Thanks be to God.
Hey, you may be seated, everyone.
Hey, good afternoon. My name is Drew. I'm one of the pastors here, and we've actually been in this message series called Emotionally Healthy Mission. I just wanted to welcome you. Today, we actually conclude this message series, and we've been talking about how there are certain values in the world around us, and oftentimes, these values are juxtaposed against each other.
For instance, the value of health versus mission. Most people think that organizations or people can't be both healthy and missional, and yet, there's something about the scriptures that actually balances the tension of both.
So, for instance, kind of what's known as the Great Commission is given, and the Great Commission is basically how Jesus gave us a commission that we're supposed to be on mission to make disciples and to teach people about the teachings of Jesus and to hopefully emulate his way in the world.
But also, the Great Commandment is supposed to inform that mission. The Great Commandment is basically that we would be a people that love God and love other people well. So, in other words, it's missional as well as loving, and we're supposed to hold together both of those dynamics.
Now, we've used words such as progress and joy. Can I hear you say "progress and joy"? That's right. Or "mission and morale." Can I hear you say "mission and morale"? That's right. We hold together all of these different tensions of how we are to be a people who believe in progress and mission, but also a people who believe in morale and joy.
Now, here's the thing. Some of you might think, "Oh, this whole message series you've been talking about, staying connected and listening to the voice of God and trying to remain so tethered to Jesus above and beyond everything, are you just saying that we're supposed to sit back and do nothing?"
Well, actually, check out this passage that was just read for us. And even if you're not a Christian, you may have read this passage or heard of it before. Look at what it says. Jesus is speaking here, and he says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit."
Now, immediately then, what we're hearing is that Jesus wants us to be people who are fruitful, that we're not supposed to be people who are static and stuck and do nothing, but actually that hopefully what emanates from who we are, as well as the way that we move about in the world, is that we're supposed to be a people who bear fruit.
"While every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit." High five your neighbor. Say, "Bear much fruit." That's right. Hopefully, we're supposed to be people who are fruitful in the world, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Now, there was an adage that I heard about this idea of bearing fruit and being people who are effective in the ways that we're growing. And I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea for organizations and things like that. And it's this adage: "Healthy things grow." Have you ever heard this before? Healthy things grow. Anyone ever heard this?
The idea is basically like, "Oh yes." And the emphasis, whenever I heard this phrase, was basically like, "You know what? The true sign of whether or not you're healthy is whether you're growing or not." And so, as a result, I'd be like, "Oh, we better be growing. That means we must not be healthy if we're not growing in these different ways."
But here's the thing about "healthy things grow." Did you notice that not only healthy things grow, but so do weeds and disease and sickness and cancer? Like, there are also unhealthy things that grow. So, in other words, growth is not the measurement of what health is. In fact, growth is simply growth, and it could be healthy growth or unhealthy growth.
Now, here's the thing, though. Jesus is actually pointing us toward what does growth look like. Look at what he writes in John 15, verses 4 to 5. He says, "Remain in me." Can I hear you say "remain"? That's right. "Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." High five your neighbor and say, "Apart from God, you can do nothing."
Now, some of you are like, "Well, no, actually, no, I can do a lot of things. I've made a lot of money on my own. I've advanced my career. I got my degree. I've done a lot of things." Well, see, Jesus is talking about ultimate things here. And when he's saying "remain," it's actually this Greek word "meno." Meno means to remain, to connect, or to continue, or to stay. It's this persistent kind of tethering that happens.
Whether it's in a relationship or in this metaphor, it's a vine that's being connected to the vine. And what Jesus is basically encouraging the people to do, he says, "Do you recognize to bear fruit, you actually have to stay connected to your life source. And if you don't stay connected to your life source, what ends up happening is you might wither and end up getting thrown out."
And the reason why, it's the difference. I mean, you and I know this difference, right? We can get a plant for you or like some flowers from Trader Joe's or from Whole Foods or whatever else in the local bodega, and I can bring it to you, but you know that it has a very short lifespan.
But the idea of actually being a living, vibrant, vital kind of vine that continues to grow and produce fruit, this is what Jesus is longing for, and this is what he's calling us to.
