Manifesto of Fruitfulness | An Invitation to a Life of Joy & Love

human wisdom, but as the very words of God to us. John chapter 15 verse 1 says this, "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 have 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. And apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you're like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such 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. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands, and remain in his love. I've 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've called you friends. For everything that I've learned from my Father I've made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command, love each other. This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated. Check out this video. It's the Word of the Lord in our early 20s. I just had this view that if Jesus is who the Bible says, that that requires one reaction, and he's not through the Bible says it requires a different reaction than anything. The middle doesn't make any sense. But I remember being in 2012 in New York City, interviewing for a job, and I heard the audible voice of the Lord say, "I'm going to bring you to New York." And in 2019, I got a phone call and it was time to come to New York. The Lord was always faithful in keeping these types of promises and meeting desires, but not always on the schedule that we would go for. Before we moved here, when we would travel to New York, it was definitely a fun place to visit. When we decided that we were moving here, I got really excited because I was like, "Oh, I'm really going to be able to make the most of the

city because it offers so much." And I think having moved here, that is still true, but God has really shifted my perspective. And now it's not what can the city do for me, but what can I do for the city, and how am I going to serve and make this amazing place even better through what he wants to do through it. It's the simplest way I know to think about why we stay in New York. It's just, I think we're city people. I love not having a car. The reality of when you go on the street, it's like you just see real life out there. And that's just the way I think both of us were designed. I think God's really given us a vision for planting here, the idea of being able to put down roots and be here in a place that is fairly transient for a lot of people. It's just nice to kind of think with the long term in life. Loving God in the city is just trying to remember with all the things going on, you know, to keep the Lord in his primary place and keep Jesus on the throne. I think loving the neighbor, there's just every opportunity. It's from just recognizing the humanity of a homeless person. It is sharing life with an elderly person in the building or the neighbor or all the people you come in contact with at work. I mean, there's just the number of different encounters. And just trying to remember that every person you see is someone that God loves immensely. It's a really compelling way to express to a lot of people that they matter and the Lord cares for them. - Well, I was preaching for a friend of mine in San Francisco a few years ago. San Francisco is America's other great city. And it's one of those tech centers. It's all about expansion, efficiency, human ingenuity. It's about mastering life and the accumulation of resources. And it was for a guy named Ben Pilgrim. His wife, Shauna, they lead an incredible church called Epic Church. And everybody I met in the church was working on a startup that was changing humanity. I was like, what are you doing? By the end of it, I was like, I stopped asking people 'cause I was so beat down about my life.

And it was a great weekend, preached a lot, did a Jesus masterclass on prayer, had a great time. And they said, hey, we wanna show you how we stay sane in San Francisco, which you know means you're leaving San Francisco. So they said, we wanna take you to Napa, baby. Have you ever been to the Napa Valley? It's quite strong, I hadn't been out there. So we go out to Napa and we go to the Coppola's Winery and estate. Now, these are the movie folks that made the Godfather trilogy of films and all the rest of it. So we, and that looks like the Godfather is there, right there. So we go out towards incredible, through the windows in the distance you see these vineyards. It's just like a poetic, poetic, beautiful vision of life. You come back inside on and there's these huge barrels of wine. You know what that wine's doing? Aging gracefully, that's what's happening to that wine. Sitting there, they've got this tasting room, amazing tasting room and I'm sitting there. And I was just reminded of the tension that our world faces right now, okay? It's a contrast of two visions of life. On one side, you've got the tech, might and power of San Francisco. And on the other side, you've got grapes on vines and the French laundry. I mean, you've just, there's like not a lot going on, okay? And I think in some ways, this, we feel

as a species right now, that this is the choice that is put before us. Will the tech overlords and AI obliterate humanity with a more than 10% chance in the next three years? Or can we return to the beauty of humanity? You know right now, the big conversation is, can AI actually kill us? And I think we're having, honestly, for the first time in a long time, a kind of conversation about what it means to be human. Do we want tech and all of its mechanized benefits? Or do we want an authentic human expression? Now, do you wanna know what the problem with this is? We have an assumption that if we don't, if AI doesn't kill us, that as a species, we're going to be fine because people are so good. Like, can I give you some feedback? We're not doing that good as a species, regardless of AI. If it's not some tech that's gonna kill us, we'll invent a weapon to destroy us, or we'll invent a tool to hate one another, we will come up with another way to destroy people. And it made me think this is a false dichotomy that's being presented to us. Authentic humanity or the life of tech and machines. We need another option. And do you wanna know where there is another option? And this is what Jesus is talking about in this passage. And here's what it is. It's not raw humanity or machines.

