Vine and Branches

“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. "I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”

I will most likely touch upon additional thoughts that I started here yesterday with, “Closed and Open Doors,” as this continues to be an area that Father is wanting to open up to me in ever clearer ways.
Once again I quote from my friend Bill Landon’s book, “Life After Death.”

“As I stated in the introduction, the Bible is the one objective source of confirmation that I accept on matters of truth about life, God and spirituality. This position can only be applied successfully if the Scriptures are used correctly.”

Before I go any further here I want to emphasize a needed and necessary point.
Because of sin and the death affects that came into an entire race of people, which which was totally unnatural became the norm for us. Because of what Adam and Eve did in imbibing from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it has become the fixed inclination (fulcrum) of our hearts to trust in ourselves, to lean unto our own understanding and in all our ways acknowledge we are the ones (gods) in control of life.
Sadly this inclination was not aborted in those who were re-birthed, if it was then why was Jesus forcefully stressing the following, “If you continue to abide within this relationship I have called you into, you will know the Truth and the truth will make-set you free.”

Our loving and compassionate heavenly Father is dealing in direct proportion, going to the depth of the habitual sin habit pattern inclination of us turning to ourselves verses being freed to turn to Him as our only Life.
The truth will set us free, but it is my experience that before the fruit of this becomes evident within our lives, the truth will make us very miserable!
A perfect word for that might be, “disillusioned!”

"Please remember that we human beings have the ability to choose to use any tool correctly or incorrectly. Contrary to what many believe, correct use of the Bible is not a massive intellectual exercise. Further, receiving instruction from the Bible does not require special instruction from a seminary or the blessing of any organization of men. We only need an understanding of a few relatively simple rules to be able to work with the Father in using His marvelous book. If we choose to ignore or violate these rules we will have to deal with the consequences of that decision and the Bible will be a snare to us instead of a guide.
The Bible is a wonderful writing but is, unfortunately, also an extremely dangerous one. For reasons completely known only to the Father, He had this book constructed in such a way as to make it completely usable only when we study it in surrender to His teaching through the Holy Spirit’s revelation. I understand at least one reason for doing this. This is a safeguard to prevent us from unraveling the mysteries of the spiritual out of our own intellectual efforts alone.
This prohibition is not a mean-spirited act on the Lord’s par. We are kept from successfully discovering spiritual truth on our own because the whole purpose of life in this world is to develop a personal living relationship with God. As such, it would be counterproductive and even harmful for the Father to allow the truth of reality to be accessible without some collaboration with Him. In God’s plan, our growth in intellectual understanding is only a secondary attribute in the larger area of developing our living relationship with the Father.”

Rich

Living Loved

Not long ago my wife and I went to see the movie Wall*E, funny, the older I’m getting the younger I seem to feel, anyway, there was this one line from the movie where the Captain of this huge space ship said something that resonated within me: "I don't want to survive. I want to live!"

In sharing with a friend tonight this (living as the result of the life of another) came up and became a major part of our time of sharing, discussing, and pondering things such as life, and what it is ‘all about.’

If the original intent of God was to be a Father, then how could that become a reality apart from children? Well, we all know that He had/has a Son, the only begotten son, Jesus Christ, but maybe Jesus was but the ‘first born’ of many sons yet to come forth and ultimately fill the Father’s house.

If His loving design for us was to be alive and to live and not just merely survive (exist), then maybe it was not going to become a living reality apart from the miracle of another’s life placed within us to BE our ONLY life!

I want to throw this thought into this mix here for further and hopefully extended conversations with anyone who might choose to read from my thoughts here.
More often than not unless one is a ‘trained professional’ it is best to not try to do what you think you can do at home, ergo, the need to rely, depend upon another?
Here to the point is what I want to say, is it possible that for a very, very long time so many Christians have suffered, being emasculated by someone putting us in our place simply because we were NOT trained professionals when it came to spiritual things, discussions etc.
In other words, if we do NOT understand what we are talking about, then how dare we have the balls to start talking as if we did understand or know anything?

