deny him. He declares that he's the only way to the Father. There's a lot that happens in these chapters and so it's important to know some context. So as he's sharing all this in John 15, keep in mind his disciples have been traveling with him for years. They've been doing ministry with him.

And he's kind of just dropped like some bombs on him, right? It's like, when are you going to betray me? When are you going to deny me? You just washed their feet. There's a lot that's happened.

So they're probably sitting there if I put myself in their shoes. Important to remember that is he's a lot Jesus, like what's, what's going on? So it's important to remember that as he's talking about this in this context, a couple of the key themes in this chapter is connection to Christ, right? So the vine, Jesus is the vine. It's important when it comes up, he's referring to himself.

I'm the vine, my father is the gardener, and we are the branches. And so what I want to do tonight is basically just walk through a couple of these scriptures. I have been sitting really, in John 15 for a long time. Just there's so much, like, richness in it. And I think Jesus, like, we're really good at seeing Jesus as our Savior a lot of times in the American church.

He's also our teacher, and there's so much to unpack in just his words. And so I want to just kind of walk through a couple of these verses, and we'll have a time to pray together and we'll be done for the evening. And then Pastor Nathan's doing a car wash for everyone who needs to wash that pollen off their car. He just found out about it. So let's look at verse 4.

Verse 4. Here. Jesus says, remain in me as I also remain in you. Again, it's important to think about the context here, but then also the context of what these disciples are about to witness, right? Jesus knows at this point he's going to be arrested, he's going to be crucified, and his words to them are, remain in me.

I think it's pretty interesting. I like to, when I read scripture, really think about, like, the moment, what maybe body language would be, like, all that kind of stuff. And I think about that, like, when Jesus is saying this, he's probably looking at them in a tender way, but also like a, hey, like, things are about to get very real, right? Remain in me. And I think that's a word for us even as we're sitting here.

What is it? April 30, 2025. I keep writing 2024 on paperwork still, but, man, the world is pretty wild. There's a lot. I'm not like a doom and gloom kind of guy, but there's a lot of just craziness going on in the world, right?

And I just keep thinking of those words because think about the disciples. They've been journeying with Jesus, and he knows that he's about to be arrested. He knows he's about to be crucified, and he knows also how disorienting that's going to be for them, right? Like, they've done ministry with him, they've seen him do all these things, and everything's about to go down and their worlds are going to get turned upside down. And so part of his final discourse, he says, remain in me.

And so tonight, like, you may be going through some crazy stuff, or you may be experiencing things that you did not see coming, and just hear those words of Jesus for you tonight remain in me, right? Also as I also remain in you. Some translations, that word remain is translated abide. And really a lot of translations, it's abide. And it can mean remain or to remain, dwell or to stay.

So it's like a. It's a constant thing. It's not something that passes by, but it's a remain, like, stay close to me, right? Jesus is calling us to stay close to him. Skipping to verse five, here he says, if you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. So how do we know that we're apart, abiding in Jesus? How do we know we're remaining in Jesus? Dwelling in Jesus? It's the fruit of our lives, right?

Pastor Clay kind of hit on this Sunday some about just the hypocrisy in the church and how the fruit isn't always the best, right? And that is the evidence of a life that's remaining in Jesus. If you're sitting here right now and you're wondering, do, am I remaining in Jesus? The fruit of your life is the evidence of that question. It will answer that question, right?

What is the. Like, what does that look like? Obviously, we know the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, but also came across this verse in 2nd Peter 1:5 through 8. It says, for this, for this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith. Goodness and to goodness.

Knowledge and to knowledge. Self control. And to self control. Perseverance and to perseverance. Godliness.

And to godliness. Mutual affection. And to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So there is a calling for us as Christians and for us as people who are abiding and remaining in Jesus.

We're called to look different. We're supposed to produce different fruit than the trees of the world, if you want to say that, right? It's interesting. My mom, I don't know why we even have this, but she has a candle that looks like an apple pie. And it looks very real, like a very real apple pie.

And she would always bring it out. I think she may still have it, but she would bring it out in the fall when we're like, you know, doing Thanksgiving dinners, pumpkins, whatever else. My poor grandpa, man, when he was still probably did it, dude, he would try to cut that pie. He probably did it at least three times. I remember he'd see it and he'd Get a knife, and he'd go to cut it and candle, you know.