It is human beings in union with God, as they were intended to live, overflowing with divine life and love, healing the world around it. And that is the option that Christianity is bringing to the table. People say to me, like, what on earth does Jesus have to say into a cultural moment like ours? And I'm like, the only way forward that makes sense for the human heart, a life with God where his love heals us and flows out of us. And really, that's why these passages that we looked at tonight are so revolutionary and they're so remarkable because Jesus is making the claim to know how to live with the secret of life. Now, there was a book written quite a while ago called Secrets of the Vine. Have any of you haven't ever read this book? Okay, we are literally Sam. Okay, well, (congregation laughing) (audience laughing) So this is a fresh audience for this message, okay? The book The Secret of the Vine is a short book. It's not 400 pages of theology. It's just a vision and manifesto of what it looks like to live with the life of God. We're doing a whole series on biblical fruit. If you only read one book about it, this is the book to read, okay? Now in The Secrets of the Vine,

he makes this point, which is, I hadn't seen it 'til I read this, okay? First thing, Jesus' claim to be the vine is not, we often view it like this. Jesus had these disciples that were kind of dumb at times, so he has to give them simple little truths so they can understand the kingdom of heaven. When Jesus said I am the vine, he wasn't saying to his dumb mates, he's a parable where finally you can understand what I've been trying to tell you. The idea of the vine, when you go back in the Old Testament, you'll remember Israel was the vine, it says that God planted out of Egypt. So the Jewish people as a nation were considered God's covenant people and his life was gonna flow through them and you'll remember their original mandate was to bless the world, that all nations of the earth will be blessed through you. So for Jesus to say I am the vine, what he's saying is that life with God is not accessed through ethnic identity and a religious system anymore. I am relocating access to the life of God into me as a person. Israel's not the vine anymore, I am the vine. This is a tectonic shift in an understanding of life with God and how you access the presence of God. So they wouldn't have been there going,

oh thanks Jesus, the kingdom is getting a little confusing, but now that you said you're the vine, I really understand it. They would have been shocked at the audacity of one man to claim. That entire story is now being fulfilled in him. And then secondly, it's amazing to me, Jesus is giving this vision of life in his kingdom. He's about to die, you'll remember, this is the upper room discourse. In a very short period of time, Jesus is about to go to the cross and die for the sins of the world. And you know, if you've ever been around someone who's dying, they're dying words matter. Jesus gathers his friends around him and he says, I am going to give you the key to cycling the nation and living on mission. And at this point they're like, okay, I get that you're the vine and that's a bit controversial about life. Hit me with the secret. How are we going to disciple the world? And it's amazing to me what doesn't happen. Jesus doesn't lean in and say, hey fellas, I need some of you to move to Rome and I need you to associate with the cultural elites and maybe you get a few of you in the Senate. And then maybe if we do it long enough and it goes really well,

maybe we can get one of our people to be a Caesar and then we can really just like disciple the nations. He doesn't come forward with a cultural influence strategy. He doesn't come forward with an escapist strategy. He doesn't say, hey, listen man, this world's so bad. Just go into the wards, love God, be a mystic. Don't worry about engaging with the culture around you. He doesn't give a religious performance option. He's like, his response is not, I'm going to need you to set up a 24 hour prayer chain for 2,000 years so I can get this done. It's amazing, here's what he says. It's very, very simple. The key for discipling the world and being the true humanity is learning to remain with me. It is intimacy with Jesus that results in fruit that heals the world. So let me give you this teaching very quickly in one chart. Here's what it is. Jesus is the vine. The father is the vine dresser. We are the branches, fruit comes through us. Got it? Good. Jesus is the vine. You're not the vine. The father's not the vine. Christ is the vine. We're grafting him through him. The father is the vine dresser.

