{"id":23448,"date":"2018-07-06T03:30:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T10:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=23448"},"modified":"2018-07-03T11:42:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T18:42:10","slug":"july-6-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2018\/07\/06\/july-6-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"July 6, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser.\u201d <\/em>John 15:1<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cAbide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.\u201d <\/em>John 15:4, 5<\/p>\n

Abiding in Which Vine?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/em>The book of John, chapter 15, speaks of the branches attached to the vine, bearing fruit. If I am a branch, and not bearing enough fruit, He will prune me. (Please, no jokes about the aging process.) If it takes His pruning for me to bear more fruit, I definitely desire to be \u201cpruned.\u201d In John 15:7 Jesus said, \u201cIf <\/strong>you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you.\u201d He said \u201cIf\u00a0<\/strong>you\u2026I will\u201d, therefore, \u201cif\u00a0<\/strong>you don\u2019t…I won\u2019t.\u201d Respect His conditions. This reminds me of a line from an old sermon: \u201cA child who disregards his father\u2019s words is not fit to have his requests granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I am abiding in Him, obeying His words, then my will is aligned with His will and my prayers are effective. However, there are other places to abide. We could choose to abide in anger, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, or be unloving, irritable, impatient, unkind, jealous, and complaining about every little thing that doesn\u2019t go \u201cour way.\u201d There are many \u201cwrong vines.\u201d Our prayers will not be effective if we are attached to a \u201cwrong vine.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, I ask myself, where am I abiding? Where do I dwell? As I pondered these Scriptures I did a dictionary search for the word abide. \u201cObey, observe, follow, adhere to, live, dwell.\u201d All these words held deep meaning for me. I desire to obey Jesus, observe Him in His word, follow Him, adhere to Him, and I certainly desire to bear much fruit for Him.<\/p>\n

I desire to be attached to Jesus, the True Vine, and bear much fruit. If my home is in Him, I dwell in Him and He dwells in Me. This paints a picture in my heart of a dwelling place of comfort and love. I can see books on the shelves of the study and a cozy couch to curl up on and read His word with Him. If I am \u201cabiding\u201d in my \u201cdwelling place\u201d, I am spending time there.<\/p>\n

\u201cLord, when I am buried in too many tasks, come with me because I cannot bear the thought of waving goodbye, leaving You behind. My Abiding Place, come with me to the grocery store, work, and play, because I am attached to You, my True Vine. I choose to abide in Your word, Your love, follow Your rules, become more like You, and keep Your command to love one another and glorify You. Therefore, I REALLY need Your help today!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-66c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23449,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23448\/revisions\/23449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}