But the thing is, it's like when. When life hits you, when the knife of life, if you want to say that, hits you and comes to cut you at the core, it's very easy to tell if you're real or not. Like if the fruit's real or if the fruit's not right. And as followers of Jesus, that's evidence that you are abiding and remaining in him, that you're bearing fruit. In that same verse, he says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

And what he's meaning by that is it's more of a spiritual thing, right? You can do a lot of things without Jesus. You look at the world and there's a lot of wealthy, successful people, right, who have done a lot of. But what he's getting at is of spiritual value. You can't do anything apart from me.

I recently. Well, I'll say recently, a couple months back, had a meeting with a guy, very successful business guy, and had kind of just gone through a lot of stuff. And it made him realize, like, everything I've accomplished really is nothing. And that's what Jesus is getting at here. Materialism, consumerism, whatever that all looks like for us, that is not the thing, right?

It's the presence of Jesus in our life. It's the deepness of the well that he wants to dig for us. That's our source and that's our nourishment. So again, apart from me, you can do nothing.

Look at verse two. Go back to verse two. We're going to kind of go in reverse a little bit. Pruning. He says he cuts off every branch.

And when he says he there, he's referring to God. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. I am not like a gardener. Pastor Terry would be the person to ask gardening questions to. I'm not that person.

I had a. I used to. My office used to be on the side of the building, and I had a plant in there that. That poor plant would die all the time. Ms. Bonnie, who used to work here, kept it alive. And I came in one day, and it was just.

It was alive again. And so I started calling it Lazarus. That was my plant name. So I'm not like a. I don't have a green thumb says tree. But my neighbor a couple houses down, he always prunes his tree, his bush, and his front flower.

Bed. And when he does it, it always looks so, like, skimpy. Just looks ugly. Like, why would he do that? Even his wife is like, he does that every year.

He cuts it down, whatever. But then fast forward, and that thing looks beautiful, right? And some of you are like, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. I should probably do that in mine. But that's what God is saying here, or what Jesus is saying about God is that he prunes us so that we would be more fruitful.

And in life, it's like, I'm kind of going through a pruning season now where things are like, this doesn't really. Didn't really think this would happen, right? But it's bearing more fruit. And for any of us, it's important to remember, like, God's not pruning us to just inflict pain, or he's not pruning us to. Just because he can, but there's something to it.

He's pruning us so that we would bear more fruit. And I felt like even as I was kind of working through these notes earlier and praying, like, some. Some of us, and maybe someone tonight that's here, like, God's wanting to prune something. And I. I literally saw the picture of my neighbor's tree, and it looks like so. But then it becomes beautiful.

And even I. I feel like it's something. It can even be a social status, job, income. I don't know what it is, but, man, let the Lord. Let the Lord do the pruning.

Is this making sense to you guys?

So important to remember that the painful seasons and seasons that don't make sense. Pruning like, it's happening for a reason, right? To bear more fruit. To bear more fruit.

All right, let's move to verse nine. If you're following along here, it says, as the Father has loved me, so have I. You now remain in my love.

I love that. How relational this is. Think about the context. Jesus is sitting with them and he's saying, remain in my love. And I think that's important to remember in our spiritual walks, is that is the first and foremost thing, is that we remain in God's love.

Like, we don't. We're not striving. We're not trying to earn anything, but it's a. Remaining in his love.

And how do we redo that? That's the question. It's like, okay, remaining his love. How do we do that? And that's by obedience.

Verse 10. He says, 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. Obedience. I have a two and a half year old, my wife and I, and two and a half year olds are crazy. They're like so sweet and they're the best.

But then she's also insane at times. And you're like, I don't. I don't even know what's happening right now. So we're learning obedience. We're learning discipline.

And it's like, so cute because you're trying to. Trying to, like, stay patient. But I'm also trying not to laugh when she's doing things. But it's all coming from a place of love, right? Like, I don't want.

I don't. I need her to learn some things so she doesn't hurt herself. It's the same with us. Remaining in the Lord's love is obedience. And obedience is not legalism.

