REMAIN IN ME

By Unknown
Posted on December 29, 2005

If you are looking for a quick devotional for your group or a discussion starter, this is a great study on John 15. Feel free to make copies and hand them out to your group. Most of us need to be reminded of these things from time to time, especially after Christmas. We all need to know that our Rio Links will not be all God wants them to be if we are not spending time in solitude and continueing to simplify our lives. If we want to bear good fruit, we have to remain in Christ. I'll be the first to stand up and testify that my behavior, good or bad, starts with my heart. Check it out.........
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REMAIN IN ME
John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man abides in me and I in him he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

"What do you do in solitude and silence? Well, as far as things to 'get done,' nothing at all. As long as you are doing 'things to get done,' you have not broken human contact. So don't go into solitude and silence with a list. Can we enjoy things in solitude and silence? Yes, but don't try to. Just be there." (Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1998, p. 359)

"The cure for too-much-to-do is solitude and silence, for there you find you are safely more than what you do. And the cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone." (p.359)

John 15:8 This is to my fathers glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

"We want to 'make the tree good.' We do not aim just to control behavior, but to change the inner castle of the soul, that God may be worshipped 'in spirit and in truth' and right behavior cease to be a performance." (p. 364)

Behavior becomes a performance when it is divorced from the cultivation of a good heart. When behavior is rooted in the bad soil of people pleasing, whether or not the behavior appears good or not, it is bad fruit. Fruit is not good or bad based on its skin, but on what is inside.

John 15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last.

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