The following message was delivered at the 2003 Shepherds’ Conference, A ministry of Grace Community Church 818.909.5530. © 2003 All Rights Reserved. A CD, MP3, or tape cassette copy of this session (# 3114-4) can be obtained by going to www.shepherdsconference.org
Running on Empty
by
Dawn Iverson
My name is Dawn and my husband Rob is speaking at the very same time as I am and he thought that was really cute. So we’re working on our little talks together, separately together. We have been at this church for a long time, for about 21 years and it’s been a real joy to be here. We’ve truly grown up spiritually here. We have been married almost 34 years and we have three children, two are married. And we have four grandchildren and it’s been a very exciting time to be a grandmother. I can’t believe I’m there where my grandmother was. And our baby is graduating from college on May10th and getting married on May 24th. So it is going to be a really, really busy time for us in the next couple of months and I trust that I am not going to be running on empty the whole time. I don’t know if you want to know anything more about me other than that. I think it’s best just to get started and you’ll learn about me probably in my talk.
Let me pray before we begin, okay? Our Lord God, I am so grateful for these privileged women to be able to be here today, to really take in all that You have prepared for them, through the various sessions and speakers and from one another, and I pray Lord that this time will truly be a very special time for them. I thank You for the privilege that we have to gather together to open Your Word and to learn more about You. It’s a privilege that we take for granted and we confess that. And I pray Lord that today there will be truly a new beginning. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Well a few years ago my family and I; I didn’t drive, my husband drove. We decided to take a family drive to see my parents. My parents live in northern Arizona. It was Labor Day weekend. We had planned all summer for this little long weekend trip. And it’s not easy to get to their place. It’s not easy to fly there because you’ve got to fly to Phoenix and then drive up so we decided to drive. And we said, “Hey, that’s not very far on the map we can do this. We had never done it. We didn’t even measure the miles but we had a new car and we had some time. We had new tires and the car was all tuned up. And we took our daughter, our youngest daughter with us. She was 17. And my husband got a new dog so we decided to take Harley with us too. And at 6:00 A.M., just before we were about to leave, our oldest daughter called and said, “Mom, Kirk has to work late so would you mind picking Luke up and driving him?” They were going to follow us, piggyback, on this trip a little while later. So we picked Luke up. He was three and a half and so we had a full car. And about seven hours into the trip we are in Arizona. And I don’t know if you have driven through Arizona but it is remote, it is remote. And there are many miles between cities and rest stops. And we had a puppy and a three year old and we stopped many times. And on one stop, I remember this, we returned to the car and Rob just casually mentioned that there was a red light flashing: “Check Engine Now.” That was really odd. We’d never seen that before and we had, we just had the car tuned up and so we ignored it. This was a new car. And we passed one town before filling up with gas. We thought we could make it to the next town and after checking the distance to empty, that was a new little toy on this car, we figured that we had sixty miles to go and we had run before on empty for 25 miles past that 60 miles so we figured we had about 40 miles to spare. Been there? Well, you do know what happened. The car started shaking and after 39 miles, could we make it 3 more miles without this car blowing up on us, because I really thought it was going to blow up. I’ve never run out of gas before but that’s what happened. The distance to empty sign was at zero and we didn’t know where we were really. And we were left wondering, what happened to that 25-50 mile cushion? Well we made it to the off ramp but it wouldn’t go anymore, and so thank goodness Luke was napping at that time. I do remember this as plain as day and Rob and Harley hiked the two miles to the next town to get help and yes, we were running on empty. And the engine needed fuel and wouldn’t carry us any further at all.
