~All or nothing~
Today’s sermon touched me today. So I decided to share a bit about what happened. We had a guest speaker come in today, Reverend Lam from Cali. He spoke about this bible verse:
Remain in me, and I will 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.
John 15:4 (NIV)
He spoke about what it means to have God as the vine and us as the branches. If you are a branch, and you have been taken away from the main part of the plant, you will eventually die. Even if it is a flower, essentially, the flower which is not attached to the plant is dead. So if you want the blessings that God gives, you must remain with God. Your goal, your focus, is upon Jesus. Not money, not power, not our pleasures.
But somehow through Rev. Lam’s sermon, my heart heard something different. Perhaps God is speaking… I don’t know… This is what I heard, “It is all or nothing…” An echo of what Lily said at a previous sermon. If you choose God, you must be with God all the way, or not at all. Either God is the LORD over your life or He isn’t. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. Do you listen to God’s commands? or do you listen to your own “good sense” ? If your focus is upon following Jesus, then it will show. You will bear fruit. In Christ, you cannot hedge your bets. If you choose to follow Christ, then you will sacrifice this life, for the promise of the eternal life to come. If you choose to follow your own path, then you will live this life pursuing your own desires. So with every choice we make, we are going down the easy and wide path… or we are going up the narrow and hard path. Choose wisely my friends.