The Fruit of Discipleship // John 15:1-17

Whether you're here in Winston or down in Lexington, you're probably tired of me saying this, but this is what we're about. We are going to make and mobilize the disciples and an environment of prayer and worship. And if you come back in 20 years, we're going to still be doing that, okay? But here's the thing about discipleship. Discipleship is not a nice city, it's a necessity. And just because it's necessary though, does not mean it's easy. And so when you think about discipleship, I don't know what you think of. Some of you, when you think of discipleship, you think of like reading my Bible with somebody else praying together with somebody else going on a mission trip or retreat with somebody else. And we love all those parts of discipleship. But here's what discipleship is also. It's discipleship in the hard places, right? It's discipleship as you walk with people through their hopes and their hurts. And here's what happens to a lot of us. When somebody that we love ends up in sin and suffering. Okay, we love them, but here's how we often feel. I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm going to get in this and make this thing worse. I don't know how to help.

That's why it restores for you, okay? Listen, restore, you heard Pastor Jordan say it. He said it's seasonal, that means, here's what that means. We're doing it twice a year for 10 weeks, okay? And so for many of you, this is your next step, okay? And I'm excited for you because there's three reasons you'd want to do restore. You'd want to do restore to deal with your own hopes and hurts in your life. You'd want to do restore just to kind of understand yourself better. See John Calvin, that great theologian from a long time ago, basically, he said all true knowledge of self is connected to knowledge of God. And all true knowledge of God is connected to knowledge of self. So through restore, you get to know yourself better, you get to know God better, you get to know your story better, God's story better. So one reason is you might want to know yourself better, want to walk through the hopes and hurts, but here's another thing. Restore can help you better help others. It can help you better minister to others. Here's what I think. I almost want to say all of you, but I'm not going to say all of you. I think most of you have just never been through anything like restore.

It is going to take you deep into your story to understand your past, and it's going to take you deep into God's word. So I know that's a lot. You watch the video, you hear me, you go, I still, I still don't know if it's for me. That's fine. That's why we're having an interest meeting on June 1st, okay? So just, this is just getting the shallow end of the pool here a little bit more about it. See if it's right for you. And Pastor Jordan on June 1st has promised to keep it short, but he's going to, after every service, he's going to give you just a simple version of it and you can better ask, is this my next step? So with that said, let's pray and we'll get to work. Let's pray. Lord, we just want to prayer it now for people in here that want to go deeper in discipleship. They want to understand themselves and your word more. I know that's all of us to some extent. But Lord, we ask that you would use restore to uniquely equip our church, to minister to itself and to help, first ourselves, but to help one another, walk through sin and suffering, we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, we're in a series called Disciple. You can type two, turn to John 15. I'll meet you there in a few minutes. Here's what we're doing in this series.

We're asking a bunch of questions. Questions are powerful. Questions can redirect your life. Questions can make you cry. Questions can encourage you. And so in this series, we're in week four, if you're new, by the way, we've been asking three different questions and today we're going to ask a fourth, okay? So in week one, I got up here and I just said, are you a disciple? And then I just try to let that sit there. Like, not do you go to church, not do you call yourself a Christian, not are you religious, not are you moral? Not that you grew up in the church, none of that. Are you a disciple of Jesus? We ask that question. And then week two got up here and said, are you trying to follow Jesus by yourself? Is that what you're trying to do? You don't do that. That Jesus had a group of disciples and discipleship happens in relationships and becoming a disciple happens in community. In fact, listen, this week, I got a message from someone from our church. Listen, this is just an average normal dude in our church. And here's the right name. Hey Kyle, I meet with three guys

from two cities once a week in a DNA group. Then he said this, this is your fault. We never would have started this without your leadership and encouragement, it has changed our lives. Thank you, I'm not telling you that so you think I'm great. I'm telling you that because here's what I, I'm talking to men and women, okay. But particularly to the men, I'm like, I am almost completely convinced that most men, even most men in the church, have never been a part of a group of guys that's helping them be more gobbling. And it just, she said that too, she knows it too, okay? So this is important, okay. So week one, are you a disciple? Week two is, are you following Jesus by yourself? Don't tell. Week three was, does your Christianity cost you anything? Because Christianity is a horrible hobby, I told you that last week, okay. that Jesus served you, Jesus sacrificed for you, Jesus suffered for you. If you just realized that just a little bit, then in response, it might just be at first a teensy, weency, itty, bitty amount, but you're gonna want to serve and sacrifice and suffer for others. This week, here's the question, okay? If you take notes, here's the question, are you growing?

That's it, are you growing as a disciple? Most Christians in America, it feels like, aren't. They're stale, they're stuck, they're stagnant, right? By the way, some of the times, sometimes you're like, God, why are you so indirect with us? Why are you so hard on us at times? Why are you, you know, whatever? Because if you baby Christians, it's been said, if you baby Christians, you get baby Christians. If you baby Christians, then you get baby Christians, and we don't want that. So we're gonna ask, are you growing? Here's the way Jesus is gonna say it in John 15, are you bearing fruit? Are you being fruitful? And so that's where we're gonna spend the rest of our time this morning. If you'll turn with me now to John 15, one packet together, we're gonna go through the first 17 verses, but I wanna stop in verses one and two, we'll spend the majority of our time there. I am the true vine, why does Jesus say that? Because there are many false vines, we'll get there. He says, I am the true vine, and my father is divine dresser or a lot of translations say gardener, same thing. So Jesus is like, I'm the vine, and my God, and God the father is a gardener. Every branch in me, that's you. So you're a branch. 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. Okay, so a little background, then we're gonna get back to John 15. This is part of the I am statements in the gospel of John. There's seven of them, and we're in the last one right now. Okay, now here's the thing, this is a helpful hat. Whenever God tells us something about himself, he also tells us something about ourselves. So if Jesus says, I am the light of the world, he's saying, you're in darkness. And if he says, I am the bread of life, and I am the living water, he's saying, you're hungry and you're thirsty for meaning and for more, and for me. If he says, I am a good shepherd, he's saying, you're a sheep, okay? So he's got all of these I am statements. Now, he actually says, this isn't really that important for you to know, but he actually in the Greek says, I am, I am. Now, why am I telling them? Because the I am statements, they're not just kind of, oh, that's neat, he says that seven times in John, and whatever. The I am statements point back to the second book of your Bible, and Moses's interaction with God in the burning bush. Do you remember this? So Moses is wondering, and he sees this burning bush,

it says he turns aside, and God basically says, Moses, I'm gonna set my people free. And Moses is like, this is so awesome. And then he's like, and I'm standing here. And Moses is like, I'm not that person, it's awesome. And remember what Moses then says next? He says to God, it's interesting that it took us this long in the Bible to get here, but he says to God, what's your name? It's like, we're in Exodus and we don't know God's name. He said, God, what's your name? He says, because I can't just go and say, a bush sent me, 'cause then they would say 41 or 43. The band from the 90s, no, a burning bush. Let me show you the account. This is Exodus, chapter three, I'll show you. It's on the screen. Then Moses said to God, if I come to the people, I'll tell you this is what happened. If I come to the people of Israel, and I say to them, the God of your Father should sent me to you. And they ask, what is his name? So God, what's your name? What should I say to them? And God said, here it is. This is what Jesus is picking up on right here. I am who I am. And he said, say to those people of Israel, I am, has sent me to you, okay. This is deep.

When God introduces himself, he says, I am who I am, what does that mean? It means God is the self-defining, self-existing God that every person must deal with. God is the foundation of reality. In other words, and I love you, so don't hear this more intense than I mean it. You will either deal with God in this life, or you'll deal with him in the next. There's just no escaping or avoiding dealing with God. That's what he's saying. Now, this is hard for modern people, 'cause modern people can escape anything. Mom, I don't like this school. Great, you get to move. I don't like this job. Great, we'll move another job. It's like, there ain't no escaping. You having a face-to-face meeting with God. God's like, you're going to have to deal with me. I am reality itself. In fact, the Bible begins with the assumption in the beginning, God. Just no defense for, no apologetics of, Okay, so Jesus picks up this imagery and he says, "I am." By the way, Jesus is the only religious leader who can say, "I am." Every other religious leader has to say, "What?" I was. Buddha, right?

