4a Abide in Me, Just as God’s spirit abides in us, we are called to abide in him. What does this mean? The word “abide” is translated from the Greek word menō (4), a primary verb meaning to stay (in a given place, state, relation or expectancy). Some English words translators have used for menō…
Category: Spiritual
Understanding the Vine Discourse: John 15:3 Purified Faith
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. The word “clean” may sound familiar. It is the Greek word katharós, which we saw in 2d, meaning to cleanse or make pure, either physically, levitically, or ethically. It carries the concept of something being free from admixture or adhesion…
Understanding the Vine Discourse: John 15:2d: It’s all about relationships
This is the third post taking a deep dive into the Vine Discourse. You can read about who Jesus is referring to and the Father being our gardener here. In the second post, we looked at the word airo as meaning to “lift up” instead of the common understanding of “takes away.” You can read…
Understanding the Vine Discourse: John 15:2a-c. Does God take you away if you don’t produce fruit?
You can read commentary on Vs 1, Understanding the Vine Discourse where we take a look at who Jesus was referring to and who the gardener is. In this post, we take a look at the Greek word airo, to life up. (2a) Every branch in Me Here we are looking at the very beginning…
Understanding the Vine Discourse: A deep dive into who, what, why, and how in fruit production
Introduction These verses speak deeply to our hearts. Yet, they leave some uncertainty, a beautiful analogy, yet also disturbing. It gives general guidelines rather than concrete instructions. We desire to abide, but how? We long to bear fruit, but what is meant by fruit? And, we don’t want to be taken away, or even worse,…
Was Jesus Insensitive to Martha?
The story of Mary and Martha has spawned countless sermons on how to not be anxious about the cares of this life but rather to be intent on sitting at Jesus’ feet, receiving truth from the Holy Spirit. But poor Martha. She certainly gets a bad rap. To be honest, it seems Jesus was less…
Pursuing God: Things You Can Do to Hear God Speak
Do you desire to hear from God? Do you desire to walk in the Spirit? Do you desire to have eyes to see and ears to hear, to perceive what God is doing, saying, where he is moving, so you can do the work the Father is doing like Jesus did? Then good. That is…
Having Faith to Endure
In Hebrews 11 we read about men and women who exemplified great faith. These are the great cloud of witnesses who underwent often horrific situations because they held to a belief that wasn’t popular. Yet, often they didn’t even see what they were believing for take place in their lifetimes. Obviously they weren’t thinking that…