Abide in Christ

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. John 15:1-4

Hello Friends!
In these verses of John 15, Jesus uses the analogy that He is the vine and believers are the branches and that we are to abide in Him. That's what I want to focus on today: abiding in Him.The definition of abide includes to follow, to conform to, to remain or dwell in. I read a lesson by Pastor Brian G. Hedges that broke this analogy into 3 things we can do to abide.

• Connect to Jesus: Just as the branches must be connected to the vine to bear fruit, so must we be connected to Jesus. This union is mutual, we abide in Him and He in us (vs 4).
• Depend on Jesus: We are dependent on Jesus just as the branches are dependent on the vine. We cannot grow without Him. In fact, we can do nothing apart from Him (vs 5).
• Continue in Jesus: We must stay or remain in Him. That means we must continue to trust Him, keep on depending, never stop believing, to persevere in Jesus and His teaching.

And in John 15:11, after all the talk of abiding in Him and His love, Jesus said that He told the disciples these things so that His joy would be in them and that it would be full. Abide in Him and be filled with His joy! I want that, don't you?

For the page, I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy stamps: Shake It Off Caps Alpha & Mini Grunge Type Alpha. I drew the grapes by copying an image I found online. Then I colored everything with chalk pastels. I highlighted "Jesus" with a white Sharpie pen.

 

Have a blessed day! Andrea