Joseph Smith, Muhammad, they can say, "I was." Only Jesus says, "I am." Here's the other thing Jesus says. To understand this, this is important. He says, "I am not, I will be what you want me to be." Which is what Americans want, right? We want the Jesus as my co-pilot. People want the Jesus of South Park and Family Guy, if you've ever seen that. They want a Jesus. Here's what we tend to do. So God says, "I'm gonna make you in my image." And we said, "We'll return the favor. "We'll make Jesus in our image." And we domesticate Jesus. Here's what Jesus says for the average American. He's a bigger, better version of themselves who is occasionally maybe slightly bothered by a few things they do. Jesus says, "Hold on, no, I am the true vine." So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk about what does it mean to bear fruit? 'Cause let's go back to verses one two, I wanna show you this. So I wanted you to get that. He's grabbing this imagery, and then he says this, "I am the true vine, and my father, "I'm back in verse one, is the vine dresser. "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit," he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes.

Why? That it may bear more fruit. Okay, so here's what we need to talk about. The main idea in John 15, no question, is being fruitful. It's mentioned, I just mentioned, it's mentioned three times in the first two verses. The word fruit at some level is mentioned seven times in the passage we're gonna look at today, okay? So what, by the way, what does it mean to be fruitful? It means Jesus is changing you and using you to change others. By the way, your fruit should be visible. Your fruit should not be hard to find, right? We're like looking at the tree of your life going, is that, this is what parents do all the time with their kids. Is there any little piece of fruit, anywhere that we can say there's life there, there's spiritual life there. By the way, this whole idea of being fruitful also fits really great in our multiply initiative, where we're talking about the main verse for this whole year is God blessed them and he said be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So here's what I wanna ask you and really, don't answer this out loud, obviously. It's just between you and the Lord, but think about this for a second. Here's my first question for us today. Do you want to be fruitful?

You have to start with, you gotta wanna be fruitful. I think the average American, even the average American Christian, they wanna be successful or they wanna be comfortable. But I don't know if their first desire is to be fruitful and we're not, thank God for successful people. We're not against that. And thank God for modern comforts. I mean, we're supposed to enjoy our life and we're supposed to, there are feasting and there is Sabbath and there is rest and there's enjoyment of God's creation. But here's what I want you to consider doing, just praying about this going, instead of asking, ask the how can I be comfortable? How can I be successful question like, can you make that question second or third in your life? And ask this question first, how could I be fruitful in this area? It's such a powerful question. How could, just imagine asking this question, how could my marriage be more fruitful? How could my time at work be more fruitful? How could my time with my children or my parents be more fruitful and here's what's so powerful about this? I really believe this. If you honestly ask God that question, if you sit on the edge of your bed or you get on your knees and you say, God, I want my home to be more fruitful,

here's what happens when you genuinely ask the question, the path appears. That's the weird thing about asking, you'll get the answer. It will usually be a bunch of things you don't want to do. That's how that works. But here's the problem with you and here's the problem with me. Some of you, your life, isn't really fruitful, it's just full. Right, what's the number one thing everybody says to everybody? We're just so busy. I try not to say that, but I'm busy, you know? It's hard. I'm not saying my life is any more full than your life, but this probably a version of this may have happened to you this week, but this is like the middle of the day. Oh, I can't even remember what day this is. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Margie calls me and we literally have to talk for maybe How to coordinate our lives that evening? Well, this kid's going here, but getting picked up by here, but this kid, but they're bringing a friend So don't forget to pick up the friend, you know, well, they need to change clothes Well, hold on, you know, well, wait, well, where are we doing for dinner? It's like this is one night of our life Everything's just full. My challenge to you guys is great that your life is full, but can it also be fruitful? On the other end of things some of you This is more of the middle schoolers the high schoolers the college students the young singles and dare I say the empty Nestors and retiree people, okay? Is your life fruitful or is your life just fun? You know and you're playing a lot of pickleball, it's going great

And I want you, you know, God wants your life to be fun. That's great I'm glad that you're having a lot of fun But like I just think that's what I take about us for the average Americans like our life is full Hoping one day our life will be fun skipping over our life being fruitful Okay, so with the rest of our time from this text, I want to show you five ways that your life can be more fruitful than it is All right, well, we'll take them quickly. Okay, here it is The first one is so simple that we can teach us in kids ministry to five-year-olds, okay, but what I'm learning Years into this now is like sometimes the most simple things are the most profound things. Okay, so here's the first here's the first Simple way, you don't have to write this down, but if you want your life to be fruitful, you have to connect it to the right vine That's it Why did I already said this to you, but if you look back on verse one Jesus says I'm the true vine Why does he say I'm the true vine because there are false vines, okay? Let me tell you a couple false vines in your life by the way, I should probably define what a vine is a vine is a source of life or you might say A source of strength and satisfaction. Now, here's what's interesting in the Old Testament God uses the imagery of a vine, but guess who's always the vine in the Old Testament? Israel So go this is with your community group or your DNA group go read Isaiah chapter 5 and God God's like Israel you are supposed to be a vine and you're not a great vine Which by the way, that's the whole Old Testament story the whole Testament story is Israel failed not Jesus is gonna finish That's the story of the Testament So Jesus is saying he's taking on this idea and going actually Israel's not the vine. I'm the truer and better Vine Okay, let me tell you some vines. We tend to attach ourselves to the vine of sin, right? Everybody sins because they think it's gonna bring life to them You've never in your whole life sinned out of duty Like I didn't want to do it, but I had 15 minutes and I decided to you know, it's like no

We all and here's the thing about it We look if we connect ourselves to the vine of sin, we think it's going to give life, but it ends up taking life Like I you know, this is a PG 13 story, but basically when I was doing ministry at Duke I had all of these fraternity Bible studies And I didn't call them Bible studies because no Duke student wants to go to a Bible study and everybody there thinks they're a leader So I said it's a spiritual leadership study and then they came and then when they got there, I'm like, how's just about say but welcome um, but um But this one guy messages me And he says Kyle, you know, I joined your spiritual leadership study because I got addicted to pornography This guy's not a believer. He's writing to me And he said I tried to talk to my dad about it and my dad said don't worry about it. It's normal He said the only problem is I can't stop looking at it And it's making me question my sexual orientation and i'm coming to you because I need help And I know that might be a little bit of an extreme example, but it's the perfect example of how we look for something to give us life And we think in the short term it's going to give life, but in the long term what it does is it just sucks life from us Okay, there's a second place. This is so simple, but there's a second place where some of you are looking for Some something to be a vine and it's why you're so miserable because so something I'm gonna say this and you're gonna go Kyle I got what I need. Thank you and you can head out early. Okay. Here's what it is Some of you are looking for other people in your life to be the vine People are just branches, right? And so like the most miserable marriages are where one or both people are looking as like you have to be a vine for me Oh, by the way, how do you know if You're making someone into a vine. I can give you like a little litmus personal litmus s Here it is. They constantly disappoint you all of the time It's like if that's happening most likely you've made that People idolize someone and then turn around and demonize them. Why? Because everybody's going to let you down. Because everyone's sinful and broken and finite and fragile. Here's another way that you can know that maybe either someone's made you into a vine because everyone's why you're just going to be saying, "Listen, I'm not Jesus. I can't meet all your needs.

I'm not omniscient, I'm omnipresent. I can't do this." Here's how you either know you've turned somebody into a vine or someone's turned you into a vine. Here it is. You know that you've turned somebody into a vine if you are wearing them out. And parents do this with their kids. You've got to play seven sports and get your GPA at 4.2 because you have to get in a wake. It's like, "Why? You're wearing me out, Mom and Dad. That's your dream." This is why unhealthy parents, especially unhealthy moms, can never let their kids go and grow up. You're a vine. You can't be a branch that goes somewhere else to bear us for it. You have to be my vine. This is what's called. What is codependency? Codependency is somebody else that's become my vine. Third thing people do with vines, they turn it into sin. They look for a vine. They look for sin to be a vine. They look for people to be a vine. They look for opportunities to be a vine. I won't spend a lot of time with this. We talk about this whole time. When you're young, you think this. You think, "If I could just get into medical school, it'll just be a vine to me. It'll bring so much life and strength. If I could just get the right job, if I could just get in the right neighborhood, if I could just get into the right school, the right career path." First thing, very simple, but it's profound. If you're not connected to the right vine, you're not going to have life flowing through you and you're not going to bear fruit. Secondly, this is not as fun to talk about. If you're going to be fruitful, it's going to be painful. I'll show you this. We'll go back to verses 1 and 2. If you're going to be fruitful, it's going to be painful. You might say, "Why isn't everybody fruitful?" The same reason that everyone's not fit. If it was easy, everyone would do it. It's painful. All right, here it is. John 15-1, "I am the true vine." We're already talking about that. "My father is the vine dresser or gardener. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away in every branch that does bear fruit." Here's the word. He prunes. That's the word of pain. He cuts that it may bear more fruit. Okay, so God is showing up in this passage as a gardener. Now, whenever you might, you might think of God as a gardener and it may give you warm, fuzzy feelings. Let me tell you what a gardener is. A gardener is a judge. I should say, a good gardener is a judge. A good gardener walks around his or her garden and inspects everything and says, "That's not doing well. That's doing well. That's doing really well. Let's cut away so that people are more fruitful. That's not doing well. Let's cut away so that some

fruit will come up." Here's maybe nothing. God, as the gardener, gets to decide if your life is fruitful. We all want to do, "Oh, my life's fruitful. Is that what God would say?" Here's the thing. Let me talk about how God prunes. First, what is pruning? Pruning is when you cut away that which hinders growth so something can grow some more. Normally, when you're pruning, you're cutting away things that are dead or things that are diseased, but you also, at times, are cutting away some healthy leaves so that we can have more fruit. Let me tell you, three ways God prunes us and three purposes for pruning. I mean, there's a hundred ways God prunes us. I'm just trying to think through what are the biggest ways we see. The number one way God prunes us is by the Holy Spirit bringing conviction to some area of our life, right? The longer you live, the more you realize this. Things one day will bother you that didn't use to bother you. That might be the Holy Spirit. By the way, don't just think deep and dark things. Yes, God needs to prune the deep sins of your life out yet. I'm talking like you may be like, "I watched too much TV. I don't want to spend the last two hours every night. God wants to prune this out of my ... He wants to cut this away that ... Actually, no, a pastor. He never talks about it. He doesn't have a TV." He's like, "He's told me before. He's just a personal legalism for me." He said, "Yeah, but sometime in my 40s, I just realized if I didn't have a TV, I could get a lot more work done." I just got rid of all my TVs and I don't ... He said, "My wife has one TV in this area and she watches it, but I don't watch a TV." I just got pruned. It might be just some ... It might be how you spend your week. It's hooting. Secondly, God prunes you through other people, both through their example and their correction. So here's what happens, every once in a while you go over someone's house and you just watch how they interact as a married couple or you watch how they are with their kids and you get in the car with your wife or your husband and you say, "What are we doing? What's wrong with us? We don't have what they have."

And they have what they have 'cause they've cut some things out to make that possible. And it's time for us to cut those things out. Sometimes it's just God speaks to you through the correction of another person. And you know, that's happened to me many times in my life where God just sends something to you. It might be through your spouse, it might be through your kids, who knows? Through someone at your community group or whatever, they say something like, "You're right, God wants to cut this away." And then the third way is the way that you probably that most people think about it. As God prunes us, through putting us in difficult circumstances and situations, through trials and tragedies and suffering, right? And you know, I've seen this for 20 years now that your greatest ministry will almost always come out of your greatest sin, suffering, struggle or weakness. Think about the Zappias who were with us two months ago. They have a nationwide marriage ministry that really happened because they had like the worst year of marriage you could ever imagine. And they had to be completely pruned individually and brought back together and then pruned together. And then now they're having this great ministry. Okay, so those are, that's maybe three of the ways how God prunes you. But here's what I want you to know because pruning is, there's three things that I want you to know about pruning though. Number one, pruning is painful but seasonal.

So pruning is always painful. Obviously it's cutting away, but if you, you know, you could just Google this yourself or ask chat GPT and be like, "Tell me everything you know about pruning." And one of the first things it'll tell you is, it doesn't happen all the time. Thank God. There are certain seasons of your life where God is pruning you. The second thing that you need to know about pruning is pruning is often or almost always for, is almost always preparation, okay? So like there's a purpose in the pruning. And this is what you have to, even if you don't know what the purpose is and you won't oftentimes, you're like, I'm going through this horrible situation of my life and I've got this sickness or my kids break in my heart or I lost my job or whatever it is. And you're in the moment, okay, we say this all the time. You can't see it through the windshield but you'll later see it through the rear view mirror but you have to believe there's a purpose in the pain and there's a lesson in the loss. Otherwise, I mean, you'll go, the one thing that we cannot handle, humans, we just, we can handle a lot. It's amazing actually, it's how strong and tough we are. What we cannot handle is meaningless suffering.

It'll make you mad and make you go mad. But here's the third one. This is a very important Christian perspective. When you're being pruned, God is not punishing you. 'Cause if you're like all of us and if you're a normal person, okay, with a normal conscience, when something bad happens you will scour your conscience. You find a lump somewhere, you will scour your conscience. Have I done anything? Has God mad at me? Why would this happen in my life 'cause, and it's like you have to know before it comes that any pruning and any pain that God allows into your life is not punishment. Jesus Christ was punished in our place for our sins. Jesus was punished. If something happens in your life, it's just a pruning. So the first thing is, we have to be connected to the right vine. The second thing is, we have to be willing to endure the pain of pruning and we can only do that if we know it's not punishment and it has a purpose and it's seasonal, but here's the third one. And this is gonna sound simple, but if you want to be fruitful you need to see yourself as a branch. Don't take yourself too seriously, by the way. You're not the vine. You are not the vine.

And the most unhappy people I know, by the way, are the people who are trying to satisfy themselves with themselves, but you're not a vine. But look, I'll show you how many says are branches. Here, follow this. He says verse two, 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've 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. So he starts talking about branches and you'll see this in a few more verses. He's gonna say, there's two purposes for branches. Fruit or fire. Kind of intense. He's like, there's two purposes for branches. To bear fruit or to burn in the fire. That's what he says. Think about it. It's like, it's a great branch and it's connected. What's this purpose? Well, let's go burn it. That's what he's saying. Now, here's the question that you might ask. Two questions. One, why is he talking about this?

Why is he using different branches? In context, this is why it's so helpful. You know, we say, when reading the Bible, it's the same principle as buying real estate, location, location, location is most important. And so here's the century. In chapter 13, which is what begins this sermon that we're now jumping into that Jesus is giving his disciples. The last thing that happens is Judas leaves to betray Jesus. So what is he writing about? He's writing about Judas and the future Judas's people who say their branches, but aren't connected to the vine and bear no fruit. So here's where we just get serious just for a serious whole time. But I mean, we're just going to get serious again for just a minute here. Okay. Let me ask you this question. This is maybe this is a question within the question. Are you faking your fruit? Judas faked fruit for three years. And one of the most startling things is not that Judas betrayed Jesus, but that no one saw it coming. Remember that? At the Lord's Supper? Who will betray you? Is it I, Lord? Is it I? Is it I? And they all said the like, why? Because no one looked at Judas and go, he's a fake follower of Jesus. We know it. So here's what happens. This is this is again, I'm going to talk to our middle schoolers or high schoolers who might be in here like this. You're going to have to decide early. I didn't have this issue. I became a Christian. My life was so transformed. I had I didn't have the vocabulary. I didn't grow up in church like that. I didn't know any of that. But now I'm watching this next generation like you guys, your middle schoolers and high schools, if you want to, you can fake it. Yeah. I mean, you know what you've heard people pray. So you can fake your prayers and you know how to talk about struggle with sin when you're just giving into it, you know, you know, all the Christian ease. You know how to give away, hide big sins and trade them in for little ones. And so you just got to decide, you got to decide, I need to actually be connected to the vine, not try to staple and duct tape fruit to a dead tree. That's kind of the image. Now here's the other last thing. Some people read this passage who have a sensitive conscience and they wonder, could I lose my salvation? Is that what happens here? If I'm not bearing fruit, he rips me off the vine and throws me into the fire, you know, this passage is, and the Bible does not teach that you can lose your salvation. But you can lose your assurance of salvation. Do you know what that is? Assurance is the feeling you have when your life is fruitful. You're like, man, like I'm changing and you don't mean this in a pride field, but like God's

using me in the life of other people like, as far as I can tell, I mean, we could be self-deceived, the Bible says that, but as far as I can tell, I'm a believer. But when you have no fruit for a season, but maybe you're still connected to the vine, but you have no fruit for a season, it will make you question if you're really a Christian. You'll wake up at three in the morning and be like, can somebody who has the Holy Spirit inside of them do that? Can somebody who's born again and going to heaven live with this unrepentant sin for two years? What Jesus is saying is his desire for your life is to be fruitful and not to fake fruit. This is why I love it. This is why our student ministry, one of their main plumb lines, is give us the real answer, not the right answer. If you've been around for two years, we know you know the right answer. We don't care. We do care, but you understand. We want the real answer, which leads to the fourth one. If you are going to bear fruit, you need to connect to the vine daily, constantly, whatever word you want to use there. I'll show you this. This is what most people think of. When they read John 15, they actually think of verses four through eight, "Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruits unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you," look at how much he's talking about abiding, "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." You know, Jesus said, there's two types of Christians, those who bear fruit and those who bear a lot of fruit. "For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me," here it is, "and my words abide in me." Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. So again, Jesus wants us to be fruitful. He wants us, by the way, to be fruitful in our character and in our ministry. And in fact, a great thing to do right now or this week is to with your community group or your DNA group, go read through the fruit of the spirit. That'd be a great question.

Am I being fruitful? Well, as the fruit of the spirit of my life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithless, gentleness, self-control. By the way, here's just another great thing to know, just for a perspective thing. If God is going to grow you in the fruit of the spirit, He's going to bring people and circumstances into your life that make you wanna react the exact opposite of the fruit of the spirit. That's how it's developed in you. So it doesn't, I wish it worked like this. I wish you could just sit on your bed and go, "God, please make me patient." And then you hope your eyes did it happen, am I patient? You know? That's what we're laughing, it doesn't happen the way. The way that it happens is God brings in people and circumstances that test my patience. Or you would like to be a person of self-control where then get ready for God to bring circumstances and situations in your life where it's gonna cause you to not wanna be in self-control. So you're gonna have to flex that spiritual muscle. Okay, Jesus says the phrase that you're probably familiar with if you grew up in church or know this pastor at all. He says abide in me, which again, we never use that phrase anymore. And once the last time you use the word abide, here's what it means, to dwell, to stay, or to remain.

And he's like, I want you to have this constant back and forth relationship with me. Where you know my word and you're thinking about it, then you're talking about my word, then you know more of my word than you, okay. So then I thought this, I thought, okay, is there anywhere today that we actually abide? 'Cause I think it's helpful to go, okay, where are we doing this? And so this is what it would feel like if we did this spiritually. Here's the number one way I think the average modern American abides on their cell phone. They have a constant back and forth moment by moment relationship with their cell phone. The average American spends four and a half hours just on their phone. This is not your iPad, this is not your screen, this is not your computer, this is not your TV, this is your phone. The average American touches to check their phone 205 times a day, which is just about every five minutes they're awake. And when I heard that, okay, the average person touches their phone every five minutes they're awake, I'm like, yes, they do. Have you ever given somebody your phone just for a moment? The other day, Marcus, I can't wanna show you something and after like two minutes, I was like, give it back please.

It's like my whole life's there. Someone might text me, I might get an email, give it back to me, right? What would it look like if we treated our relationship like with Jesus, like we treated our phone? It's like, and then it sounds maybe like 10% cheesy, but I'm like serious, like we would have this back and forth relationship where we're thinking about the word of God and we're talking to him about it. Like what if every five minutes, as you grabbed your phone, you said, Lord, help me be fruitful this week. Open my eyes where I could be fruitful. You're just thinking about it, then he brings something else to mine, he brings another description of mine, you start praying over that. Well, I wanna show you the connection between the word and prayer, I wanna read, I don't do this often, I wanna read an old quote from George Mueller, George Mueller, Godly man who started a ton of orphanages and basically never asked for money, just prayed for money, just let everything through prayer. This is what he said. When we pray, it should be on the screen, when we pray, we speak to God. Now, prayer in order to be continued for any length of time, in any other than a formal manner, requires, generally speaking, a measure of strength

or godly desire, no one talks like this anymore. Look at this. To pray, you have to have a measure of strength and godly desire, okay, go on. In the season, therefore, when this exercise of the soul, that's what he calls prayer, the exercise of the soul can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the word of God, where we find our father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us and to reprove us. What would it look like if you abided with Jesus the way you most likely abide with your phone, okay? Which leads to the last one we're gonna talk about, okay? We've talked about a lot of different things about this, but Jesus is gonna completely switch the paradigm for a moment. My father's a gardener, I'm the vine, you're the branches. He's been doing this kind of vine branch thing. Well, he moves from fruit to talk about friendship, which is the final thing we're gonna talk about. If you're gonna be fruitful, you have to have a real friendship with Jesus. Let me show you this. This is Jesus's own words. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you, okay, verse 12. Verse 13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends."

So again, Jesus is talking about going to the cross and saying, "I'm going to lay down my life because you're my friend." He says, "You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants. For a servant does not know what his master is doing." The definition of friendship, by the way, is to be invited into someone's life. This is why I hate to break it to you. If you don't have their cell, you're not their friend. If they're like, "Email me." It's like, okay, we're not friends. Great, great, great, great. I got it. Cell phones, seriously, having someone's cell phone is the sign of access, immediate, instant access. It's the sign of friendship. He says this, "You are my friends. If you do what I command you, no longer do I call you servants. For a servant does not know what his master is doing. Look, but I have called you friends. Why? For all that I have heard from my father, I have known to you," right? I told you this before, but the first time the word friendship shows up in the Bible is when God calls Abraham his friend and he calls Abraham his friend after he shares a secret.

That's exactly what friends do. Maybe that's the number one thing friends do, is they share things with each other of great importance. That's what Jesus is doing. He says this, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you." He goes back from friendship. He goes, "Fruit, friendship, fruit." But I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. Remain, stay. So that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another. Here's what we're gonna talk about as we close. Bearing fruit is not a formula. It's about having a friendship with Jesus Christ. You know, don't fake it. Don't try to have a formula. Instead have a deep friendship with Jesus Christ. See, maybe 'cause I'm a nominal, grew up as a nominal Catholic. So I grew up in a religious environment. I grew up, I go to church. It's bells, it smells, it's little homilies. It's eucharist everywhere. It's stained glass everywhere. And literally, I'm 16 years old

and no one ever had told me. Hey, Kyle, when I was 16, someone told me this. Did you know that Christianity is more about a relationship than a religion? I was like, I had no idea. And Jesus ends by going, guys, I'm a friend. He says this, and according to John 12, he says, I'm not just a friend that loves you. I'm a friend that's going to die for you. And then in John 12, I won't read it to you, but in John 12, he says, if I die, he gives this illustration of a wheat. He says, if a grain of wheat has to die, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. So here's the thing. Jesus Christ experienced an enormous amount of pain and punishment to make us fruitful. And the death of Christ has been bearing fruit for 2000 years. And so here's how I want to close. I just think of three different types of people in this room, okay? For some of you right here, you today, you need to give your life to Jesus Christ. And for the first time, you need to be a branch that is deeply connected to the vine that is Jesus Christ so that life could flow through you. And you could experience that. That's some of you. Some of you, I'm guessing a large part in this room.

Here's what you need to do. You need to not just, you don't need to give your life to Christ. Say, you already are Christian. You need to figure out what does it look like for you to be more fruitful? Not just have fun, not just have a full life, not just be comfortable, not just be successful, but what would it mean for you to be fruitful? But then finally guys, you know, I feel like I'd be remiss not to do this as I was talking today about pruning. And people needing, you know, there's something painful happening in my life, right? It's not, by the way, it's not a sin to be pruned. Pruning is what God is doing to prepare you for something next. But pruning can be painful, pruning can be confusing. And so part of what we want to do is, if you're going through a season of pruning, we want to pray for you. So here's what I want to ask. I want to ask if, for some reason, you would just say, well, I was talking to you, I'm in a season of pruning. Can I just ask you to stand? You want to close this service by praying over you. There's no shame. If you're just like, you know, I'm in a season of, yeah, you can stand.

I'm in a season of being pruned. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to pray for you guys. Just, there's no shame in it. We want to come alongside you. We had a lot of people last service to just say, we're in a season of pruning. So we're just gonna pray over you guys. If you're near them, you can put your hand on them. We just wanna pray that God would comfort them in this season, that they would believe the gospel, this is not punishment, this is pruning, and that God has a plan, let's pray. Lord, as men and women are just standing up, we just, it's amazing in this room. We never know people's stories. You never know what they're going through. Some people are standing 'cause they're going through some kind of suffering. Some people are standing probably because I'm guessing they're kids suffering, or they're dads suffering, or they're just stuck in a hard season, Lord, and they feel like you're cutting away Lord. And I pray that they would know the true subscription that when you prune, it's painful, but not punishment, Lord, that you have a purpose in the pruning, Lord, that Jesus, you experienced the punishment, now we experienced the pruning, Lord. I pray you would encourage them.

I pray you'd bring people around them. I pray we would bear burdens with them as they are in the season of pruning. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen. You can stay and we'll say. (gentle music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]