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“Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”
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had to depend on divine power. “I can of Myself do nothing.”
John
5:30
.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” On the
hills of Palestine, our heavenly Father had planted this goodly Vine.
Many were attracted by the beauty of this Vine, declaring its heav-
enly origin. But the leaders in Israel trampled the plant under their
unholy feet. After they thought they had killed it, the heavenly Vine-
dresser took it and replanted it on the other side of the wall. The Vine
Stock was to be no longer visible. It was hidden from the violent
assaults of men. But the Vine’s branches hung over the wall, and
through them grafts could still be united to the Vine.
“The connection of the branch with the Vine,” Jesus said, “rep-
resents the relation His followers are to maintain with Him.” The
branch is engrafted into the Living Vine, and fiber by fiber, vein by
vein, it grows into the Vine Stock. So the Christian receives life
through connection with Christ. The sinner unites His weakness to
Christ’s strength, his emptiness to Christ’s fullness. Then he has the
mind of Christ. The humanity of Christ has touched our humanity,
and our humanity has touched divinity.
We must keep this union unbroken. Christ said, “Abide in Me,
and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides
in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” This is no
off-and-on connection. The branch becomes a part of the Living
Vine. “The life you have received from Me,” Jesus said, “can be
preserved only by continual fellowship. Without Me, you cannot
overcome sin or resist temptation.” We are to cling to Jesus and by
faith receive from Him the perfection of His own character.
The root sends its nourishment through the branch to the farthest
twig. “He who abides in Me,” Jesus said, “and I in him, bears much
fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” When we live by faith on
the Son of God, the fruits of the Spirit will show in our lives; not
one will be missing.
“My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does
not bear fruit He takes away.” There may be an apparent connection
with Christ without a real union with Him by faith. A profession of
religion places us in the church, but the character shows whether we
are connected with Christ. If we bear no fruit, we are false branches.
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“If anyone does not abide in Me,” Christ said, “he is cast out as a