40. The Wonderful Love—

John 15:9 (NRSV) As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; 

abide in my love.

Here Christ leaves the language of parable, and speaks plainly out of the Father. As much as this parable teaches us, it cannot teach the lesson of love. All that the vine does for the branch, it does under the compulsion of a law of nature: there is no personal living love to the branch. We are in danger of looking to Christ as a Saviour and a supplier of every need, appointed by God, accepted and trusted by us, without any sense of the intensity of personal affection with which Christ embraces us.

Christ seeks to point us to this.

Q: And how does He do so?

… He leads us once again to Himself, to show us how identical His Own Life is with ours. Even as the Father loved Him, He loves us. His life as Vine dependent on the Father was a Life in His Father's Love. That love was His Strength and His Joy. It was in the Power of that Divine Love resting on Him He lived and died. If we are to live like Him we must share in this also. Our life must have its breath and being in a Heavenly Love as much as His. What the Father's Love was to Him, His Love will be to us. If that Love made Him the True Vine, His Love can make us true branches. 

"Even as the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you."

39. True Disciples—

John 15:8 (NRSV) My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and 

become my disciples.

Bear much fruit—so shall you be My disciples …

AM begs every reader to consider these words seriously. We are not to be content with the thought of gradually doing a little more or better work. We are to take the words, much fruit, as the revelation of our Heavenly Vine of what we must be, of what we can be. We are to humbly accept fully the impossibility and the utter folly of attempting it in our own strength.

Let the words call us to look anew upon the Vine and the undertaking to live out its Heavenly fullness in us. Let the words awaken in us once again the faith and the confession: "I am a branch of the True Vine; I can bear much fruit to His Glory, and the Glory of the Father." Let us ask Him to reveal to us how He asks and claims a life wholly given up to Him, to be as full of His Holy Spirit as He can make us.

Let our desire be nothing less than perfect cleansing, unbroken abiding, closest communion, abundant fruitfulness—true branches of the True Vine.

38. The Father Glorified—

John 15:8 (NRSV) My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit 

and become my disciples.

Much fruit—God asks it of us and we are to see that we give it. God can be content with nothing less and we are to be content with nothing less. Let these words of Christ—fruit, more fruit, much fruit—abide in us, until we think as He does, and we are prepared to take from Him, the heavenly Vine, what He has for us—much fruit. In this way our Father is glorified. Let the very loftiness of this demand be our encouragement. It is so entirely beyond our power, that it throws us more entirely upon Christ, our True Vine. He can and He will, make it true in each one of us.

Much fruit—God asks because He needs. He does not ask fruit from the branches of His Vine for show, to prove what He can do, no! He needs it for the salvation of men and it is in that He is glorified. We are to throw ourselves in much prayer on our True Vine and our Vine-grower. We are to cry out to God and our Father to give us fruit to bring to mankind. We are to take the burden of the hungry and the perishing upon ourselves just as Jesus did when He was moved with compassion. It is in His Power in our prayer, and our abiding, and our bearing much fruit to the Glory of our Father that we will have a reality and a certainty we have never known before.

37. The Father Glorified—

John 15:8 (NRSV) My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit 

and become my disciples.

Q: How can we glorify God?

… Certainly not by adding to His Glory or bringing Him any new Glory that He has not. We bring Glory to God simply by allowing His Glory to shine out through us, by yielding ourselves to Him, that His Glory may manifest itself in us and through us to the world.

In a vineyard or a vine bearing much fruit, the owner is glorified as it tells of his/her skill and care. In we disciples who bear much fruit, the Father is glorified. Before men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God's Grace and Power—God's glory shines out through us.

Let us learn the secret of bringing glory to God, serving in the ability which God gives us—the full acceptance of Christ's Word, "You can do nothing" … the simple faith in God, who works all in all; the abiding in Christ through whom the Divine Vine-grower does His work and gets much fruit—this is the life that will bring glory to God.

36. If you Abide—

John 15:7 (NRSV)  If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

And what is its secret?

Be wholly occupied with Jesus. Sink the roots of your being in faith, love and obedience deep down into Him. Come away out of every other place to abide here. Give up everything for the inconceivable privilege of being a branch on earth of the glorified Son of God in Heaven. Let Christ be first. Let Christ be ALL. Do not be occupied with the abiding—be occupied with Christ! He will hold you, He will keep you abiding in Him. He will abide IN you.

If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you—

These are the words He give us not only in meditation but in memory, in love, in faith—all these words entering into our wills, our beings, and constituting our lives. It is then they transform our character into the likeness of the Divine Words themselves and we become and are what they speak and mean … ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. 

Our words to God in prayer will be the fruit of Christ and His Words living in us.

35. If you Abide—

John 15:7 (NRSV) If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, 

ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

The reason the Vine and its branches are such a true parable of the Christian life is that all nature has one source and breathes one spirit. The plant world was created to be to man an object lesson teaching him his entire dependence upon God, and his security in that dependence. He that clothes the lilies will much more clothe us. He that gives the trees and the vines their beauty and their fruits, making each what He meant it to be, will much more certainly make us what He would have us to be. The only difference is what God works in the trees is by a Power of which they are not conscious. He wants to work in us with our consent. This is the nobility of man, that he has a will to co-operate with God in understanding and approving and accepting what He offers to do.

If you abide—

Here is the difference between the branch of the natural and the branch of the spiritual Vine—the former abides by force of nature: the latter abides by a Divine Power given to the consent of the will. Such is the wonderful provision God has made that, what the power of nature does in the one case, the Power of Grace will do in the other. The branch can abide in the Vine.

If you abide in Me ... ask whatsoever you will—

If we are to live a true prayer life marked by the love, power and the experience of prayer there need be no question about the abiding. And if we abide, there need be no question about the liberty of asking what we will, and the certainty of it being done. There is the one condition: "If you abide in Me." There must be no hesitation about the possibility or the certainty of it—we must gaze on that little branch and its wonderful power of bearing such beautiful fruit until we truly learn to abide.

34. Whatsoever you Will—

John 15:7 (NRSV) — 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

By now we realize that we can only fulfill our calling to bear much fruit, by praying much. IN Christ are hidden all the treasures we need; in Him all God's children are blessed with all spiritual blessings. He is full of Grace and Truth, however it needs prayer, much prayer, strong believing prayer, to bring these blessings down. Let us equally remember that we cannot appropriate the promise without a life given up for others. When our hearts are burdened with the needs of souls, and we have heard the command to save them—then the power will come to claim the promise.

Let us claim it as one of the revelations of our wonderful life in the Vine: He tells us that if we ask in His Name, in virtue of our union with Him, whatsoever it be, it will be done to us. Souls are perishing because there is too little prayer. God's children are feeble because there is too little prayer. We bear so little fruit because there is so little prayer. The faith of this promise makes us strong to pray so let us not rest until it has entered into our very heart, and drawn us in the Power of Christ to continue and labor and strive in prayer until the blessing comes in power. 

To be a branch means not only bearing fruit on earth, 

but Power in prayer to bring down blessing from Heaven. 

Abiding fully means praying much.