It's not a heavy thing if we remain in his love. Like, we understand that obedience is for our good. He's actually protecting us from something, right? So obedience. Verses 12 through 14 says this.

My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this. To lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

That's such a cool thing to think about too. Like the friendship. Jesus sitting with them, saying, like, you are my friends, right? If you do what I command. There's a relationship part there that is comes to us through the stream of, like, obedience.

And so kind of the results, some of the results of abiding in verses 7 says this. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish. Now this can get a little. We can get a little saucy with this one. We can get a little weird sometimes with this one.

Ask whatever you wish, right? You know, I've never prayed for a head full of hair. Maybe I need to. I don't know. I don't even know if I wish that anymore.

Oh, Pastor Jay has. I've saved a lot of money on shampoo, you know, but we can get a little bit weird with this sometimes, right? Ask whatever you wish. You know, it's the person who hasn't studied for the test. I don't even picked up the book.

And then right before, it's like, God, please let me get Hayes. Are like, you just keep driving by gas stations and your gas lights on. You're like, God, don't let me Run out of gas. Like it's. Yeah, you guys get it.

So there's a, there's a thing here where he's. What he's saying is, is like, if we're abiding in Jesus, if we're in alignment with Jesus, our prayers are probably going to be in line with what he wants for us, right? So when we're praying in Jesus name, it's not a, a magic word that just gets us what we want, but it's. Our lives are so in line with what Jesus wants that our prayers are naturally probably going to happen more. I don't know.

But we're in line with what he's saying. And so that's, that's what he's getting at there. Verses verse 15. Here Jesus says, I no longer call you servants, that I've called you friends.

Like, just think about that truth tonight that Jesus calls you friend. He calls you friends. He knows all your garbage, he knows all your mess. He had been journeying with these disciples for years. He had seen all the mess they had been in, and he calls them friends.

Abiding. I love this one. Commentary said, abiding replaces intimacy, or, excuse me, replaces distance with intimacy. So it's no longer he's at an arm's reach, but it's, we're friends, we're close, we're in it together. Verse 15.

I no longer call you servants and I've called you friends. Verse 16. Here he says, I ch. I choose you. I chose you.

Excuse me, and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last. Fruit that will last. I started thinking about this as it relates to, like, generational impact, like, I want fruit in my life that's going to last, right? And I started thinking about even him telling this to the disciples, like, if you stay close to me, there's going to be fruit that's produced in your life that's going to last.

And if you study the lives of the disciples after this, they did some amazing things. They also, a lot of them were martyred, which is intense too. And I keep thinking back, remain in me. Him saying that, remain in me. Like, how many of them, when they were about to die, thought back to those words of Jesus, like, remain in me.

But I love this fruit that will last.

I keep bringing up my daughter because I feel like when you're a parent, that's just what you do. But I was pushing her on the swing the other day and she's singing Twinkle Little Star, cute little voice. And I thought about that, like, man, and I hope she grows my lab. But fruit that will last.

But fruit that will last.

I want to get very practical and just talk about how to abide. Like, it's a fun. It's like, beautiful to think about, but how do we actually do it? Sometimes we can get very profound, and then we're like, okay, like, just woke up in the morning, my breath smells bad. What do I do with my life?

Like, we got to get practical. So a couple. Couple ways to abide. This is pretty much probably elementary to most of us, but verse seven, Jesus says, let, let his words remain in you.

And so one of the most basic things for us is to get in the Word. I know at church we talk about that a lot, but, like, it's essential. Like, it's not. It shouldn't be something that is recommended, but it should just be like, hey, like, this is part of the whole deal. A rule that I heard somebody say and I try my best to do.

This is scripture before screens in the morning. Scripture before screens. In today's society and age, that sounds like very extreme, right? But scripture before screens. And here's why I have to do it.

Because there's times where if I get on my phone and I see a text message from someone or check an email or whatever else, I am now abiding and I'm now remaining in those things, right? And that has. That has set the trajectory for my day. Not Jesus, but whatever that all looks like. Another way to do it is to really dig into God's Word.

There's amazing resources everywhere online to where you can really, like, learn the context. The Bible Project, I know Pastor Nathan's used some of their stuff. Amazing resource. But, like, submerge yourself in God's Word. He meets us there.

Like it's alive and it's active, right? He meets us in His Word. So read the Word and do it daily. Like, make it a habit. I don't like phones, but one of the great things about them is that we have the Bible app.

So it's very accessible if you're in line somewhere. If you're going to look at your phone, might as well be the Bible, right? So read the Word. Another one, very elementary thing, prayer.

I think we can complicate prayer a lot, but at its very basic root level, it's us communicating with God right in your car when you're walking through the store, whatever that looks like. Like, prayer is the thing for me. Interesting. I was reading a story recently about farmers, like, in the Midwest and The west, back in the day, they would run a rope from like the front door of their house to their barns. So when the blizzards would come in the winter and white out conditions, they could still get to their barns and they could take care and feed of their animals.

And that to me sometimes is prayer, right? Life is crazy and naturally it's hard sometimes to connect with God. But you have that rope that even if you can't see, you know, if you're praying and you're going, it's going to get you there. And so prayer, sometimes you don't have to say anything. If you don't know what to say, just say that God, I don't even know what to say.

And then you just sit in his presence. I ride in my truck. Some of y' all would probably think I was weird if you had a camera because it is so quiet at times in my truck, I'm just cruising along. Unless River's in the backseat and then she's. I don't even.

She's just going wild. She was drawing tattoos on herself the other day with a marker. But just being in the quiet and just, man, asking the Lord, like, I don't even know what to say, but will you speak to me in these moments that is abiding, it's dwelling, it's staying close to the presence of God and staying close to Jesus. Another way is the body of Christ is community. It's being in the church, being a part of this.

I wish that like sometimes you could be spiritually strong just by yourself. Sometimes people are hard. You know what I mean? I've said it before. I'm the most patient, kind, loving person.

When I'm all alone, that's a real, It's a real thing. But that's why we need each other, right? How are you supposed to be patient if there's no one to actually help you practice patience again, a two and a half year old teaching me a lot courage or how are you supposed to be loving? How are you supposed to be kind? How are you supposed to be have courage?

Like we need community to do this, right? It's not, you know, happenstance that Jesus had disciples that were all from different. Like in today it would be like a, basically a Democrat and a Republican being around the same table together and like, hey, we're going in this direction. Even more extreme in some ways when you think about it. So there was something about that we need community.

We need each other. We need places where we can confess. We need places that, you know, like, hey, I need encouragement and you can text somebody, or, hey, I need you to pray right now, and you text that person and you know, like, they will actually do it, right? Community.

And I think too, like, one of the beautiful things about the church is it is a place that is supposed to look different. Like, we're supposed to look different. We're supposed to look different than the world. We're supposed to be a glimpse of the kingdom come, of the new humanity, right? We're supposed to function differently.

We need each other to do that, right? Someone's complaining, and we're just all complaining, then we're just all complaining. But if you're in somewhere and someone's complaining and you can kind of like turn the tide a little bit, like, that's what we need, right? So, community. The last thing to how to abide daily is just embrace the pruning.

That's what I wrote down. Embrace the pruning. There's something there God wants to tap into to draw you closer, right? To draw you closer to Jesus and to also help you bear more fruit. And so if you're in that season, like, pruning is not.

It's not fun, it's not a good place to be. It's not comfortable. But it's for the purpose of bearing more fruits, right? So embrace the pruning. I want to read just a couple of these verses again to just kind of let them.

Let them sit.

I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain in you. And no branch, or no branch can bear fruit by itself.

It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I'm the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. But apart from me, you can do nothing.

So let's do this. We're going to pray. Daniel, if you want to come up to the Keys and Brittany, we're just going to take a few minutes to really reflect and ask a couple questions.

One is very simple. Are you abiding in Jesus? When you look at your life and you look at the fruit of your life, are you truly abiding in Jesus? Like that constant presence, staying with him, staying close, dwelling with him. Are you abiding in Jesus?

The other question is, what fruit is evident in your life? And I'm. And I'm talking more about the what's deep? What's deep in there? Like I was saying, if someone's going to cut you to the core, what are they going to find there?

Those two questions, are you abiding in Jesus? What fruit is evident in your life?