How this life has Eternal Value

John 15:3-4

            “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.”

As I began to read these verses this morning I thought of a story I enjoy telling young couples that are about to marry.  It goes like this, a pastor is counseling the couple and he asks the young lady if she wants the good news or the bad news first, and her reply is O’ pastor give us the good news; so he tells them that the two of you are going to become one, but the bad news is, which one?  Jesus is also telling His disciples the good news is that you are already clean, but the bad news is unless you abide in Him your plans, your work, and your life will be of no eternal value.

If the disciples had been listening earlier, they would have remembered these words of Jesus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

(John 5:24 ESV)  Anyone who has acted on the above Scripture is clean before the Father, in fact this thought was told to us often by Jesus.  In John chapter eight, we have this word, “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “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 ESV)  Judas (not Iscariot) asks Jesus this question, “How is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”  Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23 ESV)  That is the good news!

But the bad news is this war that goes on each and every moment is called our flesh and its battle is to (live life on its terms) live independently of God’s authority, and to not ask the Helper (The Holy Spirit) for help.  God has not minced words; we have been warned that we have an on going battle between the flesh and the Spirit. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Galatians 5:16-17 ESV) 

If you believed that after the latest Bible study on living in victory in this fallen world you now have triumph over your version of the flesh, guess again, that does not line up with Scripture.  From everything I’ve read only one person has truly lived the Christian life, and He is the author of life, Jesus Christ.  The Christian life is impossible to live outside of Jesus, and that’s why it is important to understand the need to ask the Helper for help.  We must abide, (live dependent) on Jesus and put no confidence in our flesh and its abilities, our talents, and our ability to suck life out of this fallen world.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

The True Vine

John 15:1-2

            “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Analogy is best described as a comparison between two things that are similar in some respects, and often used to help explain something or make it easier to understand.  Jesus the Creator is referring to Himself as the “true vine” and God the Father as the vinedresser, it is an analogy to help us understand some very deep truths, and at the same time a very basic truth. 

In this analogy God the Father is the one who cultivates and prunes the vines, and Jesus is the “true vine” which implies that there are also false vines.  So what would a false vine look like?  God knew we would need to know that, so He has given us many examples in both the New and Old Testaments of the bad, or false vine.  It seems to this writer that the vine is blessed by God and is planted in good soil, but at some stage of its growth, its branches begin to believe in self and not in the vine.  The people chosen by God are often the example, such as Psalm 80:8-13.  The “You” is referring to God; “You brought a vine out of Egypt; “you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.”  If you need a little more information look at what the prophet Hosea has to say: “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars. Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars. For now they will say: “We have no king, for we do not fear the LORD; and a king—what could he do for us?” (Hosea 10:1-3 ESV)

It is important to understand the vine, or in this case Israel, became full of self, and chose to live independent of God, and churches and leaders of churches can do the same thing.  Never forget that the “Vine” Jesus Christ is calling His church to abide in the “Vine” and when we the branches do so, we bear fruit that will last.

If you have been blessed to live in the United States or any country with the freedom to go and come, to do whatever is within the law of the land, and the ability to worship, God has blessed you.  But has Hosea 10:1-3, also told our story as a nation, have we not become more like Sodom and Gomorra and are we like the Israel of Hosea’s time, with no fear of the Lord?  The question must be ask, has the Vinedresser began to break off the branches, and if you see evidence that He has, what are you doing about it?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

Obedience

            “but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.”

(John 14:31 ESV)

Many years ago, while on vacation in Austria, we visited our friends Valinda and Mark Kimmel, and because Mark was on a mission trip to Romania, we took a day trip to then Czechoslovakia with Val and her two children, Page and Andrew; who are now grown and married.  The children were being children when Val, ask them to stop doing whatever they were doing, and though they heard their mother, they kept doing what she had ask them to stop.  Valinda said, “children, your actions are not obedience; obedience is doing exactly what you are told, the first time you are told to do it, all else is rebellion.”   (That is not an exact quote, but close after so many years.) 

What Val said to Page and Andrew had a huge effect on me, I was fifty years old, had a grown daughter and this young lady who Jan and I had watched grow-up opened my eyes to a wonderful truth.  It was as if God had spoken to me, Bob, do you believe that anything less than obeying the first time I ask you is rebellion?  Lord, I just wanted to see Czechoslovakia, but because you made it so clear, I am in agreement that anything less is rebellion.

