The Vine

If you've been raised in a Christian home or even around Christian people, you might have heard that Jesus is the giver of life, that He is the "vine" and we are the "branches". This can be quite confusing. It won't really make sense until you've learned the meaning behind these well used phrases.

Think about it like this; when you go out and cut a branch off of a tree you've cut it from it's source of life. Without the tree trunk the branch can't get water or food and will therefore die. It might stay green for a short time, but as the days go by it will only turn brown and dry up. Same with flowers. If you cut a flower from it's plant base, even if you put it in a vase with water, it will die because it doesn't have the life of the plant connected to it. Similar to the vine. You take branches from the vine and they will die. It's almost as if it has been poisoned, slowly dying a little each day.

Maybe it's making more sense now? Well, here's a little more.

Jesus, being the vine, is the giver of life. He gives us the "water" and "food" we need to survive this life...He is the base of any life given. He doesn't just give life away, though, only His branches can receive true life; the ones who have put their faith in Him. Those will also have the gift of eternal life. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Just as the branches and flower will soon die if they don't have their base to give them life, so are we dead in our sins without Christ. We cut ourselves from Him and we might seem to stay alive, but it is only for a short time. As we separate ourselves from life, we will wilt away to nothing.

Whenever I start pushing my way and my ideas into my daily life and leave God out, I start to see so many messes and mistakes happen. I then try to fix all of my mistakes and everything goes into upside down overdrive. Nothing works and my life starts falling apart. On the control freak scale for fixing my own problems, on 1-10 I would probably be an 11. It's pretty bad. I try so hard to fix things myself, to not bother God with my problems, worries or fears. But as I do that, I start "dying" on the inside and my life starts falling apart. When I separate myself from the One who gives me life, I no longer have life. It's that simple.

Every day God reminds me of my dependency on Him, how weak I am without Him. I try to prove to everyone how strong I am, that I'm not broken or weak...but the truth is that I am just putting on a fake identity. I am only human. I have been broken since the minute I was born. But the minute I gave my life to Christ, He took my broken pieces and put them back together piece by piece and made me a new creation. It's a very hard thing to understand. I am broken, but I'm not. My life will always be in pieces of some sort, but I am made new because of Christ.

Because of sin I will always show scars. Just as trees show a scar when you trim a branch off, when the human race first cut itself from God it marked each of us with a scar; sin. Each and every time I push God from my life, even for a short time, it causes another scar. It will be healed, but it will still be visible. I will always have memories of my scars where I made mistakes, but God heals the pain from each of them. Like Josh Wilson says, "I am new".

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold, new things have come." -2 Corinthians 5:17