This Sunday’s readings: John 15:1-8

Reflections

A machine can do work; only life can bear fruit. A law can compel work; only love can spontaneously bring forth fruit. Work implies effort and labor; the essential idea of fruit is that it is the silent, natural, restful produce of our inner life.
~ Andrew Murray, The True Vine

God’s actions are all intended to nudge you—lovingly, wisely, persistently—toward the life and character you desire but can’t reach without help.
~ Bruce H. Wilkinson, Secrets of the Vine: Breaking Through to Abundance

Here’s the marvelous news. When you look up away from yourself and you look up to God, you see a God who is able…you see a God who has capacity and competence and power. You see a God who himself is not weak. And he will use that ability…in your life.
~Thabiti Anyabwile, Washington, D.C.-based pastor and author

The contemporary climate is therapeutic…. People today hunger… for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.
~ Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), American historian and social critic

There are two ways to drink tea. Some people are dippers. They dip their tea bag up and down in the mug. A lot of Christians are like that. They dip in on Sunday morning then dip back out. They dip back in on Wednesday night then they dip back out. But there’s another way to drink tea and that’s to be an abider. It involves the act of just dropping the tea bag in the water and letting it stay there. Without touching the bag an amazing thing will happen. The color of the water begins to change as the influence of the bag in the hot water effects change in the cup. A person can just sit and watch the transformation take place because of the act of abiding.
~ Tony Evans, Pastor

This Sunday’s readings: John 15:1-11

Reflections

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.
~ Samuel Rutherford (c.1600-1661), Scottish pastor and theologian

The danger is that we may fail to perceive life’s greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God – and be content to have it so – that is the danger. That someday we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life – and have really missed life itself.
~ Phillips Brooks, 1835-1893, Pastor

Underneath human anxiety is the reversal of identity in which the finite attempts to be infinite.
~ Jackie Hill Perry, poet, author and hip hop artist

Let’s be honest—pruning is cutting and cutting hurts.
~ Bruce H. Wilkinson, Secrets of the Vine: Breaking Through to Abundance

All these things He must be in me, abiding, living, speaking in me; that I may be the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. v. 21); not in love, nor in gifts and graces which follow; but in Him.
~ Martin Luther

The greatest misery of all is for God to give you up to your heart’s lusts and desires, to give you up to your own counsels (Ps. 81:11-12). [When visited by various trials and difficulties] think thus: ‘Lord, you have laid an afflicted condition upon me, but, Lord, you have not given me the plague of a hard heart.’
~ Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646), The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment