Abiding In Christ

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, NIV)

If a branch is to yield much fruit, the branch is to thrive on the true vine, Jesus Christ. A la organic farming – no chemical fertilizers. But yielding much fruit does not come overnight. Fruit will not become much if the branch has not undergone pruning. And as the branch becomes more fruitful, pruning is still used to yield more and more fruit. But as the branch remains in the vine, the pruning soon becomes a welcome event in its life.

Many people think that the fruitfulness is produced through having the best methods, the best tools and the best of plans, or even the best training and education. More fruit is a good goal. But you must consider how you would achieve more fruit in life. Some may think fruit is all that matters. And in order for them to yield much fruit, they would start doing all sorts of things for the kingdom.

But busyness is not always equivalent to productivity. And productivity does not always mean “healthy.” You can produce and do a lot in the outside, but when time passes by the question is, was the fruit produced organically? Did it go through the process of maturing in time?  

Well you can overwork in whatever you do and realize it’s not what you do that would yield more fruit in your life. The more you try harder, the more you will find that what you do will not matter unless you give attention to the person you are becoming in Christ. In Christ, who you are and who you are becoming is much more important than the many things you do. 

Take the conversation of Martha with Jesus when He visited their house. At the start, Martha was in the kitchen preparing for the guests. Upon seeing Mary, her sister, sitting at the feet of Jesus, here heart just raged at the moment and she rushed in front of the scene to tell Jesus “Master, tell my sister to help me!” 

So in a gentle and loving manner Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about so many things. But only one thing counts, and your sister Mary has chosen what cannot be taken away from her.” I would suppose that Martha dropped everything and sat at His feet as well.  

Jesus speaks of cultivating our relationship with Him. Sometimes that’s how we measure our value: by what we do. But it takes a healthy connection with the true vine to yield good fruit. If you spend time to make that relationship with God healthy, if you prioritize relationship with Him, what you do will simply follow to be the best. A healthy spiritual life invests in what will make its life grow in quality before it can grow for quantity. Prioritize your relationship with Christ before you do anything at all, because if we reverse the order of that priority, fruit may be scarce. But if we put first things first, as C.S. Lewis says, second things will follow.