 It's good to be back. Some of you are standing up going, who's this guy? So, it's great to be back. Man, you guys are so kind. And Jane and I miss every weekend that we're not here, but we had a great summer sabbatical. You know, the first probably 15 years of the church, we took just a couple of weeks off at a time throughout the year. And so I'm just so grateful for the amazing team at all of our locations that have been able to lead and direct in our absence and preach in this pulpit week after week. Can we just give a big hand to the amazing pastoral staff? Pastor Tim, Pastor Stefan, Pastor Rick Burmeister and just my whole lead team cabinet. They've just done an amazing job. Hey, on our sabbatical, Jane and I added to our family. And so we wanna introduce to you our new, our new friend. This is Gideon and he's a big boy. He's got paws the size of a lion cub. And so he's had us up early and breaking us in. And but we wanted to introduce him to you. That's one of the things that we did. And you know, most of the time throughout the year when I'm not in the pulpit here at Radiant, it's because part of the call that God's put on our lives is to minister to other churches and to help establish and lead a movement of churches. And so a lot of times that's where we are. But most of the last, I don't know, six weeks that we've not been here have just been us taking some time to rest and to refresh and to renew a little bit of vacation time. And we're so grateful for that, but we're excited to be back. And so I want to invite you, if you would open your Bibles to John chapter 15. John chapter 15, as we're kind of bringing this John series, we're coming near to the conclusion of it this summer. But John chapter 15 is probably one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible, because it has everything to do with abiding in the vine and the vine is Jesus. This is one of the pivotal teachings that Jesus gave us as his disciples. And as we dig down deep into it this morning, you're gonna see that this is not just theory, this is organic life. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And so beginning in verse number one, Jesus says, by the way, this is his final I am statement in the book of John. But Jesus says, I am the true vine. And my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away in every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. 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. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he's thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are burned or the branches are gathered thrown into the fire and burned. Verse seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So prove to be my disciples. As the father loved me so I have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Verse 11, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. So Jesus starts off this teaching in John chapter 15 by making a profound statement. He says, I am the true vine. I am the true vine. My father is the vine dresser and you are the branches but I am the true vine. And then 10 times in this section, he's gonna use the word abide, abide in me. It's a significant word. Stay plugged into me because I am the true vine. It reminds me when I think about the relationship that Jesus is calling us to as disciples of Jesus that were to remain in union with him and to abide in him. It reminds me of the vacuum cleaner that my grandmother had when I was a kid and I would spend summers with her. Part of my responsibility was to vacuum the house. She had, you know, they had like a little 1500 square foot ranch. They had the orange, burnt orange and rust and brown shed carpet. You guys remember that from the 70s? Well, my grandparents held it for a long time but they had this rainbow cleaner. Does anybody remember those rainbow vacuums? It was during the era of Star Wars. So I thought it looked like C3P or R2-D2. It was like this thing. You had to wheel out of the closet. My grandma's like, you know, I want you to vacuum the whole house and you had to put the attachments on it. The only problem with this vacuum was that its cord was too short because in older homes like that, they didn't put electrical outlets like every five feet. It was like 25 feet to the electrical outlet but the problem was the length of the living room was about 30 feet. And so I would plug it in. I'd put the attachments on, flip it up. She had the deodorizer you'd put on the inside of it and so it smelled like, I don't know, a new car or something like that. And I'm vacuuming and everything was going okay but then I would get over to the edge where the phone was, where the piano was and that's where the cable, the cord that was plugged into the wall, that's where it got stretched to its fullest length. And as I was trying to reach, it was this, it was 50% of the time, you could get to the edge of the wall. The other 50% of the time, if you moved it too quick, it would unplug from the wall. And there's nothing more frustrating to a teenage kid when you're vacuuming and you're just wanting to get it done. You're like vacuuming, you're almost done and all of a sudden, and you got to walk back over and plug it in and then you'd go back over here, try and do it, and do it again, two or three times like that. And the key was you had to be so cautious when you're pulling the vacuum over there that you didn't make a jerky move, it had to be slow and very thoughtful so that you could get to the edge because otherwise you would unplug from the power source. And it reminds me to some degree about what Jesus is talking about because you and I live in an electrical world. We understand vacuums far better than we understand farms. We understand electrical equipment that are plugged into the walls far better than we understand what a vinter or a vine dresser who's growing vines in order to produce wine. We don't understand that world. We think wine is something you buy at the store in a bottle, but actually before it's ever in a bottle, it's rain in the clouds that falls into the soil of the ground that's captured by the root system and pulled up into the vine and pushed out into the branches. And once it reaches the oxygen and the photosynthesis and the heat of the sun, it begins to put forth its blossom and then its cluster. And then it grows in the cluster and then the vine dresser comes and he collects the fruit. And there's a whole process to it. You and I don't understand it, but we get electrical equipment. And so you know when something is unplugged, maybe it's your phone charger. Has anybody in this room ever gone to bed at night thinking you're charging your phone, wake up in the morning and realize there's no charge because it wasn't plugged into the wall? Anybody ever had that happen to you? Yeah, it's not, that's like, now you all day long, you're like, man, my battery is draining. When Jesus talks about abiding in him and that he's the true vine, what he's saying is I'm the power source, I'm the life source. I'm the one that sustains you and strengthens you. Life is found in me. You are branches plugged into me. Remain in me, abide in me because as long as you abide in me, power and life and fruit is gonna produce out of your life, but you can have all the right mechanisms. You can go to church, you can have a Bible, you can call yourself a Christian, but if we're not living in an abiding relationship with Jesus, eventually what happens is we plug our lives into other vines in order to find quick, easy and accessible life, energy and power to sustain us. This is why Jesus makes a statement that I'm the true vine because he's not the only vine, but he's the true vine. He's not the only vine. And think about it for a moment today. What are some of the vines that you and I are tempted on a daily basis? Maybe what are some of the vines that before you came into Jesus, your life was plugged into and you were drawing life from, you were drawing purpose from, you were drawing meaning from, you were drawing an adrenaline rush from. This is kind of how we live our lives, right? I mean, think about some of the other vines. Maybe some of the other vines that you can think of are selfish desire. It's like, I'm plugged into this idea, a world system that says, if you live for yourself, then you'll be happy in the long run. And so you did that and you plugged your life into that belief system, but yet it didn't produce the fruits of righteousness, did it? Or maybe you plugged into the vine of religion, which looks just like Jesus. It says, if you do all these things, check the boxes. If you go through the motions, if you're christened, if you say the right prayers, if you read the right books, if you know the right people, if you look the right way, then you'll find life, but actually it doesn't produce eternal fruits of righteousness out of our life. It actually produces other fruit out of our lives. It produces pride. It produces self-sufficiency. Sometimes it produces arrogance. It also produces brokenness, frustration and disappointment. How many people are out there in the world thinking that they're plugged into Jesus, but they're actually plugged into religion and they're not satisfied with the fruit flowing out of their lives because there's no joy, there's no peace, and there's no righteousness that's found in religion. It's only found in relationship. This is what Jesus means when he says, abide in me. He's saying, this is an ongoing, constant, active relationship between a disciple and his Lord that produces a fruitful life. It's a constant and an active, unified relationship between the disciple and his Lord that is producing a fruitful life. And can I just tell you today that that's what God's intentions and desires for every single one of our lives is. It's fruit. It's fruitfulness. Now, some people would say in the church, there's a lot of fruity people already. I'm not talking about that kind of fruit. I'm talking about the fruit of the spirit. I'm talking about the good works that we're saved for. Listen, the vine of religion says that you get saved for good works or you get saved by your good works. But the true vine, Jesus says, no, once you're plugged into me, you're not saved by the things that you do, but when you're plugged into an active, ongoing, living relationship with me, what flows out of your life is good works. You're not saved by good works, but you are saved for good works. Ephesians chapter two says you are his workmanship. In other words, God built you. He put you together. He's filled you with his life. You are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus. Four good works. God predetermined those good works. So God has good works for you. He wants fruit to flow out of your lives. But you never see a tree, if you were to go look at a vine, how many of you have ever seen like grape vines on the side of a hill or maybe out in St. Joe or in Napa or someplace like that? When you see these vines and you go out there, you don't see vines on the rails going, I gotta produce some grapes. I mean, trees are not trying. Grape vines are not welches. I gotta produce some welches. But yet how many of us are looking in a mirror at our life and thinking if I'm gonna be a good Christian, if I'm gonna be loved by God, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get more effort. Now, don't get me wrong. God wants fruitfulness out of our lives, but fruitfulness is not you and I just trying harder. This is the false vine of religion. It's the vine that says, