Life From the Vine – Kris Drent – Student Ministries

Looking for Life

And I love talking about singing. But tonight we’re not going to talk about singing.

I got thinking about the things that, if I had just one more chance to encourage you all, what would I really love to share with you? It turns out I would love to turn to John 15 tonight and look at something you’re probably familiar with. But I’ll just tell you, in my life, this is a regular go-back-to passage, a devotional passage I read on a regular basis. So even if you’re familiar with this, I’d love to go through it with you.

In John 15, Jesus uses a really simple picture. It’s a vine and its branches. You don’t need to be a theologian to get this analogy. You actually don’t even have to be a farmer or vine keeper or whatever they do. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s meant to be simple and easy. Jesus was a good teacher that way.

But before we read it, I just want you to think about something for a second. Everybody in this room—actually everybody in life, but us here tonight—everybody is looking for something. Every person seeks to draw life from something. We all naturally look to find something that gives life, something that sustains us, something that bears fruit, something that makes life fulfilling, gives life reason, gives life purpose, gets us up in the morning, gives satisfaction and joy to their day, their week, their year, their lives.

We look for it. Even people that don’t say it that way—you don’t have to teach people this. They just get up in the morning like, “Man, I just want something that satisfies.” Sometimes it’s food, sometimes it’s entertainment, sometimes other things.

Some of you may feel like you found that thing you can draw from to give life. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s your goals. Maybe it’s your achievements. Maybe it’s your reputation or your plans for the future. Or maybe it’s your friends, or being known for being a good person. There are a lot of things we can find meaning in and try to make that be what makes life successful or feel good.

Others of you may still be looking for something to fill this role. Maybe you’ve chased a few things, and they seemed promising. Maybe you’ve tried some things that didn’t quite pan out. Maybe they left you discouraged. Maybe there are other people in this room that don’t even know what you’re looking for. You just know something’s missing, and you hope you find it someday.

And you’re young. Maybe you’ll find it. I’m old enough. I’m really old, actually. Way older than Kiki even. By the way, you wore that hat like a boss. I don’t know who can make that look like it’s fun and good. You did. So hey, congratulations. That was good.

But anyway, when you’re young, it’s easy to have this hope held out: “I’m going to keep looking and find it.” There comes a point where you find out sometimes all the things you tried don’t bring that satisfaction that you’re looking for. So whether you think you found it, or whether you’ve tried some things and it didn’t work, or maybe you don’t even know what you’re looking for but maybe someday it’s coming, we’re all looking for life. We’re all looking to find where to draw that from.

Tonight we’re going to look at something Jesus said, a bold claim that every person alive needs to hear. He said something that speaks to this very issue that every person feels and deals with in life. And the truth of what he said is both very sobering, and also it includes some incredibly good news for everyone searching for life.

Jesus made the claim—and I’ll just give it to you up front—that apart from him there is no life, no fruit, no joy. But for those who are connected to him, the Father produces all three in them and for them. That’s a bold claim. And this passage is going to show us this life.

John 15:1–11

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so 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, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”

Let’s pray, and then we’re just going to walk through these.

Father, You’ve made us to be needy in life. And we naturally, as created beings, feel the need for things that bring purpose and fullness to life. We’re familiar with Your words in so many ways, but we wish to not be generally familiar. We want to be specifically familiar tonight with these. We know that You came to bring life and bring it abundantly, and so You’re speaking about it here.

Lord, we thank You that this is captured for us so that the truth of it can be mulled over and thought about, looked at, considered, dwelled on. Help us to do that well tonight together, and bring understanding. Enlighten our hearts to understand the significance of this truth and these bold claims. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The True Vine and the Vine Dresser

So let’s look at it. Let’s just start at verses 1 and 2. Right out of the gate, Jesus identifies two people. In verse 1 he says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser.” So Jesus is the vine. God the Father is the one tending the vineyard. He’s a gardener. He’s the one that has shears in His hand, taking care of this vine and all of the things the vine has. Those two identities are fixed, once they’re set, and everything else in the passage flows from them.

