I’ve walked by faith in Jesus for quite a while now, and I have matriculated among those who have done the same, and I have reached one conclusion that, I believe, is incontrovertible – We are who we are because of the fact that we live in Christ (See John 15). We abide in Him. We make our home in Him. In Him, we are shaped and formed and enabled to be who we are. Jesus and His church explain our lives. Without Jesus and without the Community shaped by Him, our lives make no sense; at least they shouldn’t make sense.

It is in saying Yes to Jesus’ invitation to live in Him that we find how He actually lives in us. Henri Nouwen said, “God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future.”[1] We are in Christ and as we live the moments of our lives, made possible by living in Jesus, we find our strength, our nourishment, and even the direction we should go in moving into our future.

Jesus speaks of this kind of relationship in the metaphor of a branch abiding in the health of the vine. As the vine goes, so goes the branch. The branch doesn’t drive the vine; the vine drives the branch. In His metaphor Jesus is the Vine and his disciples are the branches. As the Vine goes, so goes the branch. What makes Jesus who Jesus is flows through the rightly connected and abiding branch.

The Word from Jesus is “Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4). It is a mutual abiding. As we make our home in Jesus, He makes His home in us. The fruit of our lives comes as we abide in Jesus. The love that is in Him flows through us. His desire to keep the commandments of His Father flows through us and enables us to be faithful.

Why did Jesus teach these things. He said, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your Joy may be made full” (John 15:11).

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[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, In The Name Of Jesus (Crossroad: New York, 1989), 3-4.

Jesus worked quite a few miracles in His life and He did them, it seems, not to demonstrate His great power but, rather, to express His great love … A love that chooses to heal, to restore, to forgive, to accept the downtrodden, to embrace the disenfranchised, and to bring the grace and mercy of God into situations and people.

In John 13:34-35 Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to You, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I can’t walk on water, I can’t raise the dead, I can’t heal the sick, and neither can you. And, that’s not what Jesus is talking about anyway. But, I can have a heart of love that cares enough to build bridges so that people don’t have to deal with the water. I can’t raise the dead but I can support the efforts around the world to build hospitals and medical clinics that bring the gift of healing into the lives of people, in Jesus Name, people who would not normally have access to health care. I can be a part of a plan to help people do the things necessary to fight off sickness and disease. I can love the unlovely, embrace the lonely, touch the untouchables. I can bring the life of Jesus into my little world by being the kind of person He calls me to be, to love others because they matter to God, and to live in the spirit of grace and love and compassion and mercy in a world where these things are often sacrificed for the wants of the greedy, the powerful, the rich, the haves.

I have concluded, rightly I think, that there is just about nothing a group of Christians , who have been captivated by the authoritative love of God, can’t do if they decide to do it in Jesus’ name. Deciding is the issue. Get a bunch of people who have encountered the living God, and turn them loose on some need, some impossible situation, some hard and difficult problem that needs to be resolved, and they will do what might be considered undo-able by certain onlookers.

In Jesus the Way, the Truth and the Life is among us, and He is present to work His mighty works in a world that seems to be distracted and unmoved. He shows up and does a few things that astound us but more than these, He actually draws near to people and loves them. Who would have thought it? He embraces the outcasts, the lonely, the marginalized, the wealthy, the poor, the healthy, the sick, the Jew and the Gentile. Who would have thought it?

And now He says to us that we will do greater works than these because He goes to the Father. His plan was to pour out His Holy Spirit on His people, and turn them loose in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8). They would go in the power of the promise of Jesus, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth… and… I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).

How foolish some Christians must look to the world. Spouting off that the rapture is to take place tomorrow makes even Jesus looked uninformed. Worse, according to the word circulating about, the world (no; that’s not right – the universe itself will be destroyed on October 21, 2011 (153 days after the rapture).

How sad that many who claim the Bible as their Book, have no idea how to read it.

How sad that the one who started the rumor will still have a job on Sunday.

All day tomorrow I think I will just be a clandestine Christian because, quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. I’ll get over it, probably just after I post this, but, good grief, where do these people come from?

Bye, for now. See you on the 22nd right here on the good earth.

Some people view God as hard and demanding, They see God as a rigid taskmaster who has no heart for people but only for what He wants. God, for them, is to be avoided because He just doesn’t care about people or life or anything except what He wants. So, God is to be feared as a tyrant of some kind, just seeking for his opportunity to pounce on anything that might bring a person pleasure.

Jesus knows nothing about that kind of God. That God is as foreign to Him as is the thought that the man in the moon is considering forming a cheese maker union.

The God Jesus reveals to us is a shepherd (Psalm 23) who leads and restores and guides His people. He is the Shepherd who walks with His people “through the valley of the shadow of death” and who comforts His people with a rod and staff of divine proportions. The God Jesus reveals is the One who is so faithful that He overshadows His people with “goodness and loving-kindness,” and when the time of their stay on earth is over He welcomes them to dwell in His house forever.

God is such a shepherd-God than when Jesus spoke of His own life and ministry He called Himself the “good shepherd” (John 10:11), and says that He loves His people, whom He calls His sheep, so much that He lays down His life for them (John 10:11).

There are powers at work in the world present to steal and kill and destroy, but they are not of the Shepherd-God of Jesus. They are of one Jesus called “The thief” (John10:10). Jesus is of abundant life, and He brings into our lives the heart of God who loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).

Apparently people don’t have to address God as their Father, but if they do address Him as their Father the apostle Peter calls them to live for Him in the greatest reverence one can imagine. Get real and stay real before God -- that’s the issue. God knows our hearts better than we know them, so get real and stay real before God.

Maybe the question, “Who’s Your Father?” is the most important question. On one level I am a son of Samuel James Savage, Jr. On another and greater level I am a son of the Father who according to His great mercy has caused me to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (I Pet. 1:3). How I respond to the one who is my heavenly Father speaks volumes about who I am as a person going about my life during the time of my stay on earth (I Pet. 1:17).

Today the Father embraces me in “His great mercy” (I Pet 1:3) and ever reminds me that my life matters more to Him than anything silver or gold might provide. He has redeemed me “with precious blood…the blood Christ” (I Pet. 1:19) and established the life I live, both and now and in the future, upon the marvelous proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ “from the dead” (I Pet. 1:21).

Called to the deepest level of reverence for the God who would love us like that, all persons who “are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory” (I Pet. 1:21) are called to live “in obedience to the truth” (I Pet. 1:22), an obedience that leads us to “a sincere love of the brethren,” a love that calls us to “fervently love one another from the heart”(I Pet. 1:22).

God is an awesome Father and we celebrate Him best when we love one another. We are never more like our Father than when we “fervently love one another from the heart” (I Pet. 1:22). We reveal to the world how important God is to us in the way we love.