Now why did this happen? I
had a lot of time sitting in that car, while he was going to get gas, to think
about this. We were just rolling along as usual taking everything for granted,
not taking into account the stresses of this trip. I don’t know if you know it,
but going to Arizona, it’s like steady uphill all the way, the way we were
going near Flagstaff. And on this day there were headwinds. It was stormy off
and on all the way. And we were definitely overloaded because on top of the Jeep
we had all the luggage, and the children’s luggage you know, because we had a
bigger car so we took their luggage too. Also, we were very ignorant. We
didn’t know the area. We didn’t know our limits. We didn’t know the
distance. It was 650 miles one way. We hadn’t added that up. And added to
our ignorance was our presumption. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that
place: all of the best plans that you have, yet one crucial component is
missing. And it is frustrating and it can even be dangerous because as soon as
Rob left, about five minutes after he left, zooming behind us was this huge
gang of Harley bikers. They didn’t see our car but we were in a very
vulnerable place, Annie and Luke and I. So it could have been very dangerous.
And all of this could have been avoided if we had simply refueled at every
stop, not just to check our legs but to make sure that we weren’t running on
empty and to check the oil, that wouldn’t have hurt either. And keep the tank
full.
Well, I think about this trip that we had and I really think that we can apply
it to our life, and our witness, and our ministry, because how often do, do we
do things with out refueling, without going back to the source of life like we
are supposed to do? Life, ministry, usefulness in God’s Kingdom is like this
and we’re all at one time or another headed uphill, facing storms and danger
and headwinds, and overloaded and trusting in ourselves and it can result in
not only frustration and fruitlessness, but it can result in danger and serious
trouble. I cannot tell you how many people I know who have been Christians for
a long, long time and yet they struggle with going back to the life source,
with refueling regularly. I’ve been a Christian for about 22 years and I know
personally how challenging it is to keep that disciplined, daily, personal time
in the Word of God, to stay close to the Lord through His Word. Yet myself and
people I know who struggle with these quiet times are involved in ministry,
involved in doing good works in neighborhoods, involved in the church, always,
always going and doing and yet putting off the very most critical thing and
that is to spend time alone with the Lord they love in concentrated study and
prayer. I don’t care if they are young wives or older wives, or young
Christians or new Christians, or singles or married, or seminary wives or
pastor’s wives, or elder’s wives, it doesn’t matter.
The effectiveness of anyone’s witness or ministry is directly linked to time spent with the Lord. There is no shortcut. There is no shortcut. He desires to build within women, His character, His character. And this takes time, and it takes discipline and it takes some effort on our part, and what we do then is to be a byproduct of who we are. We are called not “human doings,” we are called “human beings.” And God wants to build Himself in us. To be more like Christ we must spend more time with Him and that’s just a basic, isn’t it? It’s a basic, but we all need to be reminded of the basics and so we go back to the basics. We go back to the basics, and that is to first admit that we could do better, that we need to return every day and fill up, through spending time alone with the Lord in His Word and in prayer. Just as surely as you need food, maybe not right now, and water, and rest, you need to be recharged spiritually everyday by feeding on the Word of God, and drinking spiritually everyday by going back to the well, and resting in Him or else there is loss of effectiveness. It is essential, it is not optional. It’s not an option. So the bottom line for running empty is that we’re not abiding in the vine. We’re not hooked up to the life source. We’re not plugged in to our life source.
You know there is a principle, that is a life principle, and that is, “to give out you must have something to give out, and in order to give anything out, you’ve got to take it in.” To give out you must take in. A New Testament example of this is very clearly in Mary and Martha. You all know that Martha had lessons to learn. She was the doer. She had to learn, in Luke 10 particularly, that worship is the first thing and though she complained about Mary not helping, God had to rebuke her. Jesus rebuked her. And He commended Mary and taught Mary; taught Martha what Mary knew and that is that work must flow out of worship. Work must flow out of worship. Mary spent many hours listening to Jesus, that’s what she is known for, she listened to the Lord. And she knew more than anybody else what was happening, that last week, particularly of His life, including the resurrection. You know what? You can’t find Mary at the resurrection because she understood and she knew that He wasn’t in the tomb because she listened to Him. She’s the one who spent the most time listening. And what is she remembered for? She’s remembered in connection with the gospel and she’ll be remembered forever for that. What a commendation.
So work must flow out of
worship. We must worship first, not work first. I know that our world is not
set up that way. We want to get out and do the minute we get out of bed but we
are not to do that, not to do that to be most effective.
