The Gardener - #007

In this episode, we're diving into the first part of John 15. Jesus is the gardener and works on weeding out the bad parts of our lives, as well as pruning back the dead things so that we may be more fruitful. What are some things that need pruning in your life to be fruitful for the Lord?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hi everyone and welcome to the Holy Work. I am your host, Carrie Richards, and I'm excited to be here with y'all today. We are recording this during summertime. And as you know, summertime people get to do a lot of just fun activities. And this summer I've been focusing on my garden. I started it in late spring, but as y'all know, this year it's been very dry, and so it was difficult and making sure I remembered to water it every day. And um, if you're not one of the people who are into gardening, just bear with me for a minute. This all wraps up into something beautiful, but just bear with me. Uh so gardens need rain. Wasn't raining, so I was having to go out there or my husband and make sure that everything was being watered well. And then, of course, you have to tend to your garden and pull the weeds that if you don't, it could be just a few days and they will be higher than the plants that you have growing. And then you have bugs that randomly show up. I don't know how it happens, but there's this invisible direction signal to bugs that you've never had in your yard until you have a garden. And I have some tomato plants, and these crazy horn caterpillars, they're green. You can hardly see them because they blend into the leaves. And they'll just eat your tomato plants alive. So you're not, in essence, growing food for you. You're growing food for all of these random bugs that they find out you've got a garden and whoosh, they're there, eat it, gobble up, and it's gone. But I'm trying to be smarter than the bugs this year. So anyway, I'm gonna turn this around and tell you why I'm talking about gardening at the beginning. We are gonna start by talking about John 15. We're gonna do a few podcasts on John 15 because it's so meaty. There's so much information in there. So today we're gonna focus on the first eight verses. This is where Jesus is talking about the vine and the branches. So I'm gonna read the first eight verses to you and then we're gonna dive in. So it starts out, I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like the branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my father's glory that you will bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. So that's the first eight verses. And this is just a beautiful reflection of Jesus' being the vine and we are the branches. He is our gardener. And like I was talking about in the beginning, where gardeners tend their gardens if they want it to be successful. Jesus is here every day trying to tend to us. He is trying to desire, he's desiring growth that is healthy and fruitful for us. He nourishes our soil by making sure that we have his word to go back and read on a daily basis. And he wants us to have that rich, rich um soil that is his word. And then he feeds the seedlings. We are his seedlings, and then he wants us to grow into good plants, and he feeds us through the word and through worship and meditation and just spending time with him. That's how we're getting our nourishment. And then this is not the fun part. He weeds anything that is going to hinder our growth. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't like when people point out flaws in me. That is hard. But especially when Jesus is spending some time, when you spend some time with him and he's saying, okay, this is what we gotta work on. There's this and this and this, and like the Bible says, it's easier to look at the um speck in someone else's eye than deal with a plank in your own. So we always find everyone else's fault, but we don't want to focus on ours. And in order for us to be successful and to yield good fruit like God wants us to, we're gonna need to be weeded out. And that's what Jesus is here for. So we really need to spend time with him and focus on just letting him start cleaning house and weeding out some things that does hinder our growth. And then it talks about that he is going to be um getting rid of the vines that are not producing, and you can be a good tree, but some of the branches may just not be alive anymore. And this happened this winter when we had that big frost. I have a few different trees that just got hit horribly, and I cut them back, and I was waiting to see if they were going to survive that cutting, but it was a lot of work to cut them back, and it looked like just tiny sticks in the ground. But after a while they started healing again, and we got some branches that were starting to bud, and then now we have leaves with flowers again. And so if we just let it sit there with all those dead branches on, it was gonna die. But we were able to prune it back and help it thrive. They look great now. In the beginning, it looked like I just had a stick garden, which was horrible. But um, that's what Jesus does when he prunes our unproductive parts of our plant. Um, he has to get rid of the things that aren't working. And sometimes we just need to look at our lives and say, okay, um, I got a lot going on. What is being productive and what is not? And sometimes Satan uses good things, which we could put that in quotes, good things, to cause chaos in our lives. If we're a yes person like me who struggles to say no to things, our yeses can then get in the way to quality things that should be really focused on. And we're doing too many things at once, and then we're not being successful as far as actually doing what God's focused want us to focus on. So we might need to prune some things back and be very intentional with our time, create margins in our time. That's very important. We don't want to burn the candle at both ends, where some people think it's really cool to be going 9,000 miles a minute and have just this full calendar. But I've seen in my own life that full calendars just mean more stress and you don't get to do things well. So prune some of that stuff back and really focus on what it is God's calling you to do, and it's what's going to bear the most fruit. Um, sometimes, though, if a plant is dead, it talks about that he's going to throw it into the fire and be burned because it's not doing anything. Um it's just dead and it's bearing no fruit. And I personally don't want to be the one that Jesus throws into the fire when he comes back and he says, Carrie, you did not bear any fruit. You are not my child. You did not do what I asked you to do. Because he says, makes um when he asks us to follow him, go out and make disciples and teaching everybody about him. And that's that's us bearing fruit. That is us going out and teaching the gospel to people so that as many people can be saved when he returns. So um that's something I want to avoid. I don't want to end up in that fire. So going back just a little bit into verse three, it's talking about how we are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. And so when we choose Christ, when we decide to be a follower of Christ and are born again to him, he cleans us. And we are filthy people. Our sins are so great, and we just cannot even be near God because we are so unclean. But Jesus has taken care of that and given us the ability to have cleanliness in Christ. And so he cleans us spiritually. The word is the cleansing agent that he uses, and it means that we are in the right frame of mind and we're ready to bear fruit. He's getting us ready to do what his will is. And then with that, it's verse four talks about being remaining in me as I remain in you. And we cannot bear fruit by ourselves. We have to remain in the vine. And if you think about it, if you get a plant in our garden and you just stick it on a table, well, it's not in the nutrients, it's not in the soul that's going to then give it all of the nutrition that it needs to grow. And if we are not in the word all the time, we're not going to be able to grow. We we have to remain and abide in Him and stay with Him in order to bear fruit. And when it talks about being clean, it's the spiritual purity, we are forgiven for our sins. It's the sanctification where we are continually being cleansed, we are being refined to look more like Christ every day. And that refining is not easy. Um, when you talk about the iron being refined and metals being refined, diamonds being refined, all of that. In order to get it to be beautiful looking, it's a lot of scraping and heat and um carving out things that are impure. And so it's a process, and it's not gonna happen overnight. It's going to take time, but the more time we spend with him, the easier it's going to be to be refined because he's clearing out all that and purifying us. And in contrast to the dead branches, we will be able to be fruitful. And we do need to stay connected to Christ because he is our source of power and strength. And I call it our plumb line. Um, if you have ever been around anybody who does any type of construction or building, the plumb line shows that everything is in alignment. And that should be our plumb line for our life, the Bible in Christ. And when we're looking at the world around us these days, if we pull out our plumb line, we are way out of alignment from what Christ wants us to do. Um you have to really focus on how black and white it is these days where we can't have feet in both worlds. You're either hot nor cold. God doesn't want you to be lukewarm. He says he's gonna spit you out of his mouth if he if you are. And we have to make sure that we are really focusing on what Christ is asking us to do when we are Christians. He didn't just say, Oh, accept me as your savior and then do whatever you want to. No, he wants us to change, he wants us to grow, he wants us to be fruitful, like we've been talking about. And having that plumb line of the Bible and what is true and good, and what is how God wants us to live our life versus the world, that is so important. And it's gonna be stark difference. You are going to definitely see. And worldly things will turn your stomach once you're in alignment with God. There are just things that used to not bother me as much, but now um it's just I can't, I can't watch certain movies anymore. I can't read certain books. Not that I watched horrible, horrible things, but that's how the world desensitizes us. Just a little bit here and there of cuss words, or just a little bit here and there of different