He's the one tending what is growing and pruning it to make sure that it bears the most fruit possible. So life is found through union with Christ and the father is working in our lives orchestrating what happens for maximal fruitfulness, where the branches and the fruit comes through us. I want you to know how intimate and how relational this metaphor is. So often we're just like, why doesn't God just step in and fix things? It's like he could do that if he wants that he's more interested in loving union with us and bearing his life through us. So in many ways, what's wrong with the church is not God. It's us not abiding in living out the life that Jesus has called us to do. Some of you are like, this is too much. Put a picture up. There's a picture. You gather, okay, so the roots go down. You've got this. You've grafted him with this union. This was for the slides for this morning because we had our children in the services because we're in another venue. And all these kids that grew up in New York, you don't know how much nature they've seen. And I don't know how many like wild vines are in Central Park. I know where the couple are. I know there's a place in those kitchen. But this was just to help our urban children understand how life works. I also want you to note that even though this is the central idea of the passage, this is the central metaphor, it's not the main point. Jesus

gives a metaphor, but the metaphor has a point. And here's what the point is. It is abiding. Learning to abide. The word abide is used. It's a Greek word, man, I know it's used 11 times in these 16 verses. It's used 120 times in the New Testament. And it's not like a Christian women's conference devotional kind of a word, okay? It's not even a gentle word. It's about remaining, being stable, strong connection, rooted. And so what Jesus is saying is like, I need you to stay connected deeply to the love that I have for you. And then Jesus also says this, the stakes are high. He doesn't give like a partial abiding list. There's no sort of abiding. How you do? I'm sort of abiding right now. He's like, you're abiding and the life of God is flowing through you, or you are severed from the source and slowly withering and dying. There is no sort of abiding in the kingdom of God. You're connected. You may need pruning for fruitfulness, but you are connected to the vine or you're cut off from the vine. That's why the concept of like sort of following Jesus is an oxymoron. You can't sort of follow Jesus. It's like I'm sort of married. I'm like, I don't think it works like that. You're in a covenant relationship or you are not. Now this makes me ask a question. If the whole point, if Jesus is making the claim, that life for the new humanity where God Himself will flow through us and we live the way that we were created to live, how do we do that? How do we abide? Jesus gives four. Honestly, simple, but very hard to really believe in a city like ours, ways that we can learn to abide. Here's the first way to abide. He says this, remain in my love. Remaining in His love is the first way to abide. Look at verse nine, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you." Do you get that? You are loved by Jesus the same way that Jesus is loved by the Father. Do you believe that God feels that way about you? Do you have that sense of being on the receiving end of the affection of Jesus for your life? Do you have that sense that when God sees you, He's not disappointed with you, but He delights in you? Is that your experience of what Jesus is like? And then He says this word, now remain in my love. I've mentioned this before, but it absolutely bears repeating because I mentioned it from this verse. Jesus never tells you to

remain in how you feel about God. In some sense, it almost doesn't matter how you feel about how much you love God because your faith is not built on the strength of your love or the intensity of your feelings. It's built on God's unchanging love and a strength of His commitment to you. Remain in my love. If you only went to God when you were feeling it, you wouldn't go that often, but we don't go because we're feeling it, we go because of His unfailing love towards us. Now, this is really important because we are so conditioned for conditional love, that we don't know how to receive. Most of you, your receiver in the spirit is broken, which means you don't know how to just let God love you. You don't know how to remain in His love. You don't know how to stay connected to that, and that is the heart of what abiding is about. It's about deliberately receiving rather than earning, resisting the achievement society and its instincts that tell us you are only as good as you're doing in your job right now, and it relocates our identity outside of the feedback loop of performance, which we're all absolutely addicted to, whether it's the approval of co-workers, likes on social media or affirmation from your peers. It breaks Now, some of you are like, "Well, I know the Bible." I'm like, Jesus doesn't say, "Know the Bible," though he loves his word. I've met so many Christians whose heads are filled with ideas about God, but they have never had an encounter with him. They're controlled by love for the world, of fear or anxiousness. Nothing about them says, "There's an overflowing love coming out of you." So I want to say this, it doesn't matter if you're like, "Man, I've been a church my whole life, I know Jesus loves me." There's knowing Jesus loves you, and then there is the radical amazement of the encounter with the Son of God. That's what Jesus is talking about. Listen, this to me is absolutely extraordinary. We were praying earlier in Ephesians 3. You know what Paul says? He says, "You need power to comprehend love because the world has weakened your heart and your capacity to receive." Paul has to pray that that would have power to receive the love of Christ, and they'd know the depth of it. Have you had an encounter like that with the love of God? Thomas Aquinas, have you heard of him? Maybe there's a local Catholic high school called Aquinas High School. One of the greatest theologians in the Catholic Church wrote the Sumer Theologica's incredible thinker towards the end of his life while receiving communion. He had an encounter

with the love of God where he really comprehended the mystery of divine love, and he was so overwhelmed with it. He said, "Everything I've written is like straw," and he refused to finish his work because he was so dumbfounded by love. And I bring this up because so many New Yorkers live in their mind that they have tiny little hearts, big heads, shriveled hearts. And so they're not bearing witness to the kind of scandalous love that God has for us. You've got to learn to receive his love. Understand the cross, the beauty of the gospel, that God loves you because he has chosen to set his love on you, not because of anything you have done. It is so hard when you've gone to the right school and gotten the right internship, and you're trying to build the right kind of life, and you've got all the approval metrics where you need them to simply believe that God's not impressed with any of that. He just loves you. How good are you at receiving God's love? Do you know who Henry Nowan is? Nowan's strong, was strong. He's even stronger now in heaven, but I love Nowan. He was a Dutch psychologist, priest, really just, he was a tortured soul that brought his angst to God and the gift of pain or breathtaking fruit that we are still feasting on now in his life with God. And Henry Nowan was like, in his time, like one of the most sought-after Christian thinkers and speakers. He was lecturing at Harvard. He was like every sort of important event that required a Christian perspective. He was out of it. And towards the end of his life, he started serving in a home for the severely mentally disabled. It was a community of Christian homes called La Arch. And basically, they provided 24-hour care to really, really severely disabled people. Many of them couldn't speak, non-verbal. Many of them couldn't control their bodies and required restraint in chairs. And everybody would say to him, "What is a brilliant thinker and leader like you?" And I wouldn't say it, but they would say, wasting time and talent on people who can do nothing for you. And he had this beautiful reply where he just said, "You think I'm serving them. They're serving me because they remind me when they receive communion that there is nothing they can do for God but receive his love. And they are the greatest sermon to me, either ever witness." And so, so often, we think that God's impressed with what we do for him. Let's just do a little check. Can we do a little check? Day one, you get up at 4.30 and seek God listening to a live in Hell's Kitchen on repeat. You don't read a couple verses from the Gospel of Matthew. You read the Gospel of Matthew. You then throw a sinner's breakfast like Matthew did for all your non-Christian friends. Leave four of them to Christ. You go through your day, you close the deals. At night you come to oppress that before you serve the poor in secret. And you

you go to bed whispering. That's day one. Here's day two. Wake up, looking up porn and masturbate. Lost all day, failed, yell at someone on the train, envy your coworkers for having the job that you want. Isolated from your parents. Eat bad food, binge the bear on the TV, okay? And go to sleep at two a.m., not even knowing that God exists. Now let me ask you a question. On which day does God love you more? In your heart, he loves you the same on both days. The greatest thing we have to learn to do is to receive his love, to believe that it is not ours. He died when you were his enemy. How much more now that you're in his family will he love you and be patient with you? The cross speaks a verdict of our worth and there's nothing we can do to contribute or add to our salvation. It is finished because Jesus finished it not because you contributed to it. And so you have to learn to remain in that scandalous love. Now, and says this, we are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us. I am the beloved of God even before I was born. Many things are true about you. But the truest thing about you is this. You are the one that Jesus loves.

That's who you are. You are the one that Jesus loves and the greatest struggle for some of you will be to approach God to simply believe that in spite of all you've done, that's true. That is true. Number two, can you see like, yeah, a bite, I get that? That is not like a soft devotional word. That is a war for the love of your heart. It is hard to believe that you were loved in spite of what you've done. But that is the gospel. And the enemy wants to make it about works. He wants to rub your face in your shame. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more and there's nothing you can do to make God love you less. He loves you because you're in Christ and he's a loving God. Is that the truest thing about you? Number two, so you're going to learn to live in that baby. You're going to get that in you. That has to be the operating system of your spirit. You have to learn to think fondly of yourself because God is fond of you. What do you think, when I walk around, you know what I think? I think God's like, look at Charlie's that walking around. (congregation laughing) I love this guy. I love this guy.

Ah, he's got like late nineties worshiping. I love, I love those songs. I love that he loves those songs. And when I got to sleep, I mean you go through David's understanding of God's love for him in the Psalms. He's like, man, where can I? I can't get out of your presence, man. Wherever I go, if I make my bed in hell, God's like, I love you in hell. He's like, if I go to the ends of the earth on a motorbike, on somebody's like, bro, I love you in Montana. You know, wherever you go, he loves us. Do you believe that? The great war of abiding is to remain in an unearned, unchanging, scandalous, grace-filled love of God. This is connected to the next one, remain in his word. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. Now, we tend to, so listen, when we're talking about spending time in God's word, listen, if I don't know how you spend time in God's word, I am pure digital, baby, okay? I am digital. I am iPad split screen. I am a cart pace. No, I know some of you Gen Z's. You're like, no, I like a paper Bible. I love that about you. If that's how you access the word, that's great. If you're like, you've got a candle you like

that's like an abide candle with a curated scent. And if you're getting out, you're standing with water and you've got like all kinds of colored pens and you've got journals and you've got William or Gusto and you're doing an atmosphere, I love that, okay? If you've got it in headphones and it's being read to you on the dweller, I don't care how it is. Here's what I'll say, just don't nibble. It's not snacking, you've got to get it in, you've got a feast on the word, that's the phrase we use and our core distinct is. You're not going to get the lies and the shame out with two minute Bible reading snippets. That stuff gets deep in us, that stuff burns us. Some of you are controlled by things that were said to you in the third grade. boyfriend said to you when you first moved to New York and you believe that's the truth about life and that stuff gets deep, those wounds get in our spirit, they're toxic. You need the truth. Remember in Ephesians 5 when it talks about husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church? But you remember what it says that Jesus does for the church and how he does it? It says he washes her through water in the Word and he nourishes her. And that's what the Word of God does is it washes the lies out of our life and out of our minds and it nourishes our spirit so that we can grow. Now this is really important because so many of us, a lot of folks been through a lot of trauma, we are ruminating on the worst things that have happened to us. We just get stuck in these loops that we cannot get out of and you're not going to break that purely with human self-talk. It's healthy self-talk is better than negative self-talk. But you know what's better than healthy self-talk? Divine affirmation and truth from God. Listen, in our culture that says you should love yourself, you will not be able to love yourself or come up with language more rich than what the Word says about how God loves you and feels about you. Go straight to the source and get that in you. This is a sustained,

marinating, taking in of the Word of God. And this Word is a supernatural living Word. It says that the Word is like a hammer that breaks the rock. It is living in active. It's like a sword that gets down and divides our motives and our spirits. There is power in the Word. And so you've got to get the Word in you. Some of you are like, "Oh, look, man, I've got ADD." And I just, there's a riddle and shortage. I just can't memorize. I have to do everything on listen to me. Tell me your favorite sports team and you tell me the stats of those players. And you tell me how the markets do. Listen, you can memorize what you love. Some of you are like, "I can't memorize." And you've got every Taylor Swift album ever put out lyrics. You could sing it backwards. I just want to say, we should be like that with the Word. Why rob yourself of the wonder of having the Word of God reform your mind and your spirit? Part of the reason some of your prayers aren't being answered, like you're not getting whatever you wish is because you've got disordered desires because you're believing lies and you're loving the wrong things from the world. And when the Word gets in you, it changes what you want and it changes how you pray. And I can say this in all honesty, if you're not seeing actual answers to prayer, it could be you're praying in the flesh and not out of the Word. Get the Word in you. Remain in His Word. Number three, remain obediently. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I've kept my Father's commands and remain in His love. I've told you this. Listen, these are two words you don't think go together. Okay, ready? Obedience and joy. Since I've told you this, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Do not rush past this. The gift on offer through abiding is the joy of Jesus completing you and your joy being full. Some of you need a baptism of joy tonight. Joyful obedience. When you love someone, you do whatever they ask, whatever they ask. I love that line that Tim Keller, he said, Tim Keller said, religion says, "I obey therefore He loves me." The gospel says, "He loves me therefore I obey." And I love that. This is love-based obedience. This is not like gritting your teeth. And I just want to tell you, you know what the Bible says about obedience? Two things. It brings joy and it brings blessing. How many of you, if that's not the greatest secret of Christianity, obey God's Word and it brings blessing and joy. Our culture will tell you, obey the Bible and it will restrict you, oppress you, beat you down. What a lie. You will be set free to live a life of joy. Look at the garden. Satan said, Satan said,

to Eve, God's holding out and you do it your way and is the world better or worse through disobedience. Are people more filled with joy? Ask yourself, the last time you disobeyed God, how was your conscience? How was church? We're like, "Oh, I'm so good to be in the house of God Eugene Peterson says, "No matter how natural our world makes it, sin is a foreign substance in the human soul. You are not made to sin. You are made to obey." So we remain obediently. Now, listen, obedience is also messy. It's hard. You're believing all these lies. You've been living in the world. Then you try and follow Jesus and then you screw up and you mess up and you're like, "I'm never going to do it again. You do it the next day of the classic. I'm never going to do it again the next hour." And we carry all this shame, but I've got good news for you. I love this from Richard Sibs. He says this, "There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us, and His mercy is in you every day, and He treats us according to His mercy, not our sin." And so I want you to know, just bring it to Jesus, say, "Hey, I messed up again. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and if you come with us and see our heart, He will never get sick of forgiving you as you are seeking to obey Him." Then this last point here, for this point, is interesting. Remain in community. Remain in His love, remain in His Word, remain obediently, but then remain in community. This is important because I think a lot of times we get sold a vision of abiding that says this, "Me and my journal in a monastery upstate." It's like it's all about our vision of abiding is purely individual.

