The Blessings of the New Covenant: How to Abide in the Vine (John 15) - Mark Ellis

Abiding in Him, I don't know, has always sounded for me initially a little bit kind of strange like okay like how do you do that god is a spirit he's everywhere the bible says that the presence of the lord falls the earth right it says david says i can't go to the highest mountain or the lowest value even make my bed in hell without your presence being there so clearly if we were to say, well, is anyone really outside of God? We would say, no, everyone is actually in God because we are all living within the spoken sentence that God spoke when the universe came into existence.

But in order to abide in him, you actually have to proactively be conscious of his presence.

Let me give you an example.

We are all in this room right now.

And those of us who can see one another, We are actively in one another's presence right now.

But there's a whole bunch of stuff happening over there in the kid zone that you are now unaware of.

Even though we are all abiding in the same building, you are unaware of this.

that experience and the context of that experience because you are not abiding with them you're abiding with us this is a very important point because abiding literally means that we are cohabitating it doesn't mean that we are waiting for a visitation so when jesus came he came to make a way that the holy spirit would abide with us always and it was because of that that we would be abiding In him.

And Jesus spoke about this very clearly when he spoke about John 15.

Okay, we're going to go there now.

You guys all see them? The flickering screens.

All right, John 15 verse 1 to 6.

It says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser or the gardener.

Right? Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit.

Now notice it's a branch of his.

You see that? Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes.

How many of you love pruning? You don't? How many of you have been a gardener before? If you notice that if you prune the tree, the fruit is better.

Am I right? If you don't prune the tree, the fruit isn't as good.

But if you prune the tree, the fruit is better because by pruning the tree, you are effectively removing anything from the tree that is unnecessary.

So the energy to sustain the unnecessary is removed so that you can focus on the necessary and produce the fruit.

That you need to produce.

Right? What happened?

Okay.

Someone's been kicking something under