Episode 2721 - Lesson 1 - Friday April 03 - Further Thought ✝️

Further Thought: Before we were born, God loved us; He had a plan to know us and for us to know Him. He seeks us out, like a good Shepherd, and invites us to abide in Him every day. We merely need to choose to respond to Him, and then to exchange our wretchedness and our Laodicean condition for His good gifts (see Rev. 3:18-19).Like the slow growth of a grapevine’s branches, our relationship with God might grow slowly, or it might come in bursts as a result of much-needed rain. Regardless of the pace at which we grow and the abundance of fruit that is produced in our lives, we need daily “sap,” or the Holy Spirit, to ensure that we’re remaining connected to Jesus. “Abiding in Christ means a constant receiving of His Spirit, a life of unreserved surrender to His service. The channel of communication must be open continually between man and his God. As the vine branch constantly draws the sap from the living vine, so are we to cling to Jesus, and receive from Him by faith the strength and perfection of His own character.”--Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 676. “How is the dry disconnected sapling to become one with the parent vine stock? How is it to be made a partaker of the life and nourishment of the living vine? Only by being grafted into the vine, by being brought into the closest relationship possible. Fiber by fiber, vein by vein, the twig holds fast to the life giving vine until the life of the vine becomes one with the branch, and the branch produces fruit like that of the vine.”--Ellen G. White, manuscript 67, 1897.Discussion Questions:Reflect back over your life. Can you identify any life events that have lulled you into a Laodicean spiritual condition? What events have drawn you closer to God?Ellen G. White talks about “a constant receiving of His Spirit.” How often do you pray for the Holy Spirit? What might change if you received the Holy Spirit every day?What might change if we, as a church, were to pray for the Holy Spirit more earnestly and more regularly?Be brutally, even painfully, frank with yourself over your relationship with God. What conscious choices do you need to make in order to have the closeness with Him that He wants but that you hinder?Summary: Before we can start growing in a relationship with God, we first have to pause to consider what our current relationship with Him is like. If it’s Laodicean or if our branches are not flourishing, Jesus has the perfect solution for our spiritual condition: to abide in Him.