So it's like, "Let's everyone shut up. We've got to be quiet. I'm sitting here. I'm abiding." Look at what Jesus says. "My command is this. Love each other as I've loved you. Great in love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends. You're my friends if you do what I command. Love one another as I've loved you." Now, whenever you talk about Christian love, people are like, "There's nothing unique about Christian love." Every tradition has some version of the golden rule. And Christianity is just a man-made religion that came up years ago when all other religions were being invented so that we could have social harmony and progress as a species. I was like, "I just want to tell you, there's no social advantage to loving your enemies and forgiving those who crucify you. Enemy love is the distinctive of the Christian faith." And Jesus says, "Love one another as I've loved you. Not love one another." It's not the golden rule. It's the platinum rule, enemy love. This is a distinctive of the Christian life. Now, you know what's hard about loving people? Do you want to know what it is? People are annoying. But honestly, people are so annoying. I'm annoying to some people. You're annoying to someone. There's never been a person on earth like, "Listen, Jesus was annoying to the Pharisees."

So we can't think, "Well, I've got this, you know, I've finally found like three friends and so I can't be around any annoying people." And it's like that's just not how the gospel works. See, that is a limited mentality that says love is a restricted commodity. And that if I give it away, there won't be an inflow of more of it. Here's the secret of the gospel. Like when I had my son, okay, when my son was born, I remember thinking, "I can't have any more children because I love this kid so much I'm going to run out of love." And I had my daughter and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, there's a whole, there's a, there's one over there. There's a whole nother well of love." Like where does this come from? It love is a renewable resource because God has unlimited love. And so we have to learn to remain in community. Now look at what Jesus says, "The fruit of life with Jesus." He says this, "It's security. It's permanent. It's fruit that remains. It's full of joy, answered prayer, sacrificial love for others, and it glorifies God." Don't you want to life like that? Well, some of you are like, "Yeah, but you don't know what I've done." I'm like, "Well, listen, to be honest with you, I'm sorry for what you've been through, but I don't care what you've done because what you've done does not cancel out the calling on your life." Look at what it says in John 15. Jesus says this, "So the disciples are probably thinking, 'I don't know if I can abide, then I can abide my way into discipling nations.'" Peter's like about to just deny Jesus three times. How about the opposite of abiding, denying Christ, okay? But then Jesus has to assure them, "No, no, no, no, no, no, though you struggle with

how you said, 'You did not choose me, but I chose you.'" And I appointed you so that you may go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that whatever you ask of my name, the Father will give you. Listen, you need to know this. You are appointed by God for this moment to bear fruit. Do you know how life-giving that is? To be walking around going, "I wonder, why am I here? How did I get here? What's the purpose of my life?" And to know the utter relief and joy of saying, "I am here because I am chosen and appointed with good works and fruit and it is not dependent Get out my way, I'm chosen and appointed and I'm walking in the good works prepared for me." You got that kind of gospel swagger, you got that? You need to believe that. You think you've done God some favor by choosing him, he's like, "Bro, I chose you." It's my preventing and drawing grace woke you from your spiritual death. You can be confident that God has a fruitful future for you regardless of your current moment or your current pruning. Now, this is great, but not everybody believes this. The lies are so deep, the temptations are so strong. And here's what I've learned, because we are made for union with God, that longing does not disappear. It just gets rerouted to things that distort us and break our hearts. Everybody is abiding in something. And there's a tragedy of abiding in the wrong things. Here's what I see some people abiding in, just self-preservation, like their whole goal is to maintain their own limited resources, and they're terrified that something will take that from them. This is not self-care, this is self-obsession and self-theat. I saw this statue, I thought this was really powerful. And this to me in some ways is what the soul of many people look like. It's like if you could take their best clothes that they've put on, like a kind of emotional armor, you could take that off and look at them like, "There's nothing there." They're hollowed out, filled with anxiety. The self-protective life is a defensive posture organized against the threat of lack. And someone will abide in like a spirit of fear will bury what they've got and miss out. Sometimes people abide in their own authenticity, they just get this vision of like, "I'm just going to be me." They're literally believing the lie. You can get fruit apart from God.