Anyone a gardener here? Thank you, one person, awesome. For the rest of you all, I'm not a gardener either. But here's what's interesting: here's an image of a vine, an image of a vine that goes deep down into the roots.
Now, oftentimes, we just see what's happening on the surface, but of course, what's underneath, in the ground, in the soil, the roots that go deep within. And that's how a vine actually comes outward and comes up from the earth, and it grows.
Now, if I cut off a branch from this vine, it loses its life source. Now, you and I, you don't even have to be a gardener to know this. This dynamic that whenever we're cut off from any kind of life source, things can become stagnant, stale, and eventually wither and die.
And what Jesus is doing, in such a stark kind of image, he's saying, "Don't you see? What it means to be in a relationship with me is that it's a relationship. That you're not cut off from your life source, but that you're actually connected and you remain rooted. You're persistent. You're connected to the vine."
Now, there are certain things, or gardeners, that actually help vines to grow up and out. For instance, there's this image. It's the image of a trellis. A trellis that allows a vine to grow up and out. It gives structure, stability, flexibility.
It gives structure, stability, flexibility in terms of how a vine can grow up and out. Now, the reality is most of us, when it comes down to our lives, like some of us are like, "Ah, I like these metaphors or whatever, but I don't know if it really does anything to me," especially when it comes to my spiritual life.
The reality is most of us, at the end of the day, we have a trellis in our own lives. We have a structure in our own lives. Now, I don't know what the vine might be for you. The vine might be your career. The vine might be your ambition. The vine might be money. The vine might be that one person that you're just trying to get to say yes to you to go out on a date with you.
Your vine might be all sorts of other things: video games, Netflix, your streaming service of choice. Whatever it might be, so many of us, we actually have built a trellis for our lives. And the question is, what's the vine? And the question is, what is the scaffolding of your life? What is the trellis that you have built up?
Now, in the history of the vine, in the history of the church, there's actually a phrase that's been used to talk about frameworks that are supposed to help the vine, help us to stay connected to Jesus. And the phrase or the description of this framework is called a "rule of life."
Now, a rule of life was from these monastic communities. Now, keep in mind, as I say this word "rule of life," some of us are like, we're shuddering at this word "rule." Well, a rule of life was simply this framework, a structure, a trellis, by which people would say they eat the vine. They even would leave the church.
So could you imagine the church in some days? It'd be like, even the church has lost its way from the vine. The church has become too preoccupied with money, with excess, with fame. And so what people did is they actually left the church and fled to the desert.
And the desert fathers and these different communities, what they would do is they would create a rule of life. And the reason why they would create these rules of life is because they were saying, "Instead of just going with the flow of the way that people did things, we want to create an intentional framework so that Jesus becomes the center of everything that I do."
It is so easy for me, even when I'm part of a church, to lose sight of Jesus that we need to get away into the desert and we need to create our own kind of structure and intentional focus on how Jesus will become the center of everything in my life.
I mean, isn't that sobering? Even as a church community, this could happen to us. The reality is when it comes to even us in this room, some of us, you might be like, "Well, I've never done that before. I've never crafted a rule of life. I've never had an intentional plan."
Well, I would actually submit that some of us, you probably do have somewhat of a plan. Your plan is basically, "I'm going to try to go to church on Sundays whenever I can. If I make it on time, extra credit." I mean, isn't that what we think? Like, "If I could just make it to church on Sundays, maybe I'll give a little money when we do our kind of Christmas offering."
And so, as a result, we do have some sort of structure, but the reality is if each one of us were to take an audit of our lives, like what's the most important thing to us? How have we oriented our lives, our ambitions, our money, our time?
At the end of the day, what a rule of life is, a rule of life is there to allow the vine to say the vine is the most important thing and the vine growing upward and outward, giving structure and flexibility to it. That's what I want to create.
And so these Christian communities, that's what they did. They crafted this rule of life. Now, one historic way of thinking through categories of how to create a rule of life actually comes, like, here's an image that we often use in our Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course. It's the image of, notice, the love of God is at the center.
So what am I going to do in my life? How am I going to build the scaffolding of my life, a structure, so that the vine, I can stay rooted in the vine? Now, the four different categories are prayer, like having a living relationship of prayer.
Now, prayer is not just one-way communication, me just talking to God, and God, this is what I need. Please give me this, like some vending machine God. Instead, prayer is actually a living relationship. It requires silence, listening.
It's like, I mean, could you imagine having a relationship with someone that they just talked all the time? Some of you are like, "I can't actually imagine that, and it's awful." But in the same way, prayer is supposed to be this living relationship in communion with God.
Now, the reason why prayer is up here is because prayer is the way that I stay in communication. I mean, this can so happen in marriage relationships, for instance, like to my marriage to Tina. We've been married for 16 years now, but the reality is, we've got two kids now, and we've got all these endless demands. I've got all these things to do at work. She's got all these obligations to follow.
Here's what ends up happening. It's so easy to happen in a marriage relationship. I can say all day long, "Tina's the most important person in my life. Oh my goodness, she's my boo. She's everything to me."
Now, some of you are like, "I've never heard you say boo before." I haven't either. I don't know where that came from, but nonetheless, I can say all day long how important Tina is for me. But if one were to take an audit of the structure of my life, you'd probably ask the question, "Well, hey, Drew, like you say that Tina is the most important person in your life, but the reality is when it comes to your relationship with her, you're not really cultivating a relationship with her. You don't prioritize spending time with her, listening to her."
Now, in the same way, the same is true of God. If this is a living relationship, and what prayer does is prayer is this tethering to Jesus to say, "My life is informed by listening to God, sharing with God, in conversation with God." This is where the scriptures are so important as well.
Now, prayer is one part of this, but also rest. Rest is a way of connecting with the love of God. Isn't that interesting? Some of you maybe, like, "Rest? You're like, we're in New York City. I moved to this city because it's the city that never sleeps. I moved here so I could get my favorite sandwich at 1 a.m. I mean, why would I even need to rest?"
Well, I mean, the beautiful thing about God is that even in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment is to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. In other words, to have a day of rest. And what was the day of rest there for? The day of rest was there so that in your rest, you might meet the living God. You might experience the kind of love that allows you to rest.
You know what I'm talking about when someone does something for you and you just get to be loved on. I mean, isn't that what all of us long for? And that's what a Sabbath is. And God has provided this.
But here's the thing, especially in a city like this, we become so driven by work, performance, achievement, getting things done, that we lose sight on resting and finding our deeply rooted identity in resting in God's love. Now, this is also part of a rule of life that we're supposed to keep.
But not only prayer, rest, but also relationships, the relationships that are going to become key to me. Like I mentioned, I can say all day long that Tina's the most important person to me. My kids are the most important person. But if someone were to do an audit of my life, they'd be like, "Actually, Drew, it seems like the church is more important than your relationship with your family."
They can easily take a look and they say, "Actually, you like traveling more than you like spending time at home around a dinner table." Like, do you see how this can happen so easily? Now, I can say till I'm blue in the face. And let me tell you, like, I trust you all. I trust, well, I don't trust all of you. But nonetheless, if you were to say to me, like, "I trust, like, you're going to say, like, 'Oh, yeah, Jesus is the most important person. Like, my relationships are the most important person to me.'"
All of us would say this. But in many ways, listen, I see your heart. God bless your heart. But in some ways, it's not about your heart. It's about your family. It's about your family. It's about your family. It's about your heart. It's about your trellis.
What does your schedule say? What does your money say? What does your thought life say? You're like, "But, oh, my heart, though, my heart." I'm telling you, like, I'm so in love with Tina. I gave her my vows. And it's just like, well, honestly, it looks like you like watching football more than you like spending time with your wife, like, at the end of the day.
Now, and again, see, it's not so much about our, like, we need to actually put action towards what we say we value. See, it's not only prayer, rest, relationships, but it also, when it comes to work, what are the things that I'm going to prioritize?
Now, Eugene Peterson, who's a spiritual writer, he actually uses this phrase where he says, "You are busy because you are lazy." Now, I remember hearing that and being like, "Oh, like, busy because I'm lazy. How dare you say that? Like, busy people are not lazy. In fact, they're the people that I want to work with. They're the people that I believe, like, belong in a city like this. In fact, busy people are industrious. They're the ones who get things done."
And here's what Eugene Peterson says. He says, "No, no, no. See, you are busy because you are lazy in terms of what you're going to prioritize in your life. We're lazy about prioritizing prayer, rest, relationships, and work. And so, as a result, we end up saying yes to anyone and everyone. And as a result, I become a busybody who's constantly going around every other which way without a clear sense of purpose and direction in what's really important to me."
Now, like I said, I trust everyone's heart here in terms of if you were to share with me, "My heart. What's important to me is my relationship with God. What's important to me is my relationship with my loved ones." But at the end of the day, what does your trellis look like? What is the texture of your life look like?
And Peterson says, "You are busy because you are lazy." I know this to be true because I tend to be so lazy about what to prioritize. And so, as a result, I find myself in this rabbit hole, in this rabbit hole of YouTube videos, of whatever else, whatever can occupy my time.
I'm not going to be busy because I'm busy. I'm not going to be busy because I'm in heart. And then I realize, "Oh my goodness, what have I been doing with my time and energy?" I mean, this happens to all of us, unless, unless there's a fortitude to remain as connected to the vine as we can.
Now, here's the beautiful thing. Look at what Jesus says. Jesus says, "If you remain in me and I in you," he says, "you will bear much fruit." High five your neighbor and say, "You will bear much fruit."
I mean, isn't this beautiful? He doesn't say you might. He doesn't say like, "Oh, like if you remain in me, like, well, you could have spent more time working on your profit and loss in your company. Like, that may have been a better decision for you."
No, do you see what he's saying? He's saying, "You will bear much fruit." Like, do you see, if you stay tethered to Jesus, and this is where the number one mission then becomes the Great Commandment. The number one mission is loving God and staying connected to God.
This is where he's saying, "See, if you want, the healthy thing that grows is it's healthy when you're connected to the true vine. You will bear much fruit." In fact, you don't even have to worry about the missional part. You can act, if you just stay connected to Jesus, and as you are obedient to the ways of Jesus, God can do something in you to bear lasting fruit. What a promise. What a reassurance.
Now, here's the thing. Like, for me, I've preached so many sermons. I've been a pastor for many years. It is so easy for me to do perfunctory, like, pastoral things, greet people on Sundays, say hello, preach some sermons, go home, and honestly do it without a life of prayer or connected to God.
And what's so scary for me is I can do that as a pastor. I mean, imagine the other vocations where my vocation is supposed to be in this religious field. Imagine for you all, like the tidal wave of pressure that's coming upon you when it comes to money, pressure, and all these other ways, it is so easy to become untethered to Jesus.
For me as a pastor, it's hard enough to do this. So as a result, I mean, my wife and I, we, like, as I was wrestling with this, I was like, "God, like, I have so many longings for what our church could be and for what I could be."
And for me to get rooted again, like, to hear the grace of God, like, the grace of God that says, "Drew, do you realize if you just, honestly, if you can remain, if the one thing, more than anything else in the world, if you can just remain connected to the vine, you will bear much fruit."
Now, that fruit might not look like what the world might deem as successful and what the world might say, like, "Oh my goodness, see how much, how profitable that is." But there's a certain kind of lasting fruit that the world can't take away.
And so for any one of us, what does it look like for us to say, "I will remain"? Now, here's the thing. My wife and I, then, we actually do the exercise of actually crafting a rule of life. Here's our rule of life, written deliberately in small print so that hopefully you cannot read it, but nonetheless.
But it's our conscious plan to hopefully, when it comes to us, when it comes to prayer, rest, relationships, and work, are we going to prioritize as much as we can the things that are really important to us?
Now, for every single one of us, and we actually have this exercise called crafting a rule of life that we offer every fall and every January, and it's an opportunity for us to actually make an intentional plan.
Because again, the reality is, all of our hearts, our hearts are like, "Oh, my heart is for God, it is. My heart is for my loved ones, it is." But the reality is, it's like, but also, I get sucked into the tentacles of what the culture wants to tell me is what's important to me.