Now that word true matters. When he says, “I am the true vine,” that is significant, and it would have landed heavy and hard on anybody who knew their Old Testament back then.

Just to put our feet in the reader’s sandals for a moment, consider this. In the Old Testament, God chose Israel to be His people, the nation through whom He would bring His promises, His truth, and ultimately where His Savior would come from to the world. They were His vine, and He called them this all over the place. He cared for them. He expected them to bear fruit. He expected them to bear lives of faithfulness, justice, obedience that reflected who He was. But they just kept failing at it. They never bore fruit like that. The prophets kept saying the same thing: the vine has gone bad, the fruit is rotten, the vine is unfaithful, unfruitful.

So now Jesus steps in and says, “I am the true vine. I’m the faithful one. I’m what Israel could never be.” And now belonging to God, having life with God, doesn’t come through being part of a nation or a religious system. It comes through being connected to me, Jesus says.

That’s a pretty big paradigm shift for these people. But that’s the claim: your life, your fruitfulness, your standing before God depends on whether you’re attached to this true vine—not to a religious tradition, not to a church community, not to a family heritage, but to him.

And notice the Father is the vine dresser. He’s the active agent. He does the cultivating. He does the cutting. And this really matters as we read on, because there’s some cutting that goes on. What happens to the branches, the fruitfulness, the growth—that’s the Father’s work, not the branch’s work. It’s important to remember that.

Two Kinds of Branches

If we look at verse 2, Jesus describes the kinds of branches. There are two kinds, and only two. There’s no third category here. Every branch falls into one of these two groups.

He says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so that it may bear more fruit.” Two types. And if you skip down to verse 6, Jesus fills in the picture a little more: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” That is sober language. That’s judgment language. And Jesus isn’t being mean here. He’s just saying it. This is Jesus himself. When people stand on a street corner and say things like this, people are like, “Judgmental.” When Jesus says it, he’s just being truthful. He’s trying to let them know.

So who are these branches that are thrown away? These are people who are outwardly associated with Christ. They’re around the vine. They might be in the community, in the church, familiar with the Bible, comfortable with the language. They look like they belong there, but there’s no life flowing to the branch. The connection to the vine is external only, not internal. They’re close to Christ, but they’re not drawing life from him, and therefore they bear no fruit.

And the context of this conversation actually gives us a perfect example. Do you know who just left the room before Jesus said this? Judas. Judas was one of the twelve. He was with Jesus for three years. He heard every sermon, saw every miracle, sat in every meal. He looked like a branch, right? But he was never connected. And he walked out into the night right there, disconnected, to do something that proved it.

So Jesus is being honest here about what it means to be near him and not connected to him. He’s saying it because he wants people to see the reality of their position and then come to him. The Father removes fruitless branches because they’re not actually connected to the vine.

What’s the second kind of branch? The second one is the fruitful branch. End of verse 2: “Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so that it may bear more fruit.” This branch is alive. It’s connected. There’s genuine fruit growing there. And the Father’s response is not just to leave it alone because it looks nice, but actually to prune it. Remember, the Father is the vine dresser. He’s doing the action here. So His action is to cut things away, and the goal of cutting is actually more fruit. Not just fruit, but more fruit.

The Father’s Pruning Work

The branch is already producing, and the Father wants to make it healthy to increase what’s already happening. I love plants. I have a tree in my living room. I think some of the Dodds named it Dorothy. I didn’t name it Dorothy, but Ness was like, “Why is there a tree in your living room? Don’t those go outside?” I’m like, “Not this one. This is special.” And I prune it. If I don’t, it gets kind of lanky, but if you prune it, it gets full.

Pruning hurts. If you’ve ever gone through something hard that God has used to shape you in it—maybe something that strips away your pride, a trial that strips away your self-reliance, your comfort, maybe strips away a sin that you’re holding on to—that’s pruning. That’s the kind of pruning that the Father does in His sovereignty. And it’s painful. But notice: it’s not punishment. It’s cultivation.

The Father has shears in His hand, not a sword. He’s a gardener, tenderly caring for the vine. And the very fact that He’s pruning you means that you’re alive. Dead branches don’t get pruned. They get removed. If God is cutting away things in your life—if He’s cutting away sin, if He’s cutting away comfort, and it’s cultivating something in your character—that’s actually a good thing, so that you will bear more fruit.

Now look at verse 3. Jesus tells his disciples, “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” There’s a wordplay here in the original language. The word for the action of pruning in verse 2 and the word for clean in verse 3 are the same root. Depending on your translation, maybe they both say clean, or maybe one says prune and one says clean, but that’s because they share the same root. Jesus is connecting them on purpose.

He’s telling the disciples, “What you have experienced is a fundamental pruning. My word has done its work in you. You are clean. You have been cut away from your old life, your old allegiances, your old way of living, and now you are alive and connected to me.”

There are two layers of pruning happening in this passage. There’s the initial decisive pruning when God saves a person, when His word cuts someone from their old life and makes them clean. That’s what Jesus points to in verse 3. The disciples have already experienced it.

Then there’s the ongoing pruning in verse 2, the Father’s continual work of cutting away what hinders greater fruitfulness. That doesn’t stop after conversion. The vine dresser doesn’t prune once and walk away. He comes back season after season because there’s always new growth that needs shaping. That’s sanctification. That’s God’s lifelong work of making you more and more like Christ.

It means the Christian life doesn’t necessarily get easier as you go. It may get deeper, because God keeps cutting away more so that more of Christ’s life shows in you. So if you’re in Christ tonight and you’re going through something hard, maybe God is stripping away something that you didn’t want to let go of. Maybe you’re having to endure something hard longer than you thought you should, and you’re learning how to trust and depend on him. If that’s you, take heart. Sometimes it’s discouraging. We think something’s wrong. But this kind of pruning does not mean you’re a weak, fruitless branch. More often it shows evidence that you’re alive, that he’s not done with you, and that he’s growing you.

He’s the vine dresser, and you are the branch. But there are only two kinds of branches: those that are not connected and not drawing life from the vine, and therefore aren’t bearing fruit—and those are thrown away—and then the ones that are bearing fruit, and the Father tenderly cares for them and prunes and cultivates more healthy fruit in each season.

The Central Command: Abide

Now we come to the command. This is the centrality of this. This is important. That whole vine-and-branch thing is nice, but we haven’t really gotten to the command yet. And we don’t want to miss this. We don’t want to jump to the conclusion that we know what the command is.

Look at verse 4: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” This is the central command: abide, remain, stay connected, keep drawing life from the vine.

This is in contrast to the command being “Go bear fruit.” Have you noticed he doesn’t command the branch to bear fruit? He commands the branch to abide, to connect. And I want to make sure we understand what that word means, abide, and what it doesn’t mean, because it’s easy to hear abide and fill it in with our own ideas or things that we’re used to thinking about.

Abiding is not trying really hard to produce fruit. Think about the picture Jesus is using in this illustration. A branch doesn’t sit there and strain and grunt to try to push out grapes and fruit. That’s not how it works. The branch just receives life from the vine. The sap flows in, and the fruit grows. The branch’s job is to stay connected. The vine does the producing. Does that make sense? You see why that’s an important thing for us to realize?

Maybe you’ve never grown a vine. Maybe you’ve never grown fruit. I can’t wait someday to grow fruit on an actual tree. I don’t have one. Not in my house yet. There will be.

Secondly, abiding is not performing for God so that he’ll accept you. The branch doesn’t earn its place on the vine by producing enough fruit. So if you’ve ever felt that pressure—“I’ve got to be good enough. I’ve got to have produced enough fruit to earn my keep”—that’s not what the command is. The command is to abide. And this is so helpful to my soul. The fruit comes from the connection. The connection comes first. The fruit comes later.

Third, abiding is not some mystical, feelings-based experience, like you have to feel close to God at all times or you’re not abiding. It’s more concrete than that. Praise the Lord. My heart is so easily swayed in its feelings to believe false things about God and about how he works. My heart is so easily swayed. “I’m not feeling it. If I’m not feeling it, it must not be real.” That’s not the command here.

Look at how Jesus defines it as the passage goes on. Verse 7: his words abiding in you. Verse 10: keeping his commandments. Verse 9: remaining in his love. So what does abiding mean? Abiding means staying in his word. Abiding means trusting him. Abiding means walking in obedience that flows from love. Abiding means depending on him daily—not just the moment you first believe, but ongoingly, day after day, and not walking away from it. That’s abiding.

Then verse 5 drops the definitive statement: “I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Apart from me, you can do what?

Nothing.

Oh, thank you. Didn’t know if I was the only one that heard that. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Not less. Not not as much. You can do nothing. That is total dependence. And that is the heartbeat of the Christian life. Not self-improvement, not just trying harder, but dependence on Christ for everything, because the vine supplies the life. The branch just stays connected.

What Fruit Is Not—and What It Is

What’s fruit? I think it’s important that if we’ve got to know what abide is, we’ve got to know what fruit is. Jesus keeps talking about fruit: bearing fruit, more fruit, much fruit. We need to be very clear about what he means, because if we get this wrong, we hear the whole passage wrong and we’ll miss Jesus’ teaching.

Here’s what I think happens to most of us. We hear the word fruit, and we immediately translate it into whatever scorecard we’re used to keeping, whatever scorecard we’re already using for life. We don’t want to map that onto Jesus.

For some of you, fruit may mean not messing up—saying the right things in small group, keeping your act together, having the right answers, not getting in trouble. For others, it’s how many people I’ve shared the gospel with, how many verses I’ve memorized, whether I’m doing enough, reading my Bible enough, praying enough, attending church enough. Those are all very good things, but that’s not the fruit that comes from abiding in Christ.

That stuff can be manufactured. You know that. Let me show you what fruit is not and what it is.

Fruit is not religious performance. It’s not knowing the right answers. It’s not looking like a Christian on the outside. You can glue plastic fruit to branches, and that’s called decoration. But you can’t eat it. Real fruit grows from the inside out because life is flowing through the branch.

Fruit is not moral achievement by pure willpower. “Try harder. I sinned today, so I’m just going to try harder, and that will be fruit.” If that’s the approach, that’s not what Christ does when we connect to him. If you’re white-knuckling good behavior because you’re afraid of getting caught, or because you want people to think well of you, that’s not fruit from the vine. That’s self-effort, and it will eventually let you down. If that’s where you’re finding life in performance, it’s a bucket with a hole in it. You’ll never fill it.

Fruit is not measurable spiritual achievements on your résumé—evangelism numbers, mission-trip count, reading your Bible, what your Bible streak is. “I’m 17 days straight.” Again, those are not bad. They’re just not the definition of fruit that Jesus is using here. Jesus doesn’t say, “By this My Father is glorified, that you hit your quota.” That’s just not it.

And this one really matters: fruit is not the absence of struggle with sin. Fruit does not mean perfection. Fruit means life. And life is sometimes messy, especially for someone who has been called out of darkness into light and is learning how to do that. Notice the fruitful branch in verse 2 still needs pruning. A fruitful Christian still sins, still struggles against sin, and still needs grace. The difference between a fruitful branch and a dead one is not that the fruitful branch has no flaws. It’s that the fruitful branch is alive and connected, and God bears fruit even among struggles.

I say that because I think there’s a lie the enemy wants us to believe sometimes: “Oh, you messed up. You are not bearing fruit. You must not be a real branch.” Don’t use that logic. There’s other good logic. That’s not it.

So what is fruit? I’m just going to give you a definition here. Fruit is the visible Christlikeness that God produces in and through a person who is connected to Christ by faith. I know that’s a long definition, but I’m going to say it again. Fruit is the visible Christlikeness that God produces in and through a person who is connected to Christ by faith.

And the passage itself tells us what it looks like as Jesus keeps teaching. If you just keep reading, he goes right into defining the command. “Love one another just as I have loved you.” That’s tangible. Fruit is self-giving love patterned after Christ’s love. That’s fruit. Obedience to his commands flowing from love rather than fear—verse 10—that’s fruit. Desires reshaped by his word—that’s fruit. Joy—verse 11—that’s fruit. Repentance, the fact that you see your sin and hate it and want to turn from it—that’s fruit. Growing in holiness and patience and kindness and faithfulness—these are things that the life of the vine produces in a branch.

It’s not performance. Here’s the thing I really want you to hear. Some of you are in this room right now, and you’re worried or maybe you’ve wondered, “Am I really saved? Is my faith real, or am I just faking it?” That’s an important question. But in most cases, the people I’ve talked to who are genuinely concerned about that question should be encouraged by their concern. The fact that the question bothers them, the fact that they care, the fact that they’re troubled by the idea that they might be faking it—those kinds of thoughts are more of an indicator of fruitfulness, life from the vine, than of deadness.

Dead branches don’t worry about whether they’re bearing fruit. Dead branches don’t feel the weight of their own hypocrisy. If those are concerns or impulses that you’ve been trying to work out, praise the Lord. That’s an indicator that the Lord is at work, that there’s a spiritual likeness in you concerned about the things of Christ. It’s indicative of vine life. It may be small. It may be fragile. But that kind of awareness comes from him, from those who are connected to him. So if you’re pursuing God and experiencing those kinds of challenges, be encouraged. Those are not experiences from deadness, but from life.

When His Words Abide in You

Look at verse 7. Jesus makes an incredible promise, and we’ve got to talk about it briefly. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” That sounds like a blank check, doesn’t it? And I think out of context, people use this for that all the time. But it’s not a blank check.

Look at the condition. It’s the biggest condition in this passage: “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you.” In short, Jesus is describing what happens when someone is so connected to him, so shaped by his word, that their desires start to reflect his. When you’re abiding, when the life from the vine is flowing through you, when his words are living in you, you start to want what he wants, and you ask for what he wants—and he wants to give it to you.

This isn’t a promise that God gives you whatever you feel like asking for. It’s a description of what prayer looks like when you’re actually connected to the vine. When you’re connected to the vine, as life is flowing through you, the things you care about change. And when you start to care about those things and see how incapable you are of doing the things he cares about, you ask him for help. And guess what he does? Life flows through the vine.

That’s what prayer looks like when you’re connected to the vine. So when you’re abiding in Christ, walking with him and dependent on him, laboring for his purposes and asking him for help, what more would glorify him than to do it for you? That’s what Jesus is promising. He doesn’t just promise it here in 15. He said it in 13, said it in 14, says it later in 15. You should be asking the Lord to bear fruit in you as you connect to him.

How a Dead Branch Becomes Alive

Now here’s where the passage forces us to reckon with the most important question: How does a dead branch become a living one? This whole passage assumes two categories—connected and bearing fruit, or disconnected and heading for the fire.

If you’re honest tonight and you know that you’re in the second category—maybe you’re around the vine, you look like a branch that’s connected, but you’re not and you know it. Maybe you’ve been around it your whole life. Maybe there’s no life in it for you right now. The question is, what can you do about it?

And the answer from this passage is stunning in its honesty. Frankly, you can’t do anything about it. “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.” A dead branch cannot just decide to be alive, wake up, and go do something about it. You can’t manufacture a connection to Christ by trying harder to clean up your act first, by showing up to more church events. Dead wood is dead wood, and Jesus isn’t harsh here. He’s just being truthful. This is the consistent testimony of Scripture. In our sin, we are spiritually dead inside. We are unable on our own to produce anything that pleases God. We can’t make ourselves better. We are spiritually dead. We can’t save ourselves.

But here’s the gospel. The one who is speaking these very words, the true vine, went to the cross the very next day and died. Within hours of saying, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing,” Jesus was arrested, tried, beaten, and crucified. He died to take the full wrath of God for sinners. He took the judgment that those dead branches are reserved for. He died, and three days later he rose from the dead. I hope that’s not lost on the fact that we’re celebrating that as a church this week. Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is coming.

