Living in the Vine 9 

Apart from me

John 15:5 and 16; Romans 7:7-25.

My first venture into ministry came in 1993-94 when, as missionaries with a rural faith mission, my husband and I worked alongside a local village chapel for a couple of years. There were just four members when we began and the chapel had not knowingly seen anyone born again in living memory. So, we determined to put our hearts, souls and strength into evangelising the village. 

Firstly, we set our tiny congregation praying for a year through the electoral roll: house by house, street by street. My allotted section took me over an hour each day! This year of prayer was followed by a year of very busy mission – a great variety of successive events that happened almost weekly, aimed mainly at children and families. This activity culminated at the end of the two years in a whole week of outreach with a mission team gathered from across the country who came to help us. At its peak, there were seventy-three people to follow up, but only two actually became Christians. 

There was fruit. It even looked on the surface as if there was a lot of fruit. However, I question how much lasting fruit there really was. This leads to many other questions. How much of these two years of unrelenting activity was done ‘apart from Him’? Ultimately, I wonder, what was our real motive? Was it the Kingdom? Or was it to somehow show ourselves to be approved by God to the village, the chapel and/or the mission organisation?

There is no pre-determined answer to my questions. Certainly, naivety and inexperience played a large part. There are also times when we do the hard digging and sowing, and others do the harvesting years or even decades later. But, in truth, I now know, 30+ years on, that we didn’t really pray and ask Father what He would have us do; we just got on with our plans and very good ideas and simply asked Him to bless them. It is only by the grace of God that He did this and gave a very small measure of fruit that has, thankfully, lasted through the years. 

The uncomfortable truth is that there is much Christian activity done right across the world, day-by-day, week-by-week, that takes our time and resources, is perhaps good at relationship building, but which bears little lasting spiritual fruit because it is done ‘apart’ from the Vine.

It is so easy to find ourselves living a paradox: earnestly seeking to live for Father God, to see His Kingdom extended and people being saved on the one hand, but repeatedly being stymied in this by what remains of our own enthusiastic desires, earnest motives and secret ambitions. Whilst this remains the case, we will never truly know what it is to live out of the secure rest and the peace His presence brings, the blessing of what it means to ‘abide’ or ‘remain’ in the Vine, and we will fail to see the level of lasting fruitfulness Father longs to bring through us.

Additional reading: 1 Corinthians 1:30-31; Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:5-7.

Prayer Time

Think about your life. 

• Can you identify any time when you have done things ‘for God’ but ‘apart’ from Him? 
• What was the outcome? Was there any true lasting fruit?
• Is there anything you need to repent of?

The promise of fruitfulness in and through us flows wholly out of the degree to which we surrender our self-life and allow the indwelling Spirit more and more control. There will be adjustments we need to make in order to give Him greater priority and freedom to lead and direct us; for us to learn to work in step with Him – for His glory alone – for apart from Him we really can do nothing.

Spend the rest of your time today sitting quietly with Him. Consciously be aware of His indwelling presence. Enjoy your fellowship together.

To see previous installments of this devotional, follow this link. 


^{Image by David Kohler on unsplash.com}