Jesus, the Son of God (Matthew 3:17), Jesus the Creator (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16), and Jesus who testified the following in John 10:30 said, “I and the Father are one.”   He is, He always will be, and He always has been obedient to His Father.  Do you recall earlier in chapter 14 when Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father,” and this was Jesus’ reply; “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. (John 14:9-11 ESV)

Jesus came to earth with this mindset; not as God in an earth suit, but as man who knew that He was God in the flesh, to be an example He chose to become lower than His creation, “You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

(Hebrews 2:7-10 ESV)

I must report that the conversation, that was heard in the car on that day trip to Czechoslovakia, with the Lord, still comes to my mind often, “Bob, anything less than doing it the first time I ask is rebellion.”  Often, I respond to the Lord like I respond to Jan when she is speaking to me while I’m watching a thriller on television; I just tune Him out.  I am learning that the remote has a pause button, and I can push and listen to my bride who is of much greater value than anything on that television.  Jesus, our Master and Lord has given us the ability to set our minds, so that we stop the urgent or not so urgent, and tune into the important, the voice of the One who spoke the world into being.

Isaiah the great prophet, set his mind on hearing and obeying, what a lesson we can learn from Isaiah 6:8, “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”   In John 10:3, Jesus is referring to Himself as the Gatekeeper, and you and I, who are in Christ, as the sheep; listen to what he shares with us, “To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” (John 10:3 ESV)  Could our problem be our lifestyle is too busy, it isn’t conducive to hearing God’s voice, much less doing what He tells us the first time He tells us?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

Parents mold and form our Character

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John 14: 28-29

My childhood shaped me and so did yours.  Often it takes many years to reflect on how our parents have molded and formed our character.   If we are too harsh we can damage our children, and giving them too much can also damage them.  My dad was into sports, and he should have been a high school coach, he would have been a good one.  His problem was that one son had little interest in sports, and the other was too small to be considered, so when he was not working (shift-work, or trying to sell uniforms) he was at the high school talking with the coaches or watching a practice.  The message to his youngest child was, sports are important!  Mom was sick a lot and she was very talented, she could look at a dress in a store display window and sketch it and then go and buy material for a dress for my sister and make a pattern and the dress.  That made my sister look like one of the best-dressed girls at school, and her friends could not tell it from the one in the display case.  She also was one great grandmother to our children, they loved going to mother’s house at 3738 Liberty drive, in Corpus Christi, for none other reason than they were going to have fun with grandmother. 

But those are not all my memoirs, one came into my mind when I was only a child of about 4 or 5, we were walking to church, we did not own a car, and it was a good 2 ½ to 3 mile walk to Ebony Acres Baptist church.  Dad was working at the plant and mother had three young kids walking by her side on Navigation Blvd.  My sister Doris who is 18 months older than I and brother Fred who is three years older, were behind mother and I by a good twenty yards, when mother stopped and said in a very loud voice, children run to me quickly!  We made a habit of walking in the edge of the farmer’s field and both my sister and brother were not on the road when mother yelled at them, and about the time they reached mother and I, and the 18-wheeler trailer came loose and exited the road in the area of where my sister and brother had been.  Mother began to thank the Lord and she told us that God had told her to call her children because a truck was going to lose it’s trailer, and that one act had a great impact on my life.

This morning as I was reading John 14:28-29, I was reminded that the One who told my mother to call her children is speaking to me in these verses. “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe.”  Jesus is giving His disciples a heads-up on what is going to happen, and why so they would believe.  We act on our beliefs, and that is precisely what mother did on Navigation Blvd, the day she save the live of my brother and sister, in that she believed the voice that spoke to her.  Jesus is telling His disciples and us to be confident of His existence with the Father, even and especially when the world system tells us there is no physical proof of Him being at the right hand of the Father.  So Jesus told them and us to run to Him and be safe, from all the things that entice our flesh to live independent of God and His provision.  And He told us before it happen. 

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

Anxiety

March 13, 2012

“The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”  George Mueller

Why are so many in the Christian faith filled with anxiety?  This writer’s life from a small child was centered not in faith, but in fear; fear of failure at school, at work, of not being part of the in group, and much later in marriage, being a dad, and then being a man of integrity.  I was trained like a birddog on how to worry, and did not have any assurance of the peace that Jesus promised His disciples in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

At the age of 27 I entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ, but my emotions and my mind were trained to trust only after verification.  It is one of my biggest battles in my daily walk with Christ, and for years I believed the lie that I was alone in this struggle, but I was wrong, very wrong. 

You may ask the question; how can you be sure you were not alone, in that many who profess Christ, who go by the name Christian, are also filled with anxiety?  The answer is easy and it is verifiable, I read your emails, I go to Christian supported websites, and I do not see faith in a big God who has sent a handbook down to us about how to walk by faith.  No, they are the absence of faith, they are filled with apprehension, and often the message is what we must do, and it is not to repent of our unbelief, but to send the email to your list, or to ten people and something good will happen to you, and it implies if you do not you just do not love Jesus.

For many years I’ve ask the Father to change these 16 lane highways in my mind built on fear, and bring them down to a rocky path that I would not want to travel.  I’ve also asked Him to replace anxiety with faith, and what I am learning is that both anxiety and faith are action, “the process of doing something in order to achieve a purpose.”  So it comes down to what action will accomplish the peace Jesus has left for us. 

