In the Gospels, Jesus makes some pretty shocking statements. We know this because usually right after he finishes saying them, the people around him are shocked! Some of these statements are challenging, others are surprising, while others simply seem too good to be true. This week’s passage falls into that final category. Jesus says, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you…”
Really?
Whatever we wish?
And it will be done?
Some of us even have trouble believing this because it feels like we have asked, and he hasn’t come through on his side! But Jesus is so serious about this promise that he repeats it twice in John 14-15. This Sunday, we will learn more about what it means to really be at home in this promise from the Lord.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: A Journey Home
July 14, 2013
Place at the Table
John 15:7-8
We’re so glad to have you guys here. Thank you for making the long trip. Thank you for the many times you have hosted us in Suharekë/Therandë. It has been just a joy to get to know your families. One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible tells us we are supposed to pray for all the kings and men who are in godly positions so we might live a quiet and dignified and godly life. We want you to know we as a church are praying for you.
For those of you who don’t know the story, the history of Kosovo, in 1998 and 1999 they had a huge conflict with the Serbs in which an enormous number of Kosovar Albanians were killed mercilessly. It was really difficult. In the last 15 years since that conflict ended and the NATO troops and US soldiers helped to end that war, this country has had to rebuild just about everything.
These leaders and educators and doctors are the ones who have really led the way in the reconstruction of a beautiful and powerful country. They have this amazing heart for the next generation. When we first visited Suharekë and we heard about how passionate they are for the next generation of students and young people, we thought, “Oh, we could probably work together as a church, because we feel the same way.”
I just want to say thank you one more time for all the work. Thank you, Johnny. It’s such a privilege to have a local leader. I’m so proud to live in Lilburn. We will pray for you guys who are in positions of leadership. We have been, and we will continue to do so. Thank you so much.
This morning we are going to be in John, chapter 15. If you have your Bibles, open them up to the gospel of John, the fifteenth chapter. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand. We will give you a Bible. It will be useful this morning and forever. If you need a sheet, we’re going to be doing a little activity out of your workbooks.
If you have your workbook, keep your workbook handy. If you need one of those sheets for taking notes and the activity, just raise your hand. We can give you a sheet, a notebook, a Bible. The Bible cart men are well stocked. Maybe in upcoming weeks we can have them carry popsicles also. I think that would be fun.
Remember, we’re in the midst of our series for the summer, A Journey Home. It’s the sixth week. We’ve just been walking methodically through the teaching of Jesus in John, chapter 14, and the first half of John, chapter 15, seeing what Jesus is telling us about what it means to be at home with God in that deep, connected relationship.
Last week we talked about Jesus’ teaching on the vine and the branches. Our friends from Suharekë would be very familiar with the growing of grapes. If you walk through that countryside, it’s a really fertile region. They produce amazing wine in Therandë/Suharekë, the name of the town there. That metaphor for them would just be coming alive.
Today we’re going to look at a passage. It’s one of the most important, powerful promises in the Scripture, but it’s also one of the greatest sources of disappointment and discouragement for some of us. We’re going to spend some time zeroing in on this passage. I’m going to read John 15, verses 1 through 8, just to remember the context of what Jesus is talking about. Our focus is going to be in those verses 7 and 8. John 15:7 and 8 are going to be our focus. Let’s read together John 15, verse 1.
Jesus says, “I am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away [or “lifts up” as we talked about last week], 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 have spoken to you.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for 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 burned.
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” (John 15:1-8) Let me read those last two verses again since that’s what we’ll be spending our time. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” (John 15:7-8)
This idea is so important to Jesus that he actually repeats a version of the promise three other times in these chapters. So while we have our Bibles open, just remember in John 14, verses 13 and 14, Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)
Then John 15, verse 16. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” (John 15:16) Then John 16, verse 23. “In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:23-24)
Four times, Jesus repeats a version of this promise of a relationship in which we are asking God, and he is responding powerfully in our lives. Beautiful. Powerful. Yet at the same time, it can be very troubling, because how many of us… You don’t have to raise your hand, but how many of us have had the experience of praying for someone or something?
