John 15:5 (MEV)
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who remains in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without Me you can do nothing.”
First things first: Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. In other words, He is the source and we are the recipients. Have you noticed it only goes one way? The branches do not and cannot feed the vine. It is the sap that comes from the vine that feeds the branches. This is so simple but why do we so often live our lives as if it worked the other way round?
We work to earn God’s favour. We try our best do the right things. We strive to do what He wants us to do. We try hard to be a good Christian, a loving wife to our husband, a caring mum to our kids, a great cook with a perfectly cleaned house; we do our best to attend church meetings, to help others or to be an honour student, succeed in our career, etc.. and we expect God to look at us and be impressed.
If we do all these things without Him, we haven’t done anything! God is not impressed with all the things we can do for Him. He said that without Him we can do nothing. He is only interested in what we do in Him, that is through the relationship we have with Him.
Like the branches apart from the vine do not get their necessary nourishment, dry up and end up dying; so us without receiving our nourishment from Him begin to starve and end up perishing. To the eyes of the world and even to those who are close to us, we can still look like we are doing many good things and we can look very successful. But from God’s perspective, we are doing nothing (nada!) because nothing we have done was of any eternal value.
Jesus does not call us to do great things in our own strength. He calls us to bear the fruit that comes out of a close relationship with Him. He wants to be our source and pour out in us His love, joy, peace, patience... everything we need. He wants to fill us so that everything we do would be a result of what He does in us and His life would overflow from us. Then we would know that the good that people see in us doesn’t come from us, but from Him alone. And He would get all the glory.
Let us draw close to Jesus Christ and feed on Him today. Without Him we can do nothing. Absolutely nothing.