things that may be a little questionable. Um, but you desensitize yourself and you lose that plumb line. So you have to be focused on him all the time. He doesn't want you just to have a Sunday relationship, he wants to be part of all of your life. He is like the air we breathe. It infiltrates every space of our world. You don't see it, but it's there. It's in every crevice, it's in everywhere we go and everything we do. And that's what he wants. He wants to be in every single little crevice of our life. And if we compartmentalize it and only give him parts of it, then that's not the purpose. That's not us being truly faithful to him in all we do. So we have to have that plumb line. Um, I was I was doing some studying on this, I was doing some data research, and there was a survey from Arizona Christian University back in September of 2025, and it said 52% of adults surveyed believed everyone has sinned. So almost half didn't believe people sinned. And this was people that were less than 50 years old, and they are less likely to think they sin. And they describe that all people are basically good at heart. So that kind of just gives you a snip, a snippet of how the world looks at things. We're all basically good. No, we don't always sin. And I think that that shows how far the plumb line is swung away from the truth, the word. Um, and something else that was in that survey really struck me was only three percent of all sermons preached talk about sin. And that was eye-opening because sin is what separates us from God. And only three percent of the sermons out there talk about sin. That should be something we're talking about all the time. How are we going to be better? How are we going to stop from sinning? And then we are not perfect, we're never gonna be perfect people and never sin. But each day we need to strive to do better and be more like Christ because we are the mirror of Christ to the world. If we are calling ourselves Christians, that's what we need to be doing. We need to be looking more like Him. Um so we're going to go down to verse six. If you don't remain in me, you are like the branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up and thrown into the fire and burned. And I touched on this just a little bit, but he's coming back, and there is going to be destruction of the dead vines. And I don't want to be a dead vine, and I don't want any of anybody else to be a dead vine, because that means you're gonna be spending eternity in hell, and that's gonna be torture, literally. Um, and that's not what God wants for us. He is a loving, caring, kind, compassionate God. He wants his children to be with him, but he's also given us the choice of free will, and it's our choice. Are we going to be fruitful? Are we going to remain in him and do what he asks us to? Or are we gonna not and throw our lives away? So that is something that we have to decide. We have to decide on what we're going to do, and are we going to actually be fruitful? And when it talks about in verse seven, remain in me, my words will remain in you. Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. That last part, he's not a genie in a bottle. We're not gonna rub a magic lamp and go, God, I really need a new car. Can you give me one? It needs to be red, it needs to run fast, it needs to hold all the things I need, and I just want it to be the coolest car around. Well, he's not that wish giver. What it means is we have to remain in him. When we remain in him, we then become aligned with his plan. So if we're aligned with his plan, then whatever we wish for will be his plan, and then it will be done for you. So it's kind of like that domino effect. You start out by abiding in him and remaining in him, and then you become in alignment with him, and then you start asking for things that are in alignment with what his goals are for your life, what his plans are for your future, what his hope is for you, as far as being fruitful and reaching out to other people and be and bringing them in to a relationship with him. And that is something that's so important. That is the fruit that we want to produce. So we are not a list of, hey, I want this, this, and this, God help me out here, but we want to really focus on a vertical prayer, not what can God do for me, but what can we do for God? How can we be part of his grand scheme? And how can we find those lost and reach the people that he really wants us to reach? Um, he is the source of our power, he is the source of our strength and our growth. And as we start to mature as plants, I'm using that as an analogy for our Christian life, but as we start to grow in our Christian life, he is going to be the power source. And if you unplug from that source at all, you know, you're in darkness. Just like if you unplugged your lamp at your house, you're in darkness. But as soon as you plug back in, you have that wonderful light. And that light is what's going to help us grow. You know, plants need light and water and nourishment. And that's what we get from God. He gives us all of those things. He's the living water, he is the word, is our food. And the light is our the lamp is a light to our feet. And so he gives it all to us. He is our source of everything we need. Um, and then I want to read one verse in James. It's James 4, 1 through 3. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. So it goes on to say, you adulterous people, you don't know that a friendship with the world means enmity against God. Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So we need to make sure we are focused on God and we are not asking for worldly pleasures. It's it that doesn't mean we we can't have things that make our life comfortable, but when that is our focus, that becomes an idol. God is the only thing we need to be worshiping. So we really have to be careful with that. We want to make sure that we are not letting the things of the world idolize us, having the high-end cars, the best of the houses, the top notch of all the things, and yet not giving generously to fulfill his plans. So we want to really pay attention to that. And then verse 8 talks about how it's to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. So we know that God wants us to reach out to the lost, and we need to help bring them home and help them build a relationship with Christ. And it's God's will that as many people come to know him as possible. And it says that he's waiting to return for his day of return. He is waiting until as many people as he can can follow him. But he is going to be coming back. And it's every day, it's closer and closer. And there's so many people that are saying that that's going to be sooner than later. Um, and we have to be ready. And that's a whole nother podcast about being ready for the bride of Christ and have our lamps on and not being run out of oil. And we can't just wait um until the last minute because we won't be ready. And we can't just live our life willy-nilly until we go, oh, you know what? Maybe he's gonna be coming back soon. So now I'll start doing what I need to do. Um, it's like you plan for your wedding day, and you plan on plan on plan. Yes, we know when those days will be, but you don't just show up and hope that everything's gonna go well. You don't do everything at the last minute. You pick a day, you pick the outfits, you pick the people that you want to spend time with on that day, and you pick the food and the all the things. And you work to prepare that it's the best day ever. And that's what God wants us to do. We are the bride of Christ, and he wants us to be prepared for that day. And if we are his disciples, he calls us to go out into the world and make more disciples. We are to spread the word to all the nations, and so we need to stop being lukewarm. And that's something I want to encourage you to do. I want you to to just think about are you lukewarm? Are you allowing things in your life to grow in and start taking over what you what could be a productive life for Christ? Are you allowing weeds to pull in and and start choking out what your Christianity really is? And are you focusing on worldly pleasures instead of earthly treasures? So um I do want to close us in prayer today, and then next time we're gonna do part two of John 15 and dive in a little bit deeper about love. So I want you to just keep that in the back of your mind, and that's what we'll talk about next. But I do want to pray for you, and then um just pray that you will really start spending time with God and just have Him speak to you through the Holy Spirit on what you might need to just start carving away. What do you need to weed out in your life? Um, unfortunately, sometimes that's people, people that are not um being a good influence in you. And you can be friendly, but you don't need to be close friends with people who are not building you up, making you better, and also holding you accountable for what God has in your life. If you don't like it when your friend tells you that you're doing something wrong in a loving way, then there's something going on where you're being resistant to what God is trying to tell you through people. So surround your core group of people with ones who follow deeply in the faith and who will build you up and keep you on the right path. So let's go ahead and pray. God, I just thank you for being our gardener. Thank you for showing us how much you love us because we are your children, we are your creation, and you want to tend to us. You want us to grow and thrive, and you want us to have the life that um you have planned for us. You know what you have in store for us, and we just have to walk down the right path. But we also have to be pruned and we have to be weeded and we have to be strengthened through your word. And I pray that we will do that. We will spend some time just growing. Um, sometimes it takes some time of rest for plants to then thrive. So maybe we need to just focus on our relationship with you for a little while, um, back off of all the things, and let you refine us, let you restore us for a little while, and let you rebuild us to what can then be something greater, and then you can guide us to what that is. I pray that we will um just fall back in love with you, that we will have the desire to grow in wisdom and knowledge, and just have a desire to open up your word and just spend time with you. Help that to be our main focus. Help you to be what we want and desire, and then help us to then reach out to others and bring them to you. We love you so much, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.