be joined to the vine

This morning in Sunday school Greg made this statement. I can't remember if he read it from the book we are going through or if they were his own words. It was so profound I want to share. Drum roll please (use your imagination here)...........

"There is a difference between Christ being in my life and being my life" (emphasis mine).

I'm afraid I've lived most of my Christian life in the first category. I couldn't figure out why Jesus' words like Matthew 11:30, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, seemed untrue. Now I believed God's Word to be true; I just couldn't figure out why it wasn't true in my life. It seemed I struggled all the time and could never measure up to what I thought God expected of me.

Most of my problem was that I was making it all about me. I can't manufacture or earn peace, joy, love, kindness, hope, or any of the things I longed for. For me, they only came in Him. God had already given me all I needed to live a victorious life in Him. Not apart from Him, IN HIM.

He desires the later category for us; so much so that He sent His own Son to make it happen. I love the way "The Message" puts it: But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him (Romans 5:8) and (John 15:4-5) "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."