We felt like we were abiding in the Word and abiding in God. His Word was abiding in us. We felt like we were praying in Jesus’ name. We were connected. We felt like our request was exactly in the heart and the will of God, but it didn’t happen. I remember my grandmother. She just passed away this last fall. She was a wonderful, godly woman.
For the last several years of her life, she struggled with shingles. Then for the last two years of her life, she had a lung disorder that caused her to struggle for literally every single breath she took. It just felt like she was suffocating. Being with her was so challenging because you could see she was in such pain, and yet at the same time, her spirit was beautiful. She trusted God, and she would pray to God. Every time we visited her, we would pray for her. We would lay hands on her.
Even when we weren’t with her, we were praying for her healing. It felt like we were abiding, we were persistent, we were praying in the name of Jesus, and yet God didn’t seem to answer the prayer we were asking. Do you have those kinds of stories? That’s why verses like this one can be such a source of disappointment. When that happens, when we pray but it seems like God doesn’t respond, we usually come to one of two different conclusions.
The first possibility is when we finish praying, and we feel like God doesn’t respond… My grandmother was never healed, and she died just before Christmas last year. The first conclusion we can come to is we’re not good enough. “I didn’t abide well enough. The Word didn’t abide in me. It’s my fault. I’m not good enough.”
That leads us to a kind of relationship with God that’s dominated by religious acts, trying to earn God’s response, if that makes sense. “I’m not good enough so, well, I’m going to have to try harder next time. I’m going to abide harder. I’m going to memorize more. I’m going to do all this stuff so God will look at me next time and will finally answer the way I’m praying.”
The other potential response we can have when we feel disappointed is that God is not good enough. He is distant. He doesn’t care. He is not powerful enough. I think all of us who have talked to someone who has given up on God… Maybe they were raised in a godly home, or they heard some things about God or something like that, but as the years went on, they just moved farther and farther away from God.
When you talk to people like that, there’s almost always a moment or several events in their life that they can look back to and say, “That’s when I decided God was really not that good. He didn’t come through. He didn’t answer. He didn’t (fill in the blank).” So it’s interesting because the outcome of that response, that God isn’t good enough, is very similar to the first one.
The outcomes are very, very similar, because if God isn’t good enough, close enough, powerful enough, whatever it is, then essentially we’re on our own, and we have to make it happen ourselves. Whether you’re disappointed in this verse and you feel like, “Well, I’m not good enough, or God is not good enough,” the outcome is the same.
We end up living a life that depends on ourselves, on self-reliance. “Either I have to work harder to become better, or I have to make sure I take care of all my bases getting covered because truthfully God is not really going to take care of it.” That’s a miserable place to live, relying on yourself.
Jesus, in the passage we just read, said, “…apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) The whole heart of the Scripture is that when we rely on ourselves, we are terrible self-saviors. We can’t do it. We simply can’t do it. It goes against everything that is at the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is that we have to acknowledge we cannot save ourselves, accept the help of God, trust the words of Jesus so that by his grace we can be redeemed.
What do we make of this passage? What do we do here? How do we sort this out? How do we know if we have sort of drifted into that world of religious self-reliance, trying to make ourselves better to earn stuff from God, or how do we know if we’ve drifted into that land of doubting God and not really trusting that God is really good? One of the ways you can know (and this is a good little test of that) is just to sort of take inventory of your own ability to receive.
That’s one of those things that really reveals just how self-reliant we’ve become. In your books, there’s a little activity (page 78 and 79). Go ahead and open it up. We’re just going to spend 30 seconds. Just rate yourself. How good are you at receiving a present, a compliment, compassion? That’s on the backside of your white notes sheet also. How good are you at receiving?
I love presents. That’s a five. I love compliments. I wish this was a six so I could circle that. Receiving compassion? Three. I’m not very good at receiving help. I’m okay with good advice as long as I agree with it. On the other side of the page, there’s an opportunity to reflect a little bit on why some things are harder to receive than others for us.