If you go back to the Old Testament there’s a wonderful example among many people who were very powerful ministers of the Word of God and one such man is Ezra. And Ezra is the leader who led the second group of the children of Israel back from Babylon and he also organized the whole Old Testament and the Psalms. He did a lot more than we know or give him credit for. He wrote 1st and 2nd Chronicles based on what he had of the history of the kings. And while he was in Babylon he poured over God’s Word. He had copies of it and he influenced Artaxerxes the king, to let him go back to Jerusalem to teach the people God’s Word. Now Ezra’s character is found in Ezra 7:10. The key to his character and secret of his powerful ministry, of which we have untold benefit today, is in 7:10, “For Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of the Lord and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.” So we have Ezra in the Old Testament, among many. Eric Alexander last night spoke about Samuel and we know that Moses…oh there are just untold people. I could spend a whole hour talking about all of these people but I won’t. And then we have Mary in the New Testament. So those two you can hang up as role models in your life. And understand that whether your ministry is to children, to spiritual children, to the church, to the family, successful ministry must start here; to be devoted to the study of God’s Word. It’s really a basic.
So my talk this morning is more than just about quiet times and how to do them, because I think we all know how to do and what to do. I’ll include a little bit of that, but it is really truly to be an encouragement to you, to get back to quiet times if you have been struggling with them or to renew your energy and your determination to be faithful to your quiet times, understanding why they are so very necessary. So I want to be an encouragement to you in order to know how to have a successful or fruitful and fulfilling life. So in order to have a fruitful life you’ve got to be faithful to quiet times, okay? That’s key to be what God intends for us to be.
What has God chosen for us to be? He’s chosen us to bear fruit, to bear fruit. You thought it was just to bear children, right? And cut up fruit? But John 15:16 says, “I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last”—so eternal fruit. So we’re to bear fruit, and you can go into the Old Testament because Psalm 128:3 says God expects more. It says in there that your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. So we are to bear fruit. So you can tie those two things together. We’re to be a fruitful vine within the vine. We’re really a branch within the vine. And where does it begin? I really truly believe it begins with the fear of God. So I’m going to talk this morning about being fearful, being faithful, and being fruitful.
It begins with fear. Now fear is a negative word and a lot of people don’t want to hear that they should fear God, fear God first, because it is so negative. But in Proverbs and in many other places it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” [Proverbs 9:10]. So, if you want to be a wise woman you begin with the fear of the Lord, but you have to understand what fear means. There are two basic meanings and one is an “internal alarm” that you’re just so guilty because of your sin that you run in fear, run in terror; you’re terrified of God. And the other word is, “awesome affection, reverent fear.” And it speaks about a love relationship. You stand in fear, you don’t run in fear. And so that is the kind of fear that we develop the more we know God. So I want to ask you, do you fear God? Is it alarming or is it affectionate?
Now we are to grow in the fear of God and fear of Him grows the more that you know Him. He becomes greater and you become smaller. He becomes more awesome and you become more miniscule—that is growth, that is growth. Your attitude and your understanding changes the more you grow in the fear of God, because He is simply God when you first start but He becomes the great, almighty Lord of the universe and it is an amazing thing. And you know that there is no end to your growth and understanding of God because He is infinite, He is infinite. You understand that He is transcendent. He’s above all things and He’s imminent. He’s near within. So in fearing God you realize, and in growing in the fear of God, you realize that He has the right to rule you because He is sovereign. He fearfully and wonderfully made you. He is your Creator. You realize His personal love for you. He is your Savior. He died for you. You realize He is your teacher living within you. He is your counselor, the Spirit of truth. And you realize He speaks directly to you from His Word. He is the Word. And you realize He’s coming again. He is Lord, yes.
So the most important thing you can do is to love God in reverential awe yet in personal relationship. And you must get to the place where you love Him more than you love yourself. And that’s hard for a lot of people, because this world is geared up to self-love, isn’t it? In John 21 Jesus asks Peter three times, “do you love me?” Peter was being stripped of pride and self-importance in this restoration passage. And the key issue was, “do you love me? Settle this now. Settle this now.” He was being told of his own death. And he was being asked, “Do you trust me even in this. Do you trust me in this? Do you realize that I have conquered death for you?” So they key issue is, “do you love me?” When you have settled the matter of life and death by trusting Christ then you are really ready to live and serve.
I have a friend who works with me in a ministry that I’m involved in and she is delightful. And she’s young, she’s very young. And this summer she was suddenly and severely struck with, as her doctor says, the most virulent form of rheumatoid arthritis he’s ever seen. She was a children’s leader in our ministry and just bouncing all over the place all the time and now she can barely walk at the moment. And when I saw her, the first time after this diagnosis this summer, her first words to me were, “Even though I am in excruciating pain, I will never have to die because He has taken care of that for me.” And she is ministering to more people in her pain and in this situation than she did last year ministering in the ministry she was doing. So that’s the kind of attitude that speaks of growth and fear of God and loving Him.
So living in light of fearing God can be summed up to motive because you love Him, you want to please Him, you do what He tells you to do, you obey His Word. And so the obvious and logical conclusion is you must know His Word in order to obey His Word. Fearing God is a response to a growing biblical understanding and loving relationship with the true and living God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, the Word. So the response to God is key, and response to God produces character. It can produce ungodly character if you rebel against His Word and it can produce godly character when you respond rightly to His Word. How do we know how to respond rightly? Well we know through the Word. You need to open up the Word of God. And it comes through conviction of the indwelling Holy Spirit who convicts your conscience and then you obey. It’s very, very simple. How do we grow in fear and in awe of God? It requires faithfulness. So you are called to be faithful. So out of fear comes faithfulness and not the kind of fear where you are in terror and running away but the fear of loving God in reverential awe.
So this speaks about a daily personal time alone with the Lord. You read the Bible everyday. It is His love letter to you. You must open it.
You know my husband served in Vietnam and we were married when he was there. And he was not the kind of man who wrote letters, but he wrote to me every single day that he was there. Do you think that I never opened those letters? I tore them open the minute I got them and I read them and reread them because I wanted to know, I wanted to know him. I wanted to know what he was doing. I wanted to know, although he didn’t tell me all those things, but I knew that I wouldn’t know him unless I read those letters. And so, you’re not going to know God unless you read His letter, unless you read the Bible.
In John 15, if you’ve got your Bibles you might want to take it. It just happens that I was teaching this, this week, so it’s very fresh in my mind. John 15, we have the parable of the vine and the branches. Jesus tells us we are to remain in Him or abide in Him if you have NAS. In 15:5 He says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man [if a woman] remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” Go down to verse 7. What does He mean “and I remain in you?” “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you,” so it’s connected to His words. You hook that back up with John 1:1, He is the Word, right? “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” So His Word is to remain in you. It’s a pretty simple concept. So the key is His Word. He is the Word.
Now there is a lot of
Scriptural motivation to be in God’s Word. If you read the Bible at all, Job
23:12, Job says, “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily
bread.” I have a friend who will not eat of anything until she eats of God’s Word
in the morning. That’s her discipline. It’s a pretty hard discipline, I think,
but she says she has been so blessed by that. So she says no Bible, no food.
Pretty simple. She’s really skinny too! No, she’s not.
Psalm 1:2, “But his delight
is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.” Psalm
119:97 and 98, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your
commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.” Matthew
4:4, Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written: Man shall not live on
bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” First Peter
2:2, “Like newborn babes, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow
up in your salvation.” In Acts 17 the noble Bereans, they were more noble than
the other guys around because they examined the Scriptures every day to see if
what Paul said was true. So they poured over the Scriptures every day. So, if
they took it seriously don’t you think it behooves us to take it seriously? We
need to prioritize the Word of God. Now that means organize your day around
it. Don’t try to fit it in to your day but organize all of your other day
around it. Make it a priority.
There is a little tiny book called Reading the Bible and Geoffrey Thomas wrote it and he says in his book, “This Christian life is paved with the best intentions of reading the Scriptures regularly and also with many broken resolutions and disappointments. Jesus exhorts us to search the Scriptures (John 5:39). That is, we are to ransack the Word of God. Ransack the Word of God, to pour over it, to subject it to every kind of analysis, to grasp its every shade of meaning. We are to be obsessed with the desire to understand it. This passionate concern is never to become incidental or secondary. It should be a priority in the Christian life and activity around which our existence revolves.” Is that your priority? I have to confess it’s not my priority every single day. You need to be disciplined and our world is not set up for this.
Moses at the very end of his life exhorted Israel saying, “Take to heart all my words. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life.” They are life (Deuteronomy 32:46-47). So we must daily be in the Word and we must daily pray. We pray without ceasing regularly, corporately, privately, talk to the Lord, develop a relationship with Him. You cannot get to know someone you don’t communicate with. And then wait patiently and watch expectantly for the answers to that prayer.
But this requires a plan. It just doesn’t happen. Dr. Alexander said last night that we are book collectors, not book readers. I think we’re also Bibles collectors and not Bible readers. How many of you have counted the Bibles that you have at home? I know we’ve got a Bible for everything. Someone gave me a soul care Bible the other day so if somebody’s soul needs caring I can open that Bible.
We like to listen to others preach the Bible but do we really fulfill our intentions as we would like to? Jesus had a plan to feed 5,000 people and more. And in that chapter of John there are many lessons that we can pick up from how he did it and principles that we can apply to our life. One I thought of is that He taught them before he fed them. People ran to be with Him, to hear Him and so we have to ask ourselves do we run to or put off our quiet times. Another lesson is that it was simple, it was orderly, it was organized. God is a God of order. The people were to sit in groups. It was organized that way and they received the food when they sat down and there was more than enough for everyone. Not a morsel was wasted, not a word in God’s Word is wasted. Christ is sufficient in serving others; that is another thing we learn from that. The disciples had to keep coming back to Jesus and then give to the people. And that is what we are called to do. In order to give anything out to anyone else we must go to Christ first to receive. So keep going to Him for fresh supply, it never runs out.
And also He gave thanks. He gave thanks to His Father first. And that is a reminder for us, I believe, to really give thanks for the privilege that we have to open the Bible, to openly attend Bible studies, to go to church without persecution in this country, to be able to gather freely to study the Bible, to even buy Bibles. We take that privilege for granted and we don’t even know how long we’re going to have it. We really don’t know how long we’re going to have it and so we need to take advantage of that freedom and that privilege while we have it now.
So have a plan. Have a plan. You know discipline is not natural. This kind of discipline is not natural. The world we live in is geared to noise and activity and distraction. In fact, if you say you’re going to have a quiet time most of the people in the world would think you were really weird.
So, quiet times must be cultivated. It’s also not an option if you want to grow. You know the fact is, you do what you want to do. You really do, do what you want to do. You direct your time and your energy and your money and your attention to that which you do want to do and so it’s got to be important enough to you in order for you to follow through and be faithful with it. We make appointments to get our hair and our nails done and to make that exercise class and to go out to lunch with our friends and to do all these things. We make appointments to help others and to minister to others and all of that is good but one thing we often neglect is to make our appointment with God. And so we need to make a daily appointment with Him, a daily appointment. Get your little book out and write it in there if you need to. Put it on your calendar, write it in there. And give Him your best time. If you know that you can’t even think before you have a cup of coffee in the morning, don’t give Him the time before you have coffee. If you know that you fall asleep after 8:00 at night don’t book it in at that time. Give Him your best time. I know that you probably have children, some of you in this group, and you know that they always get up when you plan to do your quiet time, right? So you just have to do it a little earlier. Plan to do it during nap time and understand that this time isn’t forever. But do it, do it. Book it. Write it down. Also don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day. Those days happen. Simply reschedule for tomorrow or for a little later.
So make that daily appointment. Prearrange a place. Prearrange a place in your home because this develops a habit. This serves as a reminder every time you go by that chair you’re reminded. A place also which limits distractions so you don’t want to have something in the living room where people are watching TV or in the computer room, you know, you know all those things.
Turn the phone off, including your cell phone. Turn the phone off. And be
organized. Have everything together. Have your Bible, your pen, your
notebook, your glasses if you need them. Have everything together. Make your
prayer list and have that available. I know someone who had a little basket
and she had all her Bible study materials in that basket so she could take that
with her and when her children were involved in soccer and all of those things
her quiet time was in the car. And it worked.
Also study the Bible, not books about the Bible. Study the Bible. You must start with God’s Word, not someone else’s opinion about God’s Word. Use commentaries later if you need to and ask your pastors to help you and direct you to good commentaries because there are some that aren’t so good out there.
Also you know what really helps, I think, to stimulate worship in quiet time are hymnals. Go through the hymns. The hymns have doctrine upon doctrine upon doctrine and they will direct your mind to worship God as you begin your quiet time.
Do it alone, let the Holy Spirit teach you and decide how to approach it. I mean you can do it in a myriad of ways. You can begin with one book of the Bible and decide to read that book everyday for a month or you can do it chronologically. I’ve got this new Bible that I’ve found, another new Bible. This is the daily Bible in chronological order. And so it reads like the history. It’s great. It’s got daily devotions, devotional insights to guide you through God’s Word. So that’s a handy little tool, I think, to pick up and use.
Someone also gave me this, this is not available, but she gave me this little prayer book and so this helps to organize your prayers for that time. Now she just gave this to me a couple weeks ago so I haven’t used that one yet. I’m going to wait until next year maybe. This is the one that I’ve been using, the method I’ve been using this year and this has been very helpful. It’s very simple and all it is, is praying through Scripture. And so the method is very simple. All I do is read the passage that I am studying this week and list God’s names and then His attributes and then petitions and then write a prayer. And it is amazing how each passage applies to your life. You think, okay that doesn’t apply to me, but it really does. And it teaches you how to think through and really start, with where it should start, and that is focusing on God Himself and His attributes and not so much on what my needs are.
So that’s another little method that you can use, but there are many other things that you can do. So decide how to approach it and be accountable. Don’t do it with someone, but tell someone, tell someone. One of the ways you can be accountable is to get involved in a Bible study and then use those lessons as the basis for your quiet times. That’s very, very efficient and it will help to build your knowledge of God.
And the last thing that I have here about how to do this is to persevere. Persevere. Just do it. Keep refueling so that you will not become empty and dry with nothing to give out. You never know when you are going to be needed to give Christ to someone. If you’re feeling spiritually dry confess that to God. Ask Him to show you what you need to learn today and then do it. Understand that when we are faithful our character will begin to reflect Jesus and that is then fruitfulness and out of that fruitfulness, or integrity of character, the world is impacted, and fruitfulness results.
So grow to be like Him you must feed on Him. You are what you eat, you’ve heard that, apply it to Scripture. And for His words to remain in you, you must remain in Him.
I was truly blessed last week because in the class that I teach there was this little girl, little girl, she’s probably 35. She’s short, no! But she was asked at a lunch what she’s noticed of her life changes since she began this Bible study this year and what she said truly blessed me. She said, “You know, I’ve been a Christian a long time but this year for some reason all day long I find myself thinking about God’s Word, thinking about what He would think of this and the Scripture that I’ve studied is brought to mind because I spend so much more time with Him now than ever in His Word.” Now, she’s got three pre-schoolers so it can be done. She does it during their afternoon nap time. And last week someone turned in a lost lesson to me and it was completely done. So I had this lesson in my possession and I said, “Ok, whose is it?” And she said it was hers and when she came up to claim it she told me that it was really hard for her to get this lesson done this week so she’s grateful that someone found it and turned it. And I asked her why it was so hard for her to get it done this week and she said, “Well, I ran the L.A. marathon.” So she ran the L.A. marathon, she’s got pre-schoolers, yet she spends time everyday in God’s Word and she prioritized getting her lesson completely done and she was limping in on Tuesday but she was there. She was there. What a blessing that was for me because I have watched her since the very first time she’s come in and you can track the growth in these women by how excited they are about God’s Word.
