“Father, help us today to be connected to the vine. Prune us, help us to produce more fruits. You are the vinedresser. We want to produce the lushest fruit of your vine.” Let’s eat from the branch of John 15 today.
A branch cannot produce fruit in itself. Many of us are trying to produce fruits without abiding in Him fully. It is all about abiding in Him – this way He will be flowing through us. To imitate Jesus, we need to abide in Jesus. Without pruning the branches, we will never produce anything of Christ. Storms in our lives are sent to expose dead parts of our lives and to break them all out of us! Sometimes when God prunes us, many other new living branches start coming out! This is the multiplication of the life of Christ. If we don’t bear fruits, God, the vinedresser, comes to deal with us. That storm in the boat (Matthew 8:23-27) exposed what was lacking in them, faith, and what kind of fruit they were bearing – unbelief and fear. The disciples were in the boat with Jesus but disconnected from Jesus in faith and trust. Jesus told them, “If you have faith, even the winds and the waves will obey you!”
Some people don’t even have joy because they are not connected to Jesus. For our joy is fulfilled when we abide in Him. How do you connect to Him? “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love...This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” When we abide in Him, we love one another. When we are disconnected from Him, we start manifesting the bad fruits, like anger. What is the opposite fruit for anger? Well, one could say self-control. So, if have this it will mirror more fruits of the flesh.
“Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” We can only be His friends if we obey everything that He commands us to do! Everybody wants a godly ordination – a piece of paper given by man. Here is an ordination given by God: we are ordained to bear fruits. We are ordained to love. Some people are so connected to the world, and the world loves them because the world loves its own. But He has chosen us out of the world and the world should hate us. Why? Because Christ is not of the world. What He looks likes does not look like them.
We need to remain with Him! Stay connected to Him until the end. We must stay connected. Connecting with God is the key to productivity: bearing much fruit like Christ (Galatians 5:22-23) and spiritual fruits (Ephesians 5:9). Connecting with Him is our key to rest. Being connected to the vine will produce the greatest harvest.
How do we get connected back to the vine? Through intimacy, meditating on His Word, and obeying it, through keeping our heart pure and clean, through getting strong in spirit, through focusing on the vision, through fasting – praying – and obeying, seeking Him, and focusing on Him!
Next year will be the most fruitful year in our lives. People will hate you for that. Because they don’t want to see Christ in you. If they see you like them, they will love you, but if they see you like Christ, they will hate you for that! When Jesus was walking around, people started looking at themselves, at their condition. The fruits show what you are connected to. The Word is a mirror to our soul. What this mirror will do is to show you what is not right. The word became flesh and spoke. When it did, they hated Him because His word did not return void and made man search their hearts and see them as they were.
Dead branches in your life will manifest the word spoken in James 4:1-8. Why is God calling them an “adulteress generation”? Because they were connected to another lover, to another vine. Their fruits were manifesting the disconnection. Get connected! Get back to the vine. Are you connected to other things? Just look at your fruits.
A double-minded man is not connected to the Spirit. If they were, they would be stable. Bad fruits and good fruits. Back and forth. We must be connected to His word, or we will be like a double-minded man! Thorns and thistles will be cut off! He wants us to be fruitful and multiply. More fasting. More praying. More Word. More obedience. More intimacy. More abiding in the vine!
Every tree is known by its fruits (Luke 6:43-45). If we are connected to the tree of life, we should be known by its fruit. If not, we are not abiding. Communion with the blood and the body of Christ. Communion with every branch that is connected to the vine! We cannot speak life if we are not abiding in the Truth. Out of the abundance of a vine that is what we will speak. Out of the abundance of the vine that you are connected to, your basket will be filled. You will eat the fruit of it.
Your pain, your trial will not endure forever, but His word will. Satan said this and that about you, and you start abiding in what he said. No. Don’t curse yourself just because you are not producing some fruits. No. Just go back to the vine. Don’t try to produce anything without Him. We are not judged by how many fruits we have but by being connected or not to the vine. We must stop focusing on the fruits we do not have but focus on staying on the vine.
Live for Him. Don’t try to keep that old branch alive. Let it die (John 12:24-25). If we abide in Him, we will always produce good fruits (Ephesians 5:9 and Galatians 5:22-23). God wants us to be filled with the fruits of Christ by being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:1-11).
What are we really connected to? Look at your fruits. “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” John 15:6
We must abide in Him! What are you abiding in? We must make this shift and start abiding in Him daily. Be connected to the Vine, the Word, the Spirit, and the plans of God. Many people are connected to everything but Him. The woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:43-48) tried connecting to everything else but finally, she connected to the vine. Then she was made whole. Some people get healed but are not made whole. Ten lepers got healed (Luke 17:11-19) but only one was made whole. He came back to be connected to the One that healed him. Grace is like the sap that glues us back into the vine.
What are you connected to? Fear, doubt, past, traditions, mindsets, soul ties. What you are connected to you will have the fruit thereof! People hated Jesus because Jesus was that mirror that helped them to see what they did not have. A branch that is dead is easy to see. It looks dead and brown. Some need to make some disconnections and reconnect to the vine. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. Apart from Him, you can sing about the vinedresser even while being disconnected from Him. You can preach about it but never produce any fruit at all.
Today, we have the blood of Jesus to disconnect us from everything that does not bear fruit! Some of us must make some disconnection today and be connected back to the vine. Life of the branch is in the blood! We don’t want to be cast out into the fire. We want to be connected back to Christ and His life that flows through the whole Body!
“Father, we don’t want to produce any fruits of the flesh, but fruits of the Spirit, fruits of the Bride.” Abiding in Him brings the greatest multiplication. No striving. If we abide in Him, fruits will be manifested. Outside the vine, we cannot do anything. We have a choice to abide in Him or to live our lives. “We want to make a plea before Your throne, Father, we want to see your fruits in us. We want to do exploits but also we want to love one another, we want to produce the fruits of Your Spirit, not only fruits of Your anointing!” We are now identified by the fruits of Him inside of us by the fact that we do abide in Him. We break connection with everything of the flesh. This next year will be the greatest year of our life, the year of intimacy, fruitfulness. It does not matter how the world is doing, we will abide in You forever. “We renounce any other connection! Your Body, communion with You, being One with you. We declare and decree that we will become one with the healer, a clear mind, clean heart, a new man in Christ. The blood has cleansed us from every bad fruit, bad branch, and bad connection. Communion is not a ceremonial thing, it is a remembrance of our covenant with You, our abiding with You! Your body made us one with You. We eat your bread, your body. This is our declaration of remembrance of why you died and what we have because of that! Father, we search our hearts, and if there is any spoiled fruit, I am asking that you wash our sins away. We will not get angry at your Word; we will rejoice at your Word. We will be connected to You this year like never before. There is healing in the abiding! Life is in the vine! Cut off every old dead branch – branches that we are hanging on to! We will abide in Him forever and our fruits will remain because we remain in You! Amen.”
Shane Roessiger
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