As we move forward into the passage, what we really want to do is get to the bottom of what Jesus is talking about in this promise about asking and receiving, praying and God working in our lives. What’s really going on here? How do we not fall off the one side of religious self-reliance and not fall off the other side of doubting God and having to do it on our own? How do we just live in the pure power of this promise that Jesus repeats four times?
We’re going to dig into the passage. We’re going to just take it apart a little bit and hopefully let it saturate our souls. As we do that, let’s just remember the big context of everything Jesus is talking about in this little passage (John 14 and 15). We’ve seen how Jesus promises we have a good home with the Father and our Father is a good Dad. God is good, like a good father. We can trust him. We can hear from him.
He takes care of our lives as we abide in the Vine. This is the whole context. As we look at this passage, we’re going to look at three main things, three words that start with the letter A. We’ll test your preaching homiletical skills. What do you think the first one is going to be?
1. Abide. Yes, absolutely. Let’s talk for a minute about abiding, because Jesus says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you…” (John 15:7) That’s the first half of the verse. It’s talking a lot about abiding. The first thing to notice when we’re talking about abiding is it’s a command from Jesus. It’s something to be done. It’s not passive. It’s not like you just wake up one morning and you’re like, “Oh! I’m abiding” any more than if you woke up one morning and you’re like, “Oh! I can play Beethoven on the piano,” or, “Oh! I can speak French.”
There is actual intention. It’s something to be done. So how do you do it? How do we abide in God? How do we abide in the Vine? David in Psalm, chapter 16, verse 8, talks about this. King David says, “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:8) How do you set the Lord always before you as you go through your day?
If we look at the life of Jesus even in the gospel of John, over and over and over again as we see Jesus talking, we see he has this amazing relationship with God. He even says, “…I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.” (John 5:19) This is John 5, verse 19. “For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” (John 5:19) Connected constantly. Jesus says, “I will only do what I see the Father doing. I only say what I hear the Father saying.”
We can read that and kind of go, “Oh yeah, well, he is Jesus. He has the free pass, a special relationship.” It’s true. He does have a relationship with God that is completely unique because he has no sin separating him. He is so connected in, but the very heart of this whole passage (John 13 through 17) and the gospel of John is that Jesus is saying, “That intimate life with God, that relationship I share with God, I’m inviting all of you into it. Come join that vine. Come share in this life. Come abide like I abide.”
Whoa. What does that mean? As I read the Scriptures, I just see the great men and women of God. I see in the example of Jesus that the word abide, when he commands us to abide, it’s speaking of a constant, conscious connection with God. Continually, consciously connected with God. Sometimes we can get distracted, get caught up. You guys know the famous story in Luke, chapter 10. Jesus comes to a village, stays at the house of Martha and Mary. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet as he is teaching.
Verse 40: “But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.'” (Luke 10:40) Here’s what Jesus says. “But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.'” (Luke 10:41-42)
There’s nothing wrong with serving, hosting, cooking, being involved unless they begin to pull us away from that constant, conscious connection with God. That’s what’s happening with Martha. She is getting so caught up in all this other stuff. This happens to us all the time. God just slips from our minds. Jesus is calling us to abide.
What does this abiding look like practically? I mean, how do we kind of really do it? As you look through the history of the saints and you see people in the past who have attempted to abide, several people stand out. Their writings even persist to this day and help to kind of give us an idea of what practically it looks like to abide with God.
Brother Lawrence. Some of you guys may have read his famous writings. They were written down a little bit after his life. He was a seventeenth-century Carmelite monk. At the age of 18, he was walking along. He saw a tree, and it had lost all of its leaves for the winter. He realized, like every year, that tree, even though it looked dead, in the springtime would surge with new life. Something just clicked in his mind.