So we ask ourselves questions. Well, isn’t a weekly Bible study enough? Or isn’t listening to sermons enough? Or isn’t it enough when I just turn the radio on and listen to sermons? Or isn’t reading books about the Bible enough? And the answer is—not enough! Those things are wonderful and they’re good and we’re not to neglect them but if you want to grow in your knowledge of Jesus Christ and make a difference for Him in your world, then that’s not enough. That’s not enough.
Well there are specific results that you can look for when you refuel regularly because fruitfulness is directly linked to faithfully remaining in Him. And it is life changing. To be fruitful however, you must be faithful. You’ve got that principle down right? To be fruitful you must be faithful. So be fruitful and you’re fruitful by remaining in the vine. Now to remain in the vine means stay where you are. Stay where you are. It means to stay in place, in direct connection to the vine. Be in close contact with the vine continually drawing your life from the vine. A better prayer than “help me live my life for You” is, “Lord, live your life through me. Lord, live your life through me.” And you see the life of the vine is flowing through the branches. We have no life without Him.
Now you look around and you say, okay, well that person says she’s a Christian, that person says she’s a Christian but you don’t see any fruit. And personally I think a fruitless Christian is an oxymoron, but God knows where the fruit is right? And He’s the only one who is really to be our fruit inspectors so praise God for that.
But when we look at our own life and we think that we’re not very fruitful I think that there are some things that we can consider about barriers to fruitfulness. You know there are some things that might block our fruitfulness. One thing is lack of proper nourishment. Maybe we’re feeding more on junk food than truth. Maybe you’re a news-junkie, got the news on all the time. Yet you’re not in the Word of God. Sometimes the fruit is not producing because the branch likes to stay in the shade and out of the sun because it’s real comfortable in the shade and we’re lazy, basically we’re lazy and we like to stay in our comfort zone. Or maybe you want way too much sun, all the attention coming to you. So lack of proper nourishment will be resulting in fruitlessness.
Another barrier is no water or little water. And so you develop a shallow root system and when drought comes, when those headwinds hit then you die in the drought. And this speaks about a people who have no roots in Scripture, no depth, and no ability to discern lies when the wolves come and so you are deceived by false shepherds. You know to recognize counterfeits you must know the truth. That’s what they teach people who work in banks. You’ve got to study the real thing so you can recognize counterfeit bills when they come. So that applies to Scripture too. You need to recognize by knowing the truth. You can probably think of many other reasons too but I am just going to run through a few.
Another barrier is disease and that happens when we have an unguarded heart and we allow infection to come in and viruses to come in and we have a week immune system and sin enters into our life and, for example, the root of bitterness would fall there. And then you know a diseased plant infects others around it and so we see gossip and slander fitting in right there under disease. Or perhaps the branches are immature and weak and easily enticed, one of those weak willed women who are easily enticed clinging to other vines. This kind of branch needs time to grow, needs pruning. This kind of branch lacks spiritual discernment, doesn’t recognize the weeds, so gets tangled up in them. This kind of branch is pretty high maintenance, needs constant attention.
Another barrier is improper pruning. You know the Father prunes us, Jesus said, right here in verse 2, “He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” We are to submit to the Father’s pruning, submit to His pruning. Don’t do a self-pruning. You might prune yourself in the wrong direction. He must guide our priorities and our energies. Don’t depend on your own wisdom and your own desires. Some people resist God’s guidance and so a barrier to fruitfulness is no gardener. And so you get all tangled up with weeds and distractions and wild vines and this is a rebellious person who is fruitless.
And the last step would be separation from the vine and this speaks of spiritual death because we’re not able for a moment to survive without Jesus. There’s only one way to God and that is through His Son. “Apart from Me you can do nothing,” and you know that. So the counter to the barriers to fruitfulness is to remain in Him, to remain in His Word always, always.
I have a grandfather and I don’t know if anyone in here has ever heard this story but this is my favorite family story. I didn’t know that my grandfather was a Christian until after he died, not really because I didn’t become a Christian, it was in the transition time. And my grandmother would then tell me stories about how he lived his life. We lived far apart so I wasn’t there day to day, but she told me that he would every morning, every single morning for 30 years from the time that he was retired until he died, he would get up at five in the morning, make one cup of coffee, get completely dressed out of his pajamas, make a cup of coffee and then go and have his quiet time in his chair, in the living room, in his Lazy-boy. And at 8:00 then he would finish and he would put his pajamas back on and go take a nap. And so, he really did that. She was just astounded that he did that every day. And I said, “Well, why did he do that?” And she said, “Well, I don’t know. He just couldn’t read the Bible in His pajamas.” He respected the Bible that much and he did that every single day. And you have to know that they were married for over 60 years, my grandparents, and she never became a Christian. And the reason I know that, that he truly was, because of the things that she told me afterwards and how she said, “Yeah, he would come in and he’d say Mary you’ve got to read this. This is so exciting. This really applies,” and I’d say, Oh Sammy, go sit down.” You know, so she never responded to his witness but I did because that impacted my life so much to know it was so valuable for him to do this every single day. And I was so amazed about this.
I remembered then about five years before then, maybe even ten years before then, before I was saved, I would ask him, “Why do you read the Bible all the time? Isn’t once enough? I mean you read it from the beginning to the end. You’ve read it all. There are other books in the world, come on.” And so I would tease him about it and he’d say, “Oh, Dawny,” he’d say, “You know it takes me so long to get to the end from the time I started in the beginning, that by the time I get to the end I forget what happened in the beginning, so I got to go back and read it all over again.” And so he did that for 30 years, 30 years. And he was impacted for Christ because of his mother as far as I know, his mother. So women you have an important, important place in the world. I know that my grandfather prayed for me and my legacy for my grandchildren I hope will be likewise.
So remain in His Word. It’s important. In 15:9 He says, “And remain in My love. As the Father has loved me so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.” Obedience proves our love for Him. In 15:10 He says, “If you obey My commands you will remain in my love.” So obedience proves love and the result in verse 11 is joy, complete joy. And it’s so simple; remain in His Word, remain in His love and know His joy, know His joy. And fruit will be developed. And that fruit is the inward fruit of character. Sanctification process—we grow in holiness, developing Christ-like character in the outward fruit of evangelism and service and all of those things, winning souls for Christ because we have a life of integrity because we’re growing to be so much more like Him.
Now time spent alone with the Lord results in integrity, builds integrity. And that is the strongest witness in the world, a world which is trying but will never succeed in doing away with Jesus. The world is trying to do that. But we are called to be faithful to His Word and that integrity will not be denied. Now with all of this as a result who would not want to begin each day with the Lord? Each day, we are not results oriented but we simply want to fulfill His purpose for our life and that is to become the person that He has created us to be and to do the work He has planned for us since the very beginning. Yet we’re never going to be that person unless and until we choose to spend time with Him.
Last night when I was here, right in front of me there was young mom and her baby was about two months old. And this was the most beautiful baby and his eyes were like this. And she was so in love with this child and it was so obvious to everyone around. She was waiting for his smile, waiting for him to look at her and anticipating every need he had but he was so fascinated with the lights and all of the people around that, he wasn’t making any noise. And she never took her eyes off of this child, just waiting for him to look at her, to make eye contact and he did. And she lit up, she lit up. And I thought God is like that with us, isn’t He? He’s just waiting, waiting for us. He’s protecting us, He’s patiently waiting, He loves us. And He wants us to spend time alone with Him so that He can teach us and train us to be like His Son. He’s waiting for us to come to Him. Will you do that? What is the blessing, the blessing, what is that blessing, “may the Lord bless you and keep you and may His face shine upon you.” That’s what I thought of when I saw her. That is the greatest reward to know, to know Him and to love Him. To know Him more is to love Him more is to want to know Him more is to love Him more. It’s never ending. And no matter how uphill the battle in this life and how strong the headwind and how stormy the weather and how stupid we are about things you can do all things through Him who gives you His strength and His presence. Will you promise and determine with Him, not anybody else, to be faithful? Let me pray.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Shepherds’ Conference Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
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