You're listening to audio from Hardin Baptist Church. For more audio content or other information about our church, please visit hardinbadness.org. Who's excited about vacation Bible school? Yeah, everybody.
It's going to be awesome. I'm really excited about vacation Bible school. And one of my favorite things is when I get to come in and see what this day is going to be like. I'm never told.
I'm just shown. So Thursday, Jenny Green and all the crew came and said, Hey, we're ready for you to see it. Walk in the door and I'm like, This is nuts. And so I walked in.
I'll be honest. I thought I was in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which is one of my favorite movies growing up. So I'll be honest this morning. It's going to be hard for me to preach and not just play because I'm like back in the movie, I'm like, you know, where's like, Zinske and all the things.
This is awesome. I'm like, I'm looking for the shrinker. But man, this is cool, right? A huge vine to remind us that Jesus is the vine.
What an incredible metaphor that Jesus gives us to really talk about who He is. And we want the point to be this morning is not that you would see this and want to have a shrunken life. Like that would be cool to be a shrunken little kid, get to play in your backyard. We don't want shrunken lives.
Instead, what we want is enlarged hearts. We want hearts that are fruitful. And how do we get enlarged hearts? Well, we do that by abiding in Jesus.
So I was going to talk about this morning abiding in Jesus. So if you have your Bibles, go to John 15. That's where we're going to be at. And before we go there, it is making some apples, go tonight at 5.30 in case you missed the memo, it is tonight.
So please come bring some friends. It's going to be awesome. I do want to highlight the VBS mission offering. It's something you hear a lot about.
You've seen us celebrate it. And we've had some crazy amounts of money that's been reached, right? Like last year, just incredible totals. And so I want to think about, okay, why are we raising this much money and what exactly do we do with that money?
So last year, raise $184,000 and $200,000. And so that's a lot of money, right? Why in the world do we raise that much money? Well, we, all of that VBS offering money goes to sin, short-term missionaries from our church, from our youth kids to college kids to adults all over the place.
So you can see we had a Brazil medical trip. We got to build a church in Brazil, which will show you in just a moment. The college team with Arizona and also Costa Rica, we had youth teams that went to Chicago and also Costa Rica, multiple trips. And then we got to do a Nicaragua church plant.
And then in Arizona, we got to do Christmas in the village. So it was just an incredible thing. So you can see, hey, a lot of money. Guess what?
We spent a lot of money because we love missions and it takes a lot to send a lot. So we'll go to the next slide. What we got to send is 208 of our own people all across to go do mission work. What an incredible thing.
So we got to go to Arizona, Chicago, North Carolina, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and also Brazil. That's the number of people we got to send to those places to share the gospel with people. Now, I want you to see some faces. So here's some faces of various teams that you're offering, you're praying, and you're giving lead to their going.
And they got to go and share the gospel with many, many people. But I just got to church. There's a church in Brazil that needed help raising money for building material. So we took the VBS offering and we bought all of the building material for this church in Brazil.
And so you can see the foundation and then now here it is today. That's a congregation meeting in it. Just an amazing, amazing thing and all the work that is being done. But I just want to know just about that.
So this week, our KBC representative came to my office and showed us our cooperative program giving. So the cooperative program feels things like the IMB, which you know we have several of our own that are IMB missionaries now. The North American Mission Board, some of our own are missionaries to that organization as well. This past year as a church, we gave almost $250,000 to the cooperative program.
That's pretty incredible. So if you think about that, doing the math, that means that we as a church just this past year have given over $400,000 towards missions. I think that's pretty cool. Right?
Like that's a pretty like, wow, the Lord is good. Right? That's you guys faithfully giving and faithfully moving and doing. And so this year our goal, it's big.
Our goal is $150,000 because that's what it's going to take to send all the people that we want to from our church, that high school students, that college students, that's adults, to all the places we want to go, it's going to take some money. And that's asking you to give, to be generous towards the gospel because you want people to know who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. But they can be brought in to the kingdom of God. Now, I want to tell you, the real heroes are what we call our mission makers.
Now, our mission makers are boys and girls, the kids of EBS. This is Kinley and Charlie Darnell. And what they did, they're here in our presence, they got to sell eggs that they've worked on their farm, raise these chickens, they have eggs, and guess what? They're selling eggs to raise money for vacation Bible school.
And if you ask them why, it's so that people can hear the gospel. I got to meet some cool kids this week, just driving our community and eliminate stands and selling flowers and selling things. And everyone asks, why are you doing this? So that people can hear the gospel.
That's really, really cool. I'm not going to ask them kids. This week for VBS, ask them people, sell some things, raise some money because we want more people to hear the good news of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So that's the mission offering, big goal, hey adults, we need you to.
So this morning, if you want to give, you can go to our website, hardmadass.org, or out on the home screen, it says VBS offering. You can give on your buckets, on the way out, just write VBS missions offering. And we want to raise a lot of money to just get the gospel out and also so that we get to do some messy things. That is always fun as well.
So if you have a Bible of John 15, we're going to get into John 15. And we're really going to look at this one word abide. So John 15, 17 verses, a lot of things in this text that we just can't unpack. I'm going to try to make it short and sweet because we got a lot of kids in here.
But what I want to just look and focus is on that word abide. And we'll give you our key text. It's in verse four. Here's what Jesus says.
Abide in me and I in you. Abide in me and I in you. That's what the Lord wants from you. He wants you to abide in him.
And as you abide in him, the Lord is going to be glorified. You're going to experience love and joy and fruit will pour out of your life. So today we're going to talk about abiding in the Lord. So I'm going to pray and then we'll jump in.
Let's pray together. Father, we love you so much. Father, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for what He did on the cross for us, paying for our sins and raising again on the third day to justify us, to make us right with you so that we can have a relationship with you.
God, we want to know this morning that Jesus is the vine or source of life and that what we do is to abide in him. We pray this in His good name. Amen. So what I want to talk about first is just the book of John because in the book of John, Jesus gives seven I am statements and we're in the seventh one right now.
So I just want to read real quickly the seven I am statements and it gives you an idea of who Jesus is and what He's claiming about Himself. Here's what Jesus says in John six, I'm the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger. John eight, I'm the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. John 10, I'm the door.
If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. John 10, I'm the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. John 11, I'm the resurrection in the life, whoever believes in me though he died yet shall he live. John 14 six, I'm the way, the truth in the life, no one comes to the Father except through me and then now our seventh one, I am the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser.
So we're going to see first is Jesus is the vine. So these big I am statements. This is who I am. One thing he tells us is he is the vine and good for us.
We have a really big visual image of what that might look like. Like we built it for you. Here it is because in Jesus's day when he's walking around teaching, everyone knew what a vine was. Everyone knew what a vine was.
The kids would play in them, run around, play tag in them. They all were familiar with vineyards. They were all familiar with picking grapes. They knew this image for us.
We see like cornfields, right? So we had to build a very big vineyard. And so this is the metaphor, the illustration Jesus saying, Hey, I am the vine. So what does that mean by I am the vine?
He's trying to tell us is that he is that source of life. So verse 1 of chapter 15 says this. I'm the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.
Already you are clean because of the word that I've spoken to you. I love that. Hey, you're already clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Notice we don't get clean by works.
We get clean by the word. We get clean by the gospel. It's the gospel that cleanses us. The gospel connects us to the vine.
You can't work for it. Earn it or buy your way into the kingdom. It's through belief in the gospel. What who Jesus is and what Jesus is done for you.
We're going to share the gospel with all of your kids. We're going to tell them who Jesus is and what Jesus did and hopefully some of them were pinned in belief and be brought in to the vine. Now this vine imagery, by the way, the Israelites would have assumed the vine is them. They are the vine.
That's who they are. And if you go to things like Psalm 80, they would have know this because Psalm 80 verse 8 says this. You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground from it. It took deep root and filled the land. So that's Israel. Israel was God's vine.
God cleared the land, brought them out of Egypt. They grew. They grew out of the land. But then Israel, the vine did what?
They sinned against God. They disobeyed. They wouldn't ever obey His word. They wouldn't ever walk in obedience.
So what they experienced is judgment. They got cast out no longer His vine, but there's a prophecy of hope in verse 14 that says this. But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you.
Give us life. And we call upon your name. So there's one coming. There's a man at God's right hand.
There's a son of man who is strong, who's coming and when he comes, we're going to call upon the name of the Lord. We're going to be made to have life again. So what is this I'm pointing to? Of course the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the vine is not Israel. The vine is one Israelite and His name is Jesus. And if you're connected to Him, you are part of the new people of God. But think about the image.
I am the vine. Everything else grows off of me. I am the very source of life. So Jesus telling us that He is that true vine.
So my question is, are you connected to Jesus? Are you connected to Him? Do you have life in the name of Jesus? So we're going to do, in this text, there are 10 times Jesus uses the word abide.
We're going to look at eight ways that we can abide. Eight ways that we can abide. First is this, abiding Jesus. So number one, abiding Jesus.
That's the most important thing to do. Abide in Jesus. Notice, abide in me and I in you. So what does abide mean?
I mean, so where we don't use a whole lot, what does it mean to abide? What means to remain, to stay, to dwell, to be at home, to stay there, to hold on to? That's what it means to abide. Like this morning, when my alarm went off at 5 a.m., you know what I wanted to do?
I wanted to do a biding bed. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay asleep, go to sleep. But I knew you're going to come here today and I need to have this thing finished so I had to wake up.
I couldn't abide in bed. But Jesus is saying, hey, stay in me. Don't leave me abiding me. Don't grow out of me.
Don't grow past me. Instead, clean to me. I love what James Comer says about this term abide because he brings up the concept of Jesus is not asking us to do something that we're not already doing. Because here's the reality.
All of us abide. It's just what we do as humans. We are people who abide. We have to make our home in something.
We have to root in something. It's just the kind of people we are. The question is not are you abiding. The question is what are you abiding in?
And so one of the ways we can figure out what we abide in is what are you doing in your board? What are you doing? You have free time. What are you doing?
You're off the clock and the clothes are clean and the dishes are put up. What do you do? What do you do? What do you root in?
Make your home in. What do you do? This is my abiding time. What do you gravitate towards?
I want to give you three examples that Comer uses. I think they're so good. He says this. If we abide in the infinite scroll of social media.
So maybe some of us, that's our happy place. Whenever we're born, we go to social media and we scroll and we look. We scroll and we look. That's our home.
We say in it. He says this. If we abide in the infinite scroll of social media, it will form us into people who are angry, anxious, arrogant, simplistic, and distracted. So he says this, whatever you abide in, that thing begins to form you and what you're formed in comes your fruit.
So you can look at the fruit of your life. Am I angry? Am I anxious? Am I distracted?
Am I simplistic? Well, what am I abiding in? Because that's what I'm being formed by and here comes the fruit of that. He gives two more examples that I want to know.
He says this. If we abide in the endless queues of streaming platforms, Netflix, all the stuff, we spend our time all day on YouTube, all day endless queues, what will that do? It will form us into lustful, restless, and bored, never present to what really is. We're just always watching and it's forming us.
The things we constantly watch form us and in fruit from that, we become the people that we make our homes in. Our homes grow fruit. Abiding grows fruit. The last one he says, if we abide in hedonism, another drink, another toak, another hookup, it will likely form us into people who are compulsive, addictive, running from our pain and simultaneously our healing.
So it's just man, it's always about the next, the next thrill, the next pleasure. And you'll be formed into a person that is compulsive, always chasing after the next thing. So what we abide in forms us. And then he ends with this, but if we abide in the inner life of God, that will also form us.
It will slowly grow the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faith, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. See whatever we abide in, that thing, it forms us in how we're formed is what the fruit comes from. So what's Jesus saying? Abide in me.
I'm a vine. And if you abide in me, then you're going to be formed by me and out is going to come fruit that's like me. In other words, you're going to act like me when you abide in me. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to abide in Jesus.
You know what we have to do to abide in Jesus? We have to stop abiding in things that aren't abiding. See, for a lot of us, we're abiding in things that aren't abiding. They're not lasting.
They're not going on forever. They're temporary. They're moment. They're flashes in the pain and then they're gone.
What we have to do is abide in things that are abiding, things that are eternal. That is the Lord Jesus Christ, His kingdom. That's what we abide our lives in. Number two, abide as dependency.
Divide as a bind as a dependency. Verse four says this, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. We have to be dependent on God. What's the branch have to do?
The branch has to be dependent on the vine. If the branch falls down and decides, I'm just going to produce for it on my own, I'm going to lay on the ground, I'm going to squeeze real hard and for each of you to come out, it's not going to work. It doesn't have the power or the ability. It's like kids in the room, if you ever tried to grow, if you ever tried that, like I'm not as a kid, I wanted to grow.
I'd be like, how do I grow? If I try really hard, maybe I'll grow. You can't try hard and grow. Grow to something that happens to you.
You just keep being human and you're going to grow. That's how you grow. So what's Jesus saying? Hey, the path towards growth is not trying really hard and working really hard and doing really hard.
No, the secret is stay connected to me. Keep abiding in me. I will cause growth. Because apart from me, you can't do anything.
Apart from me, you can't grow fruit. It's just like the branch has to be connected. You have to be connected to Jesus. And just think about the holiday we just celebrate him.
Independence Day, right? We shoot off fireworks like, hey Britain, haha, we're not connected to you guys anymore. We are independent. And that's nice as Americans, but it's really bad as humans because we are not independent of our creator.
We are dependent on God for everything, for life, for breath, for our whole lives. We are dependent on God. So yeah, we might be independent as Americans, but we are not as human beings. We're not as followers of Jesus.
We are connected to Jesus. We are completely dependent on Him. So live your life, dependent on the Lord Jesus. Clean to Him, hold on to Him, make your home in Him, and truly believe if I'm away from Jesus, I can do nothing.
I can't just like a little branch can't. Number three, abide to bear much fruit. So we're going to abide to bear much fruit. Notice what verse five says, I'm the vine and you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me and I in Him, He it is that bears much fruit. Four, apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, He is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and are burnt. Did you notice something?
The secret to growing is not in doing. It's in staying. The secret to your growth. Some of you want to grow.
You want to be kinder, you want to be more loving, you want to forgive more, you want to be a better worker, a better husband, a better wife, all those things. Those are really great things to want. The secret is not in more doing. It's more remaining.
It's more staying. Staying rooted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Staying, connecting and squeezing on to Jesus that He is going to produce the fruit in and through you. See, apart from Jesus we can do nothing.
But notice what we see that the goal is to what bear much fruit. That if we're connected, we're going to bear fruit. And not just some fruit. If you're connected to Jesus, you bear much fruit.
And that's what we want. Like look at all this fruit. This is good. This is what branches are supposed to do.
How does the branch get fruit? By abiding in the vine. Not buying it, squeezing it, trying it. No, it's by abiding.
Then God grows fruit through your life. So we want to abide to bear much fruit. Number four, we abide to glorify God. We abide to glorify God.
Notice number seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it'll be done for you, buy this, my father's glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Notice if you abide in me and my words abide in you. Notice there's a connection between abiding in Jesus and the word of God abiding in us. In other words, you can't disconnect the two.
You can't say, well, I'm going to abide in Jesus, but also not read my Bible. No, how you abide in Jesus is through reading your Bible and studying your Bible and loving your Bible and memorizing your Bible and thinking about the word of God dwelling in you richly, which is what Colossians teaches, is how we dwell in Christ richly. So how do I make my home in Jesus? I let Jesus' word make its home in me.
I'm spending time with the Lord. So how does that branch take connected to the vine? It's through the word of God. And notice what happens as we love the word of God, as the word of God makes its home in us.
Then what happens? We're praying to the Father and the Father is answering prayers. And then people are seeing God's work in us, God's light in us. And you know what's happening?
God is glorified in us when we abide in Jesus. You might think like, how does that happen? When you abide in Jesus, you know what you become like? You become like Jesus.
And the more you abide, the more you become like Jesus. And the more his fruit flows through you. So people see you, they run into you, they say, hi to you at work and at home. And when they nudge up against you, what comes out?
The fruit of Christ. And so when people see you, you look like Jesus, they get to experience who Jesus is like by being around you. And they see the light of Jesus. And God is glorified when you live your life like Jesus.
What do we do? We abide for the glory of God. Fifthly, we abide in love. Notice this.
This is one of those lines that you should probably try to meditate and memorize this week. Notice this. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
And just think about that for a moment. So Jesus wants you to abide in his love. And before he says, he says, look, as the Father has loved me, can you even comprehend how much God the Father loves, God the Son? Like for one, God is love, right?
And God the Father and God the Son, an eternal relationship, have always loved, so God the Father has always loved God the Son from all eternity. And God is love. How much love does God have? God the Father forgot the Son.
I mean, you can't imagine, you can't comprehend it, right? How much you love your family, your son, your daughter. How much more is God's love? The Father's love towards the Son.
And notice what Jesus says, as the Father loved me, so I've loved you. In that same kind of way, in that same manner, now I am loving you. So the way God the Father loved God the Son, God the Son is loving us in that same way. That should kind of blow your mind a little bit.
It's not a yawning point. That's a what? How could it be that Jesus loves me that much? Well, you know, you can actually see it because He demonstrated His love for you.
Why you're still a sinner, Christ died for you. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that who so ever believe in Him would not bear but have everlasting love. Like God has shown, Jesus has shown for the joys that before me and the cross. He loved us till the end.
He loved you and me, and He gave His life on a cross for us. That's how much Jesus loves you and Jesus loves me. And you know what He says? All that love, all that love, imagine how big it is and how you can't comprehend it.
And then just abide in it. Abide in my love. And if I could say something, all of us in here, what? To be loved.
All of us, it's what we seek our whole lives. We want to be loved. We want to belong. We want someone to sing over us.
We want somebody to stand proud of you. We want somebody just to love us for who we are, just to love us and all of our mess and all of our wrinkles, just to give us that unconditional love and nobody can give it to us except for the Lord. We were made for His love and we won't be satisfied until we snuggle up to the love of Jesus. Abide in His love.
Love that is unconditional. Love that didn't say, hey, when you become lovable, I'll love you. No, He said you're unlovable, but I love you anyways. And then my love is going to make you more and more like me.
The love of God. I mean, how great is the love of God? And you know what? If you're a believer, you have His love.
So you know what you need to do? Abide in it. Don't seek for it somewhere else. Don't seek outside of God to be loved, to belong, to find sinivings, to find value.
No, just believe, hey, I've got all the love I need in Jesus. I'm a branch that is stuck to Him. I'm abiding in Him. And I've got all the love I could ever need or ever want in the Lord Jesus.
Jesus loves you. Abide in His love. Number six, abide in obedience. Notice what Jesus says.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I've kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. Notice what Jesus says. There's no abiding apart from obedience. You can't abide and also rebel.
It doesn't go together. No, abiding involves obedience. He says, hey, just like I kept my Father's commandments and I remained in His love, you keep my commandments and abide in my love. So how do we abide in the love of Jesus?
We listen to what He says and we obey His voice. We come under Him as a good Lord and Savior and we say, Jesus, you know best, I'm going to come under you and I'm going to obey you. And that's how we snug with His love. That's how we abide in His love is by obeying the things that He's told us to do.
See, we love Him and we obey Him. See, we all have the opportunity every day to either abide or rebel. We can abide in the love of Jesus or we can rebel against the love of Jesus and try to find love our own way and try to find happiness our own way. It never works the other way.
What we need to do is to abide in the Lord Jesus. Number seven, here's why we abide in the commandments. It's for joy. We abide for joy.
Notice verse 11, these things, what He just said, I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Why does Jesus want you to abide in Him? Because He wants your joy to be full. Not just a little joy.
He wants your joy to be full. And so here comes Satan's greatest lie. Satan's greatest lie is the commands of God, the word of God, the demands of God. They're all kill joys.
They're all robbing you of happiness. You've got wants and desires and God's got rules against those wants and desires because He doesn't want you to be happy. He doesn't want you to be satisfied. He doesn't want you to be full.
He wants you to be grumpy like He is grumpy. That's what Satan wants to sell you on. And Satan says, I've got all the joy you can imagine. And Satan just brings it all out.
I've got pallets of joy. And it's just all of the sin that you can imagine. All the things that you're flesh. All the things you lost after.
Here it is. Just go jump into it. You know what it is? It's endless joy.
Go have fun. Joy and happiness. And it's all a lie. And I don't have to convince you of that because you've all experienced it.
I have to, right? We've all ran after something that Jesus said no to that we thought would make us happier if we said yes to it. And we all went in that and we loved it and we enjoyed it. But then what happened?
It didn't last forever. Did it? No, it ended up in guilt and shame and ended up robbing us of joy because what Satan offers is moments of happiness but he can't offer joy. He can't offer fullness.
He can't offer pleasure forever more because that is something only at God's right hand. And God says in the songs, at my right hand are pleasures forever more. Delighted me and I'll give you the joy, the delights of your hearts. I've got joy.
You are thirsty and I'm a fountain of living water. Just come and drink. I've got all the joy, full joy that's found in me. And what Jesus is saying is if you want full joy, there's only one way to get it by abiding in me, by being the branch that connects to the mind because I am where joy is at and I'm where joy is full.
We're all longing to be happy. We're all longing to be satisfied. We're all longing for everything. And Jesus is saying everything is found in me.
I'm the God who satisfies your hearts that if you abide in me, you will have joy and then lastly and then we're done abiding fruits. Point eight, abiding fruit. Verse 12 says this, this is my command that you love one another as I've loved you. Greater love is no one than this that one lays down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants but the servant does not know what the master is doing but I have called you friends. For all that I've heard from the Father, I've made known to you. You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you so that you would go and bear fruit and that your fruit should stay with me.
What? That your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you. These things I've commanded you so that you will love one another. Notice that we have the love of Jesus.
He tells us have got better love you can ever imagine. You're no longer servants. You're now friends and just so you don't get it backwards, I chose you. You didn't choose me but I chose you and now you're part of this thing.
You're a brand because I chose you. I crafted you in and now that you're here. You know what your joy is to abide in the fruit that I'm producing through you. Bear much fruit and so have your fruit abide.
You know what one of the markers of that fruit is? To love one another. To love the people in this room, the messy people in this room. To love.
So Jesus wants our fruit. Not just happen for a moment but for our fruit to abide. For a fruit to keep going. So the question is how do we have abiding fruit?
How do we have fruit that keeps going? How do we have fruit that doesn't run out? You can't but Jesus can. You don't have the ability.
You don't have what it takes. Regardless of what anybody told you. You don't have what it takes. Hey kids, regardless of what it tells you, you can't do this.
It takes the Lord Jesus. It takes his life, his death and his resurrection. When you believe in the gospel, Jesus gives you the Holy Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit, he dwells in you.
He abides in you. You get to abide in him. And as you abide in Jesus. You know what happens?
He produces fruit in your life. And that fruit, it abides and it remains. So as you think about this big vine all week long, because you can't get that out of your brain, right? It's there.
You're going to think about this. You're going to be here at VBS and see this vine. Let it remind you of who you are. You're not the vine.
You're not the source of life. No, what are you? You're a branch. What does a branch do?
A branch abides. You're doing it right. The question is, what are you abiding in? Because the thing you abide in, it forms you and out comes fruit from that.
So you're abiding in something other than Jesus. Or you're abiding in the Lord Jesus, letting him form you and let fruit come out of him. We're now living a life that looks like Jesus. So what do we do?
What's our task? We don't work. We don't try. We don't muster it up.
No, we do. We abide. We abide in the Lord Jesus. And as we abide in him, he makes us more like him.
And from it comes fruit. So I love looking at this vine. And honestly, it kind of takes me back to like that movie, how do I shrink the kids? I do love that movie.
But the point when we see that vine is not, man, I wish my life was shrunk. So I could experience all the cool things in that movie. Now, the point is not for your life to be shrunk. The point is for your heart to be enlarged.
How does your heart get larger? Not by trying, but by trusting. By abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ. So what do we do this week?
One word. Abide. Let's pray. By the way, we love you so much.
We thank you for Jesus who is the vine, God. We thank you for all the children in this room. God, we love them. You have such a grand plan for them, God.
We pray over vacation Bible school. We pray that it be an awesome week of fun and excitement in the kids here about Jesus. That we raise money for the offering so that we can tell others about Jesus. And we pray that Jesus, we magnify in everything we do.
Father, we love you and we praise you in Jesus' good name. Amen. Will you guys aren't dismissed? We are.
Sense. Go preach the gospel we say we love. You are listening to audio from Heart in the Baptist Church. For more audio content or other information about our church, please visit heartinbadness.org.