He realized, “Wow. God gives life to that tree, and I’m like that tree also in that I kind of look dead, but God can bring life.” That set him on a course of faith for the rest of his days. For the next six years, from 18 to 24, he was a soldier for a little while, and then he was serving in a house. He was like a footman in a great house. He says he was a really poor footman. He was big and clunky and always broke things.
At the age of 24, he entered into the monastery to become a monk. Because he didn’t have any real formal education, he was never able to be fully ordained or anything like that. He spent his entire life, the rest of his life, as the cook for the monastery. Yet he began to just write and talk and share about his constant, conscious connection with God. Let me read you a couple of quotes. These were written down after his life, so they’re kind of in the third person. Just listen to the words of Brother Lawrence.
He taught, “That we ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity, speaking to him frankly and plainly, and imploring his assistance in our affairs, just as they happen. That God never failed to grant it, as he had often experienced.” Then he wrote, “There needed neither art nor science for going to God, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but him, or for his sake, and to love him only.”
You can get the little edition The Practice of the Presence of God. This one says, “Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will encounter from your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations. Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.”
The last one. “And it was observed that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. ‘The time of business,’ said he, ‘does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.'”
Is that how you feel at work? Writing emails, answering the phone, taking reports here and there, hitting the road traveling. Brother Lawrence, in the middle of a crazy kitchen, as he is talking, he is sharing how, in his heart, there’s this place of abiding, constant, conscious connection with God that isn’t shaken.
I mean, you read through this whole thing. Sometimes when you’re reading Brother Lawrence’s writings, it kind of feels like, “Oh, I went into the market, and I thought about God. I was in the kitchen chopping carrots, and I thought about God.” Actually, that’s kind of the point. It’s very simple. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to be super trained.
It’s just maintaining that constant, conscious connection with God. The fruit of his life… I mean, here we are 350 years later still reading his words, a simple cook in a kitchen who said, “I’m going to turn my heart toward God and live as one abiding.” How many great leaders with high positions have come and gone, and their lives never really register to us today? Yet here is a simple cook who, through abiding, continues to speak to us in the simplicity of his life.
Another good example is a guy named Frank Laubach. Frank Laubach was an American. In the 1920s and 1930s, he went to the Philippines as a missionary to help teach literacy. Where he was stationed on this island among the Moro people in the Philippines, he was by himself for a while because his wife and his son were ill and kind of frail. It was hot and humid tropics and everything else.
He had some time just to experiment a little bit with this idea of abiding. He read through the gospel of John a bunch of times. He just couldn’t help but notice how Jesus was constantly connected to God. He said, “I want that.” This is what he wrote. He wrote back a number of letters. Let me just read you a couple of excerpts from them, because I think it helps sort of irrigate our minds and our imaginations about what it could look like to really abide practically.
On January 20, 1930, Laubach was writing home. He said, “Two years ago, a profound dissatisfaction led me to begin trying to line up my actions with the will of God about every 15 minutes or every half hour. Other people to whom I confessed this intention said it was impossible.
I judge from what I have said that few people are trying even that. But this year I have started out trying to live all my waking moments in conscious listening to the inner voice, asking without ceasing, ‘What, Father, do you desire said? What, Father, do you desire done this minute?’ It is clear that this is exactly what Jesus was doing all day every day. But it is not what his followers have been doing in very large numbers.”
A little more than a week later, January 29, he writes, “I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never have felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me. To know this gives a sense of security and assurance for the future which is also new to my life.
I seem to have to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing ‘takes care of itself,’ or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to his will, to make this hour gloriously rich. This seems to be all I need think about.”
On March 1 he writes, “This sense of being led by an unseen hand which takes mine while another hand reaches ahead and prepares the way grows upon me daily. I do not need to strain at all to find opportunity. It plies in upon me as the waves roll over the beach, and yet there is time to do something about each opportunity. Perhaps a man who has been an ordained minister since 1914 ought to be ashamed to confess that he never before felt the joy of complete, hourly, minute-by-minute—now what shall I call it?—more than surrender.
I had that before. More than listening to God. I tried that before. I cannot find the word that will mean to you or to me what I am now experiencing. It is a will act. I compel my mind to open straight out toward God. I wait and listen with determined sensitiveness. I fix my attention there, and sometimes it requires a long time early in the morning to attain that mental state. I determine not to get out of bed until that mindset, that concentration upon God, is settled.
It also requires determination to keep it there, for I feel as though the words and thoughts of others near me were constantly exerting a drag backward or sidewise. But for the most part recently I have not lost sight of this purpose for long and have soon come back to it. After awhile, perhaps, it will become a habit, and the sense of effort will grow less.”
Then this last one. The island where he was, the Moro people are all Muslims. He writes, “As I analyze myself I find several things happening to me as a result of these two months of strenuous effort to keep God in mind every minute. This concentration upon God is strenuous, but everything else has ceased to be so. I think more clearly. I forget less frequently.
Things which I did with a strain before, I now do easily and with no effort whatever. I worry about nothing, and lose no sleep.” That’s awesome. “I walk on air a good part of the time. Even the mirror reveals a new light in my eyes and face. I no longer feel in a hurry about anything. Everything goes right. Each minute I meet calmly as though it were not important. Nothing can go wrong excepting one thing. That is that God may slip from my mind if I do not keep on my guard. If he is there, the universe is with me.
My task is simple and clear. And I witness to the way in which the world reacts. Take Lanao and the Moros for illustration. Their responsiveness is to me a continuous source of amazement. I do nothing that I can see excepting to pray for them, and to walk among them thinking of God. They know I am a Protestant: Yet two of the leading Moslem priests have gone around the province telling everybody that I would help the people to know God.”
Pretty cool. Laubach developed some literacy training methods there in the Philippines called “Each One Teach One.” Over the remainder of his life, the conservative estimate is that 60 million people around the world learned to read because of his efforts. Constantly as he was teaching and helping others teach, the Laubach literacy method and everything else, everything was infused with these stories of Jesus and the Bible. Huge impact.
In fact, he is the only American missionary to ever end up on an U.S. postage stamp (1984). If anybody is a collector and wants to give me one of those, I would be happy to not mail any letters with it. Think about this. This is, again, the impact. Here is this guy out on an island in the middle of the Philippines, and yet we’re reading his words. His life is speaking to us. The impact of his life runs to millions. Why? He knew how to be connected to God.
This is what Paul is talking about in Colossians, chapter 3, when he says, “Fix your mind, set your mind, on things above.” Constant, conscious connection. What we find when we turn our hearts and turn our minds toward the Lord is he loves to be found by us. This is the greatest command. Jesus teaches, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, all your soul.”
How does that work? How does that happen? Man, this abiding, constant, conscious connection to God takes us in that direction. This is not some sort of Eastern meditation where the goal is just to empty our minds. Rather, it is to be in communion with the living God. That’s not all of it. Jesus says in the verse, “If you abide in me…” Then, “…and my words abide in you…” (John 15:7)
What’s that mean? What’s the second half? They really go together. The way we abide in God and his words abide in us, I mean, it’s kind of like two sides of the same coin working together in our lives. What does it mean for the Word to abide in us? John, chapter 8, Jesus is talking about this. This is verse 31. He says to his disciples, “If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)
That’s great. A true disciple is abiding in the Word, abiding in them. The truth is setting them free. Then there are some others gathered who are listening. They feel like it’s not their connection to Jesus but rather that they’re just born into the family of Abraham that will take care of them in their relationship with God.
Jesus says a few verses later (verse 37), “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my Word finds no place in you.” (John 8:37) What does it mean for the words of God, the words, to abide in us? Jesus says, “…my Word finds no place in you.” (John 8:37) The Word is abiding in our hearts when it has a place to rest, when we make space for the Word in our lives.
In Joshua 1, verse 8, a young leader about to lead the people into a whole new place, develop a whole nation and a government structure and all sorts of things for the education of the people and the agriculture and everything else… Joshua 1:8. This is the command he carries with him into the new land.