As a great football coach Vince Lombardi once stated; “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”  So in my chase of perfection or better stated, a daily walk with Jesus; I’ve come to the understanding that I need the “Helper.”  In my search for how to walk in victory, I came to an understanding that God never expected me to live the Christian life, only one person has ever lived it and that was Jesus Christ.  But God sent me a Helper who has come to live in my earth suit and this is Jesus’ word to us about our Helper: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”  (John 14:26 ESV) 

If you find fear and anxiety at the door of your heart, it will require you to ask the Helper to break the control you have given to both your mind and emotions to control your “Will.”  Anxiety has found a home in many a Christian’s life, and yet it comes down to our will. One last quote from Vince Lombardi, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

A Seeker of Truth

John 22-26

            Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (John 14:22 ESV)

I write, not because I’m gifted in that area, but because God has put a desire to leave a record of what I’m learning for my grandsons and anyone else who wishes to read them.  I would call myself a truth seeker, but I also understand that I often do not listen to truth, but let my emotions dictate my will.  At 70 years of age I’m in the process of learning to put no confidence in people, leaders, government, and for sure in the promises of this world system.  If you believe this is easy you are very wrong, I was trained like a bird dog about how to get my needs met, and for many years the game plan and the training worked.  But I ran across John 18:37-38, and it was time to examine what Jesus calls truth. 

Jesus has been arrested and is before Pilate, and Pilate poses this question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Listen to Jesus’ answer:   “Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”  (John 18:37-38 ESV)

 I had to ask myself this question, how should I live?  And the only answer is to live as if Jesus tells the truth, and that truth has always collided with man’s independent spirit of living life in the manner that we please.  Now there in lies a big problem, I want to depend on Truth, on Jesus, but I find myself often living a defeated Christian life; and I’m not alone, the apostle Paul also looked to his skills, his training, and it caused him to at times live independent of the Father.  As you read the following, sin is identified, it is a noun, and you will also see that the personal pronoun I is used 16 times, Paul is having a flesh trip. “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-20 ESV)  Go back and read verse 15, only the pronoun “I” is used.  Bill Gillham gives this insight; “What happened to sin in verse 15?  Sin is masquerading in verse 15 as the “old you” that was crucified with Christ, and he’s imitating the old man.

Bill often gives a key concept in his book Victorious Living, and this is one of them; “The power of sin impersonates the old man, speaking to you – the new creation – with first-person pronoun (I, me, myself), using your accent and your tone of voice.”  Bill goes on to explain, “This is why it seems like the old man is still alive, even though the Scripture states clearly that he is dead.  He was crucified and buried with Christ (Romans 6:4-6; Galatians 2:20).”

Because I grew-up in a Baptist family, and Baptist church, under Baptist doctrine, we were not taught how to ask the Helper for help.  In fact, I was an adult before I grasp that God never expected me to live on any terms but His, and that Jesus had left me a Helper, to guide me into all truth.   This was Jesus answer to Judas (not Iscariot) and to each of us.  Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

(John 14:23-26 ESV)

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

Orphans

John 14:18-21

When the word orphan comes into your mind what thoughts are conjured up?  For me it has a connotation of abandonment, of desertion, of rejection, of being left behind.  Now it may not have anything to do with the parents, they may have been killed in some manner, or it could be many other reasons, but that does not change the reality of not having a home and parents who care and provide for you.

I also have a name that comes to my mind of a man named George Mueller who lived from 1805 -1898.  “Among the greatest monuments of what can be accomplished through simple faith in God are the great orphanages covering thirteen acres of ground on Ashley Downs, Bristol, England. When God put it into the heart of George Muller to build these orphanages, he had only two shillings (50 cents) in his pocket. Without making his wants known to any man, but to God alone, over a million, four hundred thousand pounds ($7,000,000) were sent to him for the building and maintaining of these orphan homes. Near the time of Mr. Muller's death, there were five immense buildings of solid granite, capable of accommodating two thousand orphans. In all the years since the first orphans arrived the Lord had sent food in due time, so that they had never missed a meal for want of food.”  (Taken from George Mueller Quotes) 

But I am so thankful to understand that though you and I had parents, and that is a great blessing, we also were abandoned and fell into the orphanage of sin, for God has said; “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23 ESV).  And we also know that our loving Father bought us out of the bondage of sin by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.  By faith, not our faith, but the faith the Father has given, we agree with God in the manner that the apostle Paul states in Romans 10:9, “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Now, we have a loving Father, we are part of a family, and Jesus Christ is our older brother, our Savior and Lord.  Our older brother, being in the form of man, yet God, wanted you and I to understand the value the Father has placed on orphans, and Psalm 68:5 gives much clarity to that fact; “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.”

So our Lord, and brother wanted us to have a clear understanding that we were not being abandoned.  Going back to John’s gospel, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:18-21 ESV)

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

Quote from George Mueller: “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”