Through faith in him—not through church attendance, not through being a good enough person, not through having the right parents or the right friends or the right answers, but through faith in him—a dead branch is made alive, connected to the vine, cleansed by his word, given life that it could never produce on its own. That’s the first pruning. That’s what verse 3 is all about. God’s word comes to you and cuts you from your old life. It prunes away your sin, your self-reliance, your dead religion that can do nothing to bring life, and you’re made clean, made alive, and connected.

If you’re not in Christ tonight, that’s what you need. You don’t need more religion. You don’t need to try harder to clean yourself up. You need to be rescued. And I just want to encourage you: stop trying to do it by your own efforts, your own ideas. Stop looking for life everywhere out there, trying to find what’s going to satisfy you next. Just believe what Jesus said. Trust Jesus. Trust that his death paid for your sin and his resurrection gives you life. That’s how a dead branch gets connected to the vine.

And if you’re in Christ this evening—maybe a struggling believer, maybe a growing one—just hear this: the gospel is not just how you get saved. It’s how you abide. You never move past your need for Christ. You never graduate to self-sufficiency. Abiding means you come back to this reality every day. You say, “I need You. I depend on You. Apart from You, I have nothing. I can do nothing. I am nothing.” That’s exactly where he wants you, because that’s where life flows.

The Joyful Life of the Vine

As we close, I just want to look at one more thing. Verse 8 says, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” Verse 11 says, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” Do you see the purpose? The Father is glorified, and you are filled with joy. His joy. Full, complete, overflowing joy.

This is not a passage about the misery of religious obligation. This is not describing a grim, white-knuckle existence while you just try to hang on for dear life and not mess up until he comes. He’s describing the most joyful, most purposeful, most deeply alive existence available to any human being: life connected to the source of all life, bearing fruit that you didn’t manufacture, that brings glory to God you couldn’t earn your way to. That’s the invitation of this passage. Life from the vine. Real life. Connected life. Fruitful life. Joyful life.

And it begins with a simple, honest reckoning: Which kind of branch are you? Are you connected, drawing life from Christ, bearing fruit that he’s producing in you? You’re just paying attention, saying, “I just hold on here,” and then one day you look back and there’s fruit. That’s sap and all that. I mean, look, a branch without roots—branches don’t have roots, you know that—but the vine does. So it gets all that from the ground, brings it up, and next thing you know they’re just holding on for dear life to the vine, and it bears fruit.

So are you connected, drawing life from Christ, bearing fruit that he’s producing in you, being pruned by a Father who loves you and cares for you? Or are you near the vine, externally kind of there but getting nothing, having to live off the life that the world offers, which leaves you broken, leaves you feeling more empty? You’ve got to keep going back for more just to get a little bit more of it, and it just doesn’t satisfy. Next thing you know, your soul just feels dead.

There are only two kinds of branches, and the invitation to come to the vine and live is open. I’m just going to tell you my personal testimony: there’s a lot you can go after in this world, and it all leaves you broken. This brings real joy.

I just want to encourage you to take a look at that and talk about it tonight. We’re going to go to our discussion groups now. Let me pray, but I’d love to give you opportunity to interact about that.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we thank You for this invitation, that it is so obvious that it’s nothing that we can earn and it’s nothing that we can work for, and that in fact we have to abandon all the things that we would try to bring to the table just to accept what this offer is.

Lord, I pray for the people in this room, that they would be encouraged if they’re going through trials, things that are causing them to see their dependence on You, that that’s an eye-opening experience that You use as You draw people to Yourself and even prune them.

And Lord, for people that just don’t care about You, I pray that this message would be something that You can use to encourage them to see how fruitless life is without You, and that they would desire the joy that You bring.

Lord, we’ve all been there. I started there, and it took me too long to figure that out. But I’m so thankful that You showed me the joy in You, and You are faithful.

Thank You for this passage and for Jesus’ clear teaching. May it enlighten us and continue to challenge and encourage each of us tonight. In Your name, amen.