"Make me broken So I can be healed
'Cause I'm so calloused
And now I can't feel
Make me empty So I can be filled
Make me lonely So I can be Yours
'Til I want no one
More than You, Lord" - Words from a Christian Song
The excerpt below is from the book called TRUE VINE by Andrew Murray. The entire book can be read at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/true_vine.i.html
A dear sister in Christ shared what she was reading, and I have been blessed. I have been blessed in my reading so far. Oh, how I long for the Vine to continually make me, even when the pruning brings anguish. May all believers fully surrender each time He prunes us.
YE, EVEN AS I
If Ye Keep My Commandments, Ye Shall Abide in My Love, Even as I have Kept My Father’s Commandments, and Abide in His Love—John 15.10
We have had occasion more than once to
speak of the perfect similarity of the vine and the branch in nature,
and therefore
in aim. Here Christ speaks no longer in a parable, but tells us
plainly out of how His own life is the exact model of ours.
He had said that it is alone by obedience we can abide in His
love. He now tells that this was the way in which He abode in
the Father’s love. As the Vine, so the branch. His life and
strength and joy had been in the love of
the Father: it was only by obedience He abode in it. We may find
our life and strength and joy in His love all the day, but
it is only by an obedience like His we can abide in it. Perfect
conformity to the Vine is one of the most precious of the
lessons of the branch. It was by obedience Christ as Vine honored
the Father as Husbandman; it is by obedience the believer
as branch honors Christ as Vine.
Obey and abide—That was the law
of Christ’s life as much as it is to be that of ours. He was made like
us in all things, that we might be
like Him in all things. He opened up a path in which we may walk
even as He walked. He took our human nature to teach us how
to wear it, and show us how obedience, as it is the first duty of
the creature, is the only way to abide in the favor of God
and enter into His glory. And now He comes to instruct and
encourage us, and
asks us to keep His commandments, even as He kept His Father’s
commandments and abides in His love.
The divine fitness of this connection
between obeying and abiding, between God’s commandments and His love, is
easily seen.
God’s will is the very center of His divine perfection. As
revealed in His commandments, it opens up the way for the creature
to grow into the likeness of the Creator. In accepting and doing
His will, I rise into fellowship with Him. Therefore it was
that the Son, when coming into the world, spoke: “I come to do thy
will, O God”! This was
the place and this would be the blessedness of the creature. This
was what he had lost in the Fall. This was what Christ came
to restore. This is what, as the heavenly Vine, He asks of us and
imparts to us, that even as He by keeping His Father’s commandments
abode in His love, we should keep His commandments and abide in
His love.
Ye, even as I—The branch cannot
bear fruit except as it has exactly the same life as the Vine. Our life
is to be the exact counterpart
of Christ’s life. It can be, just in such measure as we believe in
Him as the Vine, imparting Himself and His life to His
branches. “Ye, even as I,” the Vine says: one law, one nature, one
fruit. Do let us take from our Lord the lesson of obedience
as the secret of abiding. Let us confess that simple, implicit,
universal
obedience has taken too little the place it should have. Christ
died for us as enemies, when we were disobedient. He took
us up into His love; now that we are in Him, His Word is: “Obey
and abide; ye, even as I.” Let us give ourselves to a willing
and loving obedience. He will keep us abiding in His love.
Ye, even as I. O my blessed Vine,
who makest the branch in everything partake of Thy life and likeness,
in this too I am to be like Thee:
as Thy life in the Father’s love through obedience, so mine in Thy
love! Saviour, help me, that obedience may indeed be the
link between Thee and me.
No comments:
Post a Comment