It says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:8) The Book of the Law, the words of God in our hearts and in our mouths, just meditating on it day and night, the outcome is pretty powerful. It will make your way prosperous, good success.
We were last week in Myrtle Beach with all of the Midtown and Snellville and Athens and some Monroe college students and some young adults. They’re doing their Summer Discipleship Project. They spend two months out there at the beach. They’re all living in a hotel, staying in suites.
It’s so funny. Everybody calls it SDP. Some of the guys were joking with me. It’s Summer Discipleship Project. They were like, “We were pretty sure it was going to be like, ‘Summer Dating Project.’ Then it turns out that rule number five that the whole community abides by is no dating at all. So we haven’t been dating much.” Much.
They’ve been focused on just learning from God and abiding. They do four nights a week with kind of general session. They get together, and various teachers come in. Amy and I were teaching with them last week. They do three-hour sessions. I mean, they share testimonies about what God has been doing.
Then they worship. I’m sitting there. I mean, when was the last time you were in a three-hour meeting? You know? It’s like, “Whoa, this is long!” But it was great. They’re hungry, and they’re telling all these stories about how the Spirit of God is invading and healing people and working in their lives and how they’re growing. I mean, it’s really powerful, cool stuff.
As we were there and we were praying, “What can we share this week? How, Lord, do you want us to just invest in these kids,” what we really felt like was the Lord just reminding us that the power of God’s Spirit leading us and intervening and performing powerful things is amazing, but it’s just an amazing moment unless the Word is abiding at the core of your community. That’s what takes these great moments and turns them into a powerful movement.
We just kept sharing with them how important it was to hold the Word at the center of your community. Every night, we would just read the Scripture, raw Scripture, together and talk about it. If you go back into the records of the early church, that’s what they did too. I mean, Colossians, chapter 4. Paul has written this letter to the church at Colossae, but then he says, “As soon as you guys have read it, make sure all the other gatherings in this town also get to read it. Then take it over to Laodicea so they get to read it too.”
What did they do when they got together in the early church? They got together and just read the Scripture. I could see some of the records of the early church. They would get together. Justin Martyr was writing about the early church services. He says they would read the Scripture “as long as time permits,” which back then I think was a pretty long time. Just reading it. Why? Because you have to have that Word going on in the midst of your community, finding a place among us.
Scripture memory at this point is a good thing to mention. Scripture memory is such a powerful discipline to help bring the Word of God into our lives constantly, because if the Scripture is memorized, you can be thinking about it and mulling it over, chewing on it even when your Bible is not open.
Just when you’re in the kitchen chopping carrots, like Brother Lawrence, or you’re out walking through town like Frank Laubach, or you’re doing your job, driving around the city, that Scripture memorized in your heart just is such a powerful way for the Word to abide in us. I remember Dallas Willard. He just passed away this year, but he was a really powerful writer. A lot of his books have impacted me personally quite a bit. He studied the Scripture and shared what it means to be transformed by God.
He was a big advocate of Scripture memory. He said, “[It] is absolutely fundamental to spiritual formation. If I had to…choose between all the disciplines of the spiritual life…I would choose Bible memorization. …because Bible memorization is a fundamental way of filling our minds with what they need.” I was listening to him talk one time. He was telling this story. He said some people came up to him and said, “I can’t really do it. I can’t memorize Scripture.”
He talked in this deep, kind of slow voice. He said, “Actually, it’s quite simple. All that you need is some time and a chair and your rear end in that chair.” It’s work. It takes some effort to memorize the Bible, but the payoff is so powerful. I mean, that’s why at KidzLife every Wednesday night this fall, we’re going to be memorizing the Scripture together, hiding the words of God in our hearts, because it leads us. It fuels our thinking to be with God’s perspective. It helps us resist temptation.
I mean, the Enemy comes along and tries to convince us that God is not good or we should do that or whatever else. When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus didn’t reason with Satan. Do you know what he did? He just spoke Scripture back to him. What do you do when you’re tempted? Do you have the Scripture hidden in your heart, abiding in you to bring forth in the hour of need, to wield the most powerful sword the cosmos has seen against the great Enemy?
That’s abiding, the first big word that starts with the letter A. We’re just about out of time, but we’re just going to cover a couple of things because a second thing that starts with A we see in this passage… Abiding. Then what’s the next thing Jesus talks about?
2. Ask. You’re good. It’s so nice when the alliteration actually comes out of the Bible. Here’s what happens. As we abide, it transforms our asking. How does this passage work? “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish…” (John 15:7) We tend to jump to the “ask whatever you wish.” The key is in the abiding, the Word of God abiding in us and us abiding in him.
Yes, it’s effort, but we’re not earning anything from God. We’re simply connected consciously, continuously with God. That’s the idea. As that happens, as we abide in that Vine, as we’re connected with God, our wishes change. Our asking is transformed. A great example of this is in John, chapter 2. It’s worth turning there. We’ll do this fairly quickly.
John, chapter 2, tells us the story of Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were in Cana of Galilee. We were sitting there reading this passage, and our guide on the EPIC trip… Some of you guys were there. Some of you guys can come next year. Some of you guys have been in the past. We’d love to have you.
Anyway, we’re sitting there, and our guide, Father Kamal, an old Arab priest, was reading through this passage. He began explaining to us what’s really going on in John, chapter 2. Verse 1: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.” (John 2:1-2) What’s going on here?
In Jewish tradition, you get married on the third day because if you go back and read Genesis, the third day is blessed twice by God. It’s a good day to get married, and it’s probably cheaper these days to get married on a Tuesday than a Friday or a Saturday. A lot of venues are a lot more open.
In the ancient world (and it’s still this way in the Arab world), for a wedding, if you are a third cousin or closer relation to the bride or the groom, you’re automatically going. You don’t even need an invitation. It’s just assumed you will be there. If you are farther than that, then you need an invitation. Even if you are invited, you can kind of bring whomever you want.
We see an interesting dynamic. Mary was at the wedding. Jesus was invited, bringing his 12 disciples. What does that tell us? It tells us Mary was within that sort of circle of extended family who is expected to be there. Jesus, because he is sort of one removed, is invited. He is still there, and he brings his disciples.
If you’re part of that extended family at a wedding, you are expected to help make the wedding a success. You don’t take your seat at the wedding until everyone else has found theirs. Then you sit wherever else. You are responsible for the supplies of the wedding. If you see something is running low (“Uh-oh. We’re out of food. The bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers are missing from the plate”), you just take care of it. You don’t go to the wedding planner. You don’t go to the coordinator or the mother of the groom or whatever it is. You simply take care of it.
Here’s Mary. She notices the wine has run out. This is a crisis at this wedding, a source of huge humiliation and shame, an enormous need. She goes across. Verse 3: “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.'” (John 2:3-5)
I love it when my mom does that. Fortunately, I’m never responsible to perform miracles, but… What happens here? Typically in an ancient wedding, you’d have the men’s side and the women’s side. The women would all celebrate together. The men would all celebrate together. Mary realizes the wine has run out. Her responsibility is flared up. “Nazareth is a three- to four-hour walk away from Cana in Galilee. How are we going to get wine?”
Normally you just go home and get whatever you had, and you’d bring it to the wedding, but it’s too far for her. She comes across to the men’s side. Jesus says, “Woman…” We look at that, we say, “What’s going on there?” What’s happening is Jesus is saying to his mother like, “Hey, you’re a woman, and we’re a bunch of men over here, pretty responsible for most of the wine being run out, so you might not want to hang out with these guys.”
Mary, who has perhaps spent more time with Jesus than any other person in his life… The disciples were with Jesus… What? Three years. Mary was with him 33 years. Mary has been with Jesus all this time. She knows him. She is connected to him. Notice what she says. “The wine has run out.” She doesn’t tell him what to do. She doesn’t ask him for anything specific. All she does is come to Jesus and present the need. “The wine has run out.”
