meditations for an everyday relationship with Jesus

He is the true Vine

John 15:1-5 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vineyard keeper. Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me.”

Without God and His divine grafting none of us would stand a chance. It is because of His mercy that He recognizes the good fruit and has decided to harvest the best and burn the rest!

He prunes that which is grafted in so that the good fruit it bears it produces in abundance. Remain in Jesus and season to season, year to year, you will bear delicious fruit for the soul.

If you are cut off, you are either a dead branch or you were never compatible (not of the same species): evil or an unbeliever. No graft that is securely bound to the “one true vine” can be removed except by the vineyard keeper.

Harvest time

John 4:35-36 “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so the sower and reaper can rejoice together.

Jesus is not talking about fields of grain in the literal language of agriculture, but is using a metaphor to describe the readiness of souls. He urges the listener to look at a very unique field of harvest the harvest of believers for the kingdom.

The sower may be any one who planted the seeds of salvation in an unbeliever’s heart, but we are not the authors of salvation. The author of salvation is the Holy Spirit. The reaper is God, but more probably the responsibility of an archangel like Michael or Gabriel.

Unlike terrestrial harvest, the spiritual harvest is perpetual and is not seasonal in the way we understand it. The season for gathering souls is all year long, and will last until God decides the harvest is over.