Maybe there is an understanding, (revelation) that flows intuitively out of the Life of the Father, or, the life of another that has become in fact our only Life.
As I shared with my friend tonight, I said, ‘Bro I really do not know how much of anything I truly understand in so many things I have shared with you, but I believe it all to be the truth nonetheless.'
Does that mean that everything I see-feel is the gospel truth, that nothing can be added or subtracted from what I say or see, of course not, but I have always believed it much easier to drive a bike while being on it than talking about bike riding while the bike is leaning up against the porch.

Getting back to this ‘life of another’ issue, maybe this is why so many things have been and continue to be at best just stuff that keeps us surviving rather than living, in not knowing that true, real living will only happen as a result of having the life of another being placed in us, and being led to its reality, not merely just a Jesus add on pinned on us.
I love how Paul so clearly makes this reality and its power up close and available for all. Here, and here.
What more could there possibly be available to us through His death for us than to be reconciled, and the answer is enthusiastically spelled out; “we shall be saved by his life.”

I want to encourage anyone reading this to NOT let, allow, anyone to dumb you down into a fetal position of believing that you do not, can not live a spiritually vibrant romantic loving adventure in discovering His all for you apart or without their guru and exalted saintly status of directing you as someone who is so naive and ignorant.

This ongoing, unfolding revelation of being loved, and in turn living loved is in my opinion the out working of His divine design; “until we're all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God's Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. No prolonged infancies among us, please. We'll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love."

Rich

No Short Cuts

In response to my friend Dave and his quick wit demonstrated over here, I wanted to share the following.

A popular movement in Christianity in the past few years has been the attempt to live our lives by applying the question, “What would Jesus do?” to the situations in our lives.
This sounds good but it completely misses the point. What we commonly look for in asking this question is some kind of specific guidance such as, “Would Jesus buy a Ford or a Chevy?” It pains me to inform you that Jesus didn’t know what a “Ford” is. The object of seeking specific guidance is really to allow us to live independently instead of living through the moment by moment operation of the Father’s life in us. The Father’s life is spontaneous and operating in that spontaneity requires the walk of faith. Being told what to do, even by God, is not faith. It may be obedience but it is not faith.And obedience apart from faith is dead obedience.

I don’t mean to imply here that we cannot expect to get guidance for our living from the Father. We can expect to be led by the Father in our daily living. This is not the prescriptive “go and do” type of guidance we are often taught to seek. Rather, when we live by the Father’s life leading from our spirit we are guided moment by moment. This is most often the leading of “God’s unspoken yes.” We have God’s leading from our reborn human spirit continually. The life of Christ in us is continually operating. We go through our days confronted by a series of choices. As long as we are making choices that are acceptable to the Father we feel no hesitation. If we consider a course that is harmful (to ourselves or others) we will experience a “check” or sense to not go there. We can heed the check or we can ignore that check and live with the consequences of walking in our own way. These consequences need not be dire but we will see our plans fail and our expectations not be met.This is not a BIG deal. We learn to follow the Lord’s leading by our mistakes as well as our successes. The Father knows this is part of the process---this is why Christ died for ALL our sins everywhere; past, present and future. (1Peter 3:18)

As we gain experience in listening to the Father’s leading we will make fewer mistakes. We will learn to listen better and turn more quickly. In the end there is NO substitute for dependence on the Father’s life as our only life and resource for living: (John 15:5)
Living independently from the Father is bankrupt living. There is no legitimate reason for walking apart from the moment by moment resting in dependence on the Father for all things. This is the way we were meant to live. This is the ONLY way we can live effectively.

Once again this is taken from Bill Landon’s book, ‘My Father and Your Father’.


I am so thrilled that NO man can teach us this operation of the Law of the spirit of Life in Christ Jesus and its unfolding work of grace within us, liberating us daily from the gravitational pull from the Law of sin and death!!There are NO short cuts for any of us. In being awakened to the depths of His matchless grace and unconditional love, we are freed to join Him in discovering just how deep the rabbit hole really is.
Yahoo!!!!

Rich