Then on her way back from the men’s side over to the woman’s side, she tells the servants, “Get ready to do whatever he tells you.” As Father Kamal was teaching on this passage with us, he said this story has, for the early church in the East, been a model for prayer. How do we pray? They’ve looked to this story and the way that Mary approaches Jesus as a way that we can approach God in prayer.
He said in the church in the East, oftentimes the way they pray is they come to God and simply say whatever need they have (like Mary, “The wine has run out.”). For me, Amy was fighting a cold at the time. That next morning, I’m lying in bed. I’m praying for her because I know she doesn’t feel well. All I said was, “Lord, my wife is sick.” Just holding it before him.
You think about the needs in your life, the responsibilities, in your life. “Lord, we have to make payroll.” “Lord, my daughter is not walking with you.” “Lord, my marriage is struggling.” “Lord, my workplace is a mess. It seems like nobody wants to know about you.” “Lord, I don’t know how to do what I need to do today.”
Simply coming to God and presenting those requests to him, as we abide, it transforms the way we ask. I remember when Buddy had his aneurysm, and we were all waiting in the hospital. He got out of the surgery. They took him over. This whole time we were praying for him. All of us were praying for him. How were we praying?
Man, I just remember in my heart thinking, “I don’t know, God, how to pray. I don’t understand everything that’s going on in his arteries. I don’t understand everything that’s happened to him. Lord, Buddy is dying.” I was just holding it there in the presence of God, abiding with God as the need was between us. Then, just like Mary, being ready to respond with whatever God wants to do with it. “Lord, whatever you want to do with this, whatever you say, I’m good.”
The way we ask God in prayer doesn’t dictate or demand what he has to do. Simply bringing our needs to him and then watching, abiding, waiting. “Lord, what do you want me to do? Okay. Okay, we can do that. We can fill these pitchers with water. Then you’re going to have to touch it. Okay.” Boom. Wine. Everybody goes, “This is the best wine we’ve ever tasted.”
As we abide, it transforms our asking. As our asking is transformed and we learn to simply present our needs to God… Man, I even think about our friends from Kosovo here. The way God answers these prayers is so delightfully surprising. In 2001 as a church, we began to ask God, “Help us to connect with Muslims around the world so there might be a great unity in God between Christians and Muslims. What we see is not that. Lord, show us where we can make friendships. Where can we build relationships?”
We had no idea. Honestly, I don’t think most of us even really knew exactly where Kosovo was when we started praying like that. We just held up the need. “Lord, the world is divided between Muslims and Christians. We need Jesus in the midst of that.” What has he done? He has built this amazing relationship with these friends. He has come through and shown us, in a place we never would have expected, amazing friends and people to work with, where our kids and their kids could partner together and really build that unity in God’s kingdom.
So many times we present our needs to God, learning how to do that, not dictating, not demanding a specific outcome. Just saying, “Lord, here it is. I’m going to wait so you can do whatever you want to do with this.” There’s a profound level of communion with God in that place when it’s almost like you’re holding the need with him together, and you’re holding that promise Jesus gives us. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) Now the last word, and we’re finished.
3. Answer. How is God going to answer? Jesus tells us right here in the passage. He says the way God answers these requests is it’s going to be things that bear fruit, things that bring glory to God, and things that reveal true disciples. That’s what happens. In those hours, those days of abiding and prayer, fruit comes forth. God is glorified, and the disciples, true followers of Jesus, are revealed. Our abiding transforms our asking. Our asking gives God freedom to respond. God’s answer will always bring glory to himself. Let’s pray.
God, we thank you. Thank you for bringing us together to hear from your Word. Thank you for these promises that are challenging, that are good. Lord, like Mary, we come to you, and we want to hold before you the needs, the responsibilities. Lord, we all have places where the wine has run out. We hold those before you, and we trust you, God. We trust you to answer by bringing fruit, bringing glory, and revealing true disciples. In Jesus’ name, amen.