Connected to the Vine - Church Online - January 25, 2026

``So this morning, we are finishing up our first thing series. And over the last few weeks, we've been asking a lot of important questions together. We've talked about questions of what comes first in life. Then we talked about questions of of where we place ourselves. And then last week, we looked at the question of, well, what actually lasts in life? And this week, we're gonna be asking another question. It's not a question of what should my life look like so much. Rather, it's a question of where is my life actually coming from. And in John chapter 15, Jesus doesn't give us a list of instructions. [00:06:11] (32 seconds)  #AbideInChrist

So we hear a verse like that and we're like, really, Jesus? Do you literally mean that we can do nothing apart from you? I mean, look around this world. There are plenty of people who live that don't have Jesus involved in their lives and then they do things. They they build lives. They they raise families. They get things done. So Jesus is not saying that apart from him we can't function. He's saying that apart from him we can't produce life. Think about it. You can perform. You can stay busy. You can even stay religious. But the kind of life that Jesus is talking about, the kind that bears fruit does not originate in and from us. A lot of people are living their lives today as if they can self supply what only Jesus can give. [00:08:55] (41 seconds)

Not because they stopped believing in Jesus, but because connection has quietly turned into maintenance. Picture like this. You've got a branch. And I'm not talking about that switch your grandma asked you to go pick off the tree because you were misbehaving. No. Just a bare branch. And you can take some fruit, and you can duct tape it on that branch. And from a distance, somebody might look at that branch and be like, wow, that that branch has fruit, but that branch is not alive. The branch was bare, not because it wasn't trying hard enough to be a branch. The problem was that branch had been cut off from its source. [00:09:36] (34 seconds)

The problem was disconnection and that's what a lot of us do spiritually without realizing it. We we like to duct tape fruit to our lives like that bare branch. And what I mean is this, we try to attach outcomes to ourselves that can really only be produced by a living connection. You can add niceness to your life but niceness isn't the same thing as Christian love. [00:10:10] (22 seconds)

when everything looks right but feels dry underneath, our instinct is almost always to add more effort, to add more trying, to add more doing. And that might not be a discipline problem though. It might not even be a motivational problem. It gets back to what Jesus said, it's a connection problem. [00:10:59] (19 seconds)

He's saying, without me, you can't produce life. We see it all the time. People who are achieving success but yet they're still disconnected. People who are building platforms but they're still disconnected. People who look faithful but they're still disconnected. We cannot bear lasting kingdom fruit without connection. [00:11:44] (21 seconds)

We can't do it. That's why it's possible in our lives to look like we're doing everything right and still feel like something's missing. That's not an effort problem. It's a supply problem. We're missing out on what we're supposed to be connected to. And Jesus gave the solution in John chapter 15 verse four. He said what? He said, remain in me. And that's where we get stuck sometimes because remain to us, it does sound like a task. It sounds like something where I'm supposed to do this. I'm gonna succeed or I'm gonna fail at remaining. But that's not what Jesus is describing. [00:12:05] (33 seconds)

Jesus is calling himself the true vine And he's saying that life with God is no longer about a system. Life with God is no longer about performance. Again, it's about connection. And connection doesn't work the same way that performance and effort work. The vine doesn't look at the branches, say, hey, branch. Try harder at being a branch. No. Remaining isn't like that. Remaining isn't something you accomplish. It's something that you stay attached to. Branches, again, they don't try harder to be branches. The best thing they can do is to not be disconnected from the vine. [00:12:39] (35 seconds)