And unless we start making a plan, or at least shooting for something, to say, "Jesus, I want my number one goal that you are my one thing, to be rooted in you when it comes to prayer, relationships."
Now, I want you to know this. Like, this past season, I've actually taken on a role with the organization Emotionally Healthy Discipleship on the executive team, as the executive director of this organization, while I'm also leading Hope as a pastor of this community.
Now, and our elders are aware of it, our leadership has been aware of this. Now, I want you to know, so like, I'm entering a season of incredible fullness. Now, here's what ends up happening, right? My mentor, and he says to me, he says, "I think right now, I wanna challenge you to create more silence in your life. Silence and solitude."
I'm like, "Listen, I'm like a, I'm pretty good at silence. I'm pretty good at prayer." Like, there's this pride that emanates from me. He's like, "No, I'm gonna set you up with a spiritual director so that you can start creating more margin in your life for prayer."
So I was like, "Okay." So I meet with the spiritual director, the director says to me, "Well, to engage in the exercises that we're about to go into with silence and prayer, it's gonna require an hour every morning for you, for more silence."
And I was like, "You mean an hour, like, extra, like, more than what I'm doing right now?" And my spiritual director says, "Yes." And I was like, "Oh, I've got so much to do. I'm such a busy guy."
And I kid you not, this is the thought that comes to my mind. Like, I start thinking an hour extra every morning, and immediately what comes to mind is, "How am I gonna watch Laker games and Golden State Warriors games at night on West Coast time?"
Now, of course, it doesn't come out of my mouth, but that's what's going through my head. I'm like, "How am I gonna watch West Coast basketball games? I can't believe what you're asking of me."
And I remember like, that's what's coming through my mind. But then outwardly I say to her, I'm like, "Oh, I'm like, I'm gonna pray about this, you know?" Oh my goodness.
And then, I mean, but here's the sobering thought. I was just like, "Oh my goodness, look at me. Like, here I am. I'm a pastor of a church. I say Jesus is everything to me, but don't take away my late-night basketball watching."
And it just became this moment of like, "Oh my goodness. I can say something till I'm blue in the face about what's important to me." But at the end of the day, like, I get so attached to things.
I mean, the reality is most of us, when it comes to our lives, our lives look like this. It's the scales when it comes to being with God or doing for God, we are far more proficient in doing for God. It's way imbalanced.
And what Jesus is basically saying is like, "Ah, you've got it all wrong. Not that doing is bad. It's just that it's imbalanced." The goal looks a little bit more like this, that our being with God is what informs our doing with God.
That I'm hopefully, as a pastor of a church, and God forbid if I were to ever do this, just be running through the motions without a vibrant relationship, a living relationship with God.
Now I could do the stuff, and it's so easy for me to fall into that trap, but I mean, you wouldn't want that for me, and I wouldn't want that for you. The reality is we as a church community, everything we do is so that you can hopefully build your own trellis so that your life will be about Jesus.
Your life is not about your career, your ambitions, even your family. Of course, your family's part of it, your career's part of it, your ambitions are part of it, but that your life fundamentally, what it means to be a follower of Jesus is that you and me, that the true vine for you and for me is not your ambition, your career, your money, your 401k, your stock market investments, but actually that your greatest vine is Jesus.
When we have groups and courses and service opportunities, now the reality is some of us, we basically like, again, we've got these, we've got to scaffold ourselves. We're like, "Oh yeah, like going to church on Sundays, maybe giving a little bit, and like I said, maybe some extra credit if I get there on time. If I stay to the end, if I go up for prayer, that's like triple extra credit. That's like amazing extra credit."
But do you see like it's more than this? It's more than perfunctory kind of behaviors. It's really like what are you and I doing so that we're deeply connected to the vine so that our hearts are connected to the vine and our doing flows out of our being.
Now here's the sobering thing. Look at what Jesus says. If he says, "If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned."
Now, this is incredibly sobering because many of us, we read this passage, we're like, "Oh yes, remain. Thank you, Jesus, that you've remained in me and that you are committed to us. You love us."