And they just say, "I'm going to be myself." But you know what the problem is? If you have to invent yourself, you have to sustain yourself. And do you know how hard it is to sustain an identity? Do you know how hard it is to make up who you want to be and then perform that all the time? And do you know how much you require other people to tell you? You're doing great, you're awesome. When everybody, you're like, "I don't even know who I am." Fragile, demanding, and insecure. I live right near a hotel construction site in Midtown. And I saw one of your faces smile like, "Bro, that's awful." And yes, it is awful. Because I want to say this, there's no rest on construction sites. When you're perpetually building, you're never at rest. That's why Sainte Augustine says this, "To abide in God is to rest and to be anywhere else other than in God is to be restlessly striving for rest." Isn't that the experience of your restlessly striving for rest? Sometimes people abide in a vision of achievement and success. And they're just like, "I want the fruit of my own skill and power applied to the world, and I want to feast on my own accomplishments." It's good in the short term. Of course it is. Popularity is better than rejection in the short term. And I think money, the most parts better than poverty, I hate what poverty does to people. And recognition and success, they feel great at first, but they're not. They're not an ultimate good that you draw from to sustain your spirit. If you're in finance, you're only good as the last quarter, or you're only as good as the last market or whatever, so many people have lost it all. I was here in 2008. I walked through Times Square when Lehman Brothers was falling apart and papers were flying out of office buildings, and people were walking out like zombies because everything they put their hope in disappeared in a moment. And if it's not temporary, it's fragile because I want to tell you this, two generations from now out and nobody will care about your success. And you don't want to be that cringy old person talking about the good old days, and everyone around you's like, "Please man, let it go. Nobody cares." And if you're like, "I'm so successful it's going to endure to the next generation," I promise their kids won't care. It's just the nature of it. It's temporary. And if you try, that fruit will rot and die. It is not permanent. And not only that, it's rarely pleasing to God because success is done for the self. Fruit is always given to others. And apple tree is not sitting there going, "How are we doing now?" It's literally for others, but success is always how you like me now. It's always about showing what you've done. Look what Derek Prince says, "Whatever is not initiated by Jesus will be burned up in the day of judgment."

Success is so temporary and it's so distorted, and if you get it, enjoy it, but it will not last long. And I think probably the worst way that people choose to abide, instead of abiding in God's scandalous love, is they just get that religious spirit, and they abide in their religious performance. Now, I think religion is more dangerous. Jesus seemed to love sinners, but couldn't stand the Pharisees. It's spiritually dangerous because it has the vocabulary of grace, but it runs on the engine of performance. And I'm going to tell you, New Yorkers are some of the most religious, but secular New Yorkers are more religious than most Christians I've ever met, man. There's all kinds of Pharisees in all kinds of spheres. If we think that God loves us based on how much we serve in the church, or how much we read our Bible, or how many press as we go to, or how many people we share the gospel with, we're relying on what we're doing, not what God's doing. Dallas Woolens says this, "If you do not fall in love with God, spiritual disciplines will become legalism." And there's nothing worse than the mix of what did Jesus say, "Beware the east of the Pharisees." That stuff is potent. A little bit of legalism will disrupt a whole community of grace. The fruit of life apart from God is anxiety, insecurity, abuse, dissatisfaction, pride, and exhaustion. And in all honesty, if you were to do an analysis of the lives of most people in New York, this would be a summary of the state of there in a being. John 15, 6, "If you don't remain in me and you remain in something else, you're going to be like a branch that is thrown away and withers, picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." What a tragedy. I hope like this is this, what Jesus is saying here, is such a revolution for the human spirit. Another life is possible that our world does not know. Peace is possible in the middle of anxiety. Acceptance is possible in the middle of rejection. Hope is possible in the middle of despair. Love is possible in the middle of hate. You can have an overflowing river of love coming out of your life if you remain with Jesus. And it's not based on how much you do for God. It's comprehending and receiving what is done for you. Is that how you're following Jesus? If you get... Listen, there's so many spiritual goals you may have. You may be like, "I want to be good at questions about faith."

Listen, let me give you one thing to get good at. Ready? Here's what it is. Get good at abiding in Jesus' love. Get good at that. You've heard me say this before, but my life ambition since I was 17 years old was to be a black belt in abiding. Just like, "John, your life's a mess on the outside." I'm like, "Yeah, but inside it is a playground of love, baby. I am abiding in a love that this city cannot give me and cannot take from me." What about the pain, the trauma, the heartache? Listen, that's out there. And I'm not going to let out there dictate what happens in here. In here is an expanding culture of a heart of love. And the enemy knows the power of a Christian who lives in the love of God. And he will do everything to minimize your connection. You have to fight for intimacy with Jesus. And it's such a weird word. It's like, because this is how often it looks for me. It's like, "I'm at war to get an hour to sit quietly and meditate on the word and receive his love." The other morning, I'm sitting on my couch. It's early. I've woken up. And I just sit there. And I'm like, "Oh gosh, I've been on a sabbatical," which is called abiding in wonder. And I have to go back and there's going to be so much pressure and so many demands. And Lord, I struggle with religious tendencies. I struggle with missionalism. I love doing stuff for God. I said, "No, I need a fresh feeling of power and love to step back in. I don't want yesterday's power. I don't want the wonder of the sabbatical. I need power and love for this." And I just sat there with this verse, "I receive your love. I receive your love. I receive your love." And I sat there and I felt the love of Jesus wash through my spirit. I'm sitting there weeping on my couch going, "I wish I could open my spirit to the city of New York and this could flow in it every lonely. David said that because your love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

And so I'm not coming back out of sabbatical, like, "I'm just coming back going, I'm abiding, man." Words flowing, loves bubbling up, trying to obey, and I'm trying to do this together. If you were to grade yourself, not out of any performance, but are you resolved to get a black belt in abiding? Are you fighting for that connection? I want the sack of the spirit of God flowing through my life. Because here's the thing. Once you're connected, it's effortless. You never see a tree going, "Ah, stop!" Like, "Tree, what are you doing? I'm making fruit, man. I'm barren fruit." You don't even know how it works. It's just sitting there, getting sun and water, and staying connected, and stuff's just coming out of it. And you'd be amazed all the things you're trying to achieve for God will flow naturally when you have union with Jesus, the people you're trying to love. You'll be able to just love them naturally because Jesus' love flows through you. The patience you want, the self-control, it'll flow out of you because you have union with Jesus. So I want to challenge you to fight the voice of Satan that wants to sever you through shame from receiving the love of Jesus. And the most courageous thing you may have to do in your life is actually believe the gospel is true for someone like you.

I close with this quote. I love this from Brennan Manning, who was like, he wrote a book called "The Ragamuffin Gospel" and he was just like, honestly, like a kind of jacked up alcoholic priest. But you know what he was? The one that Jesus loved. And he just wrote about his struggles before God and he just wrote about the beauty of the gospel and he says this, "For those who feel their..." Now listen, listen, ask yourself if this is true about you. "For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God." Do you feel like you're a disappointment to God? Do you feel like, gosh, if you knew that or like Jesus knew that, he just like, I'm not a fruit bearer, I'm like, he'll kick me out. He wouldn't even want to abide with me. For those who feel like their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept the love of Jesus Christ, knows no shadow of alteration or change. God loves you because he's love and he loves you. And that's the end of that. And you can believe that, you can live in that or you can fight that and choose your shame. But he sits at night and he wants to give you a fresh baptism of his love. So would you bow your head as we kick off this series?

And maybe the starting point for you is just saying, God, I believe that's true, I believe the gospel. I confess that Christ died for my sins. And I say yes to his story of grace and not my story of shame. Maybe you're one of those categories, maybe you're riddled with self-preservation and anxiety and you just feel like it's just a limited commodity and you've got to manage. Just invite the river of God's love to come in. Maybe you've had a revelation tonight that all the success you've been working for is so fleeting and you want permanent fruit, not transient, temporary fruit. Just say to the Lord, Lord, I exchange success for fruitfulness tonight. I change the vision of my life from success to fruitfulness. Make me a fruitful person, not a successful person. Maybe you're here and you've just got a spirit of religion and you don't even know it until you're hearing it describe to you and you're like, gosh, I actually think God loves me more when I'm doing good. And you want to break off that religious yoke and take Jesus light and easy yoke where you can find rest for your soul in the humility of Christ. All you have to do, by faith right now, hand whatever it is that's in your hands and just give it to Jesus and receive his love instead. Just say, Lord, I exchange my brokenness, my success,

my fear, my anxiety, my shame, my failure. And I exchange it for the cross, the blood, adoption, new covenant, your life. I receive all that you died to give me. I thank you that your work is for me. So Jesus, we thank you for the invitation to abide in your love, your word, community and obedience. And we say, yes, give us black belts in abiding Jesus that we may know and grow in the skillful art of receiving your love. In Jesus' name, amen.