And then there's this phrase, he's like, "Actually, but if you don't remain connected, guess what happens to those branches? Those branches wither away, they die, and then they get burned. Thank you very much."
Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up this part of the passage, but do you see what he's saying? He's saying some of us, when it comes to the tethering of our lives, like he's saying, "Stay connected to the vine, the true source of life, the one that won't fail you, the one that has always been faithful to you, the one that would die for you, the one that would give his life, the one that invites you into a life of freedom and love and purpose and commitment."
But gosh, it's sobering. Like when you and I, we start to give our lives to things, and we become disconnected from that vine, we start attaching to all sorts of other things. And you and I know this, the amount of money and ambition, especially in our town, that can cause us to get so untethered to Jesus and we start attaching to other things and everything else is there to lure us, isn't it?
Whether it's success in the world's eyes, whether it's these relationships that we know are not good for us, whether it's substances, whatever it might be, there's all sorts of things that are grappling at us. And Jesus says, "Well, if you just remain in me, if you can just stay connected to me."
But the reality is if you don't, what happens is it burns away. I mean, and you and I know this, and you've heard stories about this, how there's no amount of money, no amount of how much your ambition can take you that ultimately will deeply satisfy the human heart.
Why? Because all these things are fleeting. These moments when we look back on our lives and we're like, "I can't believe I counted that as most important in my life." You see this all the time when it comes to relationships.
I say that my wife is the most important person to me, but inside my career is, and so as a result, I give myself to my career and then my wife, my relationship becomes untethered. I mean, we do this all the time.
One of the most haunting quotes was, when I heard this from Francis Chan, look at what he says. He says, "Our greatest fear should not be a failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."
Our greatest fear should not be at failure, but at succeeding at things that don't really matter. I mean, isn't it true? We take a look back on our lives and we look back and we're like, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe I counted that as so important when I've lost out on the real thing, the most important thing."
And what God wants to invite every single one of us to, and these Sundays hopefully are this moment of disruption for you and for me of like, "Gosh, what are the things that you're giving your life to? That what if today is a grace for you? What if today of all the places that you could be, God gave you the grace of today so that somehow, you're starting to realize, 'Oh my goodness, I've been preoccupied with things and maybe I've even been succeeding at things that ultimately don't really matter.'"
And what if some of us, we basically, we've been giving our minds and our thoughts and our energy to West Coast basketball? No, I'm just kidding. But you're just giving yourself to things and you're just like, "What am I doing with my life?"
And what if the grace for you today is actually to come before the living God? Say, "God, I just want my heart. I wanna become realigned with you. I wanna attach again to the true vine that gives real life, that gives real contentment and joy."
You know what's so interesting about the earliest Christians is that they lived with that kind of purpose because they had met the living Jesus. And as a result, there was a kind of freedom and purpose and power with which they lived.
And isn't that what all of us long for? Some of us were living out of fear, anxiety, a drivenness, a chip on the shoulder. And again, not that drivenness and ambition are bad, but so many of us live this kind of way.
And don't all of us want the kind of freedom, security, rootedness in something that will hold us when all the world around us, when circumstances around us start going up and down, that we have a vine that will never let us down?
And you know what's so interesting is the Apostle Paul, he writes to the church, he writes to the church in Philippi. Look at what he says. Look at this approach to life. Such a stunning claim. Look at what he says. He says, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Whoa. I mean, Paul basically says, he's like, "I am so secure in the love of God. I am so secure in my life's purpose that whether I live, or whether I die, I have Jesus. If I have Jesus, I have everything."
You see, in the invitation, the invitation of the Christian life is that you don't need to find your greatest security in your bank account, in your success, in the way you look, in how well your kids or your relatives do, in school or in work.
Like, your greatest, deepest security and love and purpose can be found in Jesus and Jesus alone. And as a result, like the Apostle Paul, could you imagine being able to say this? Ah, yes. In life or in death, I have Jesus.
And because I have Jesus, I've got everything. Got everything. I've got everything. Give me Jesus. You can have the whole world. Give me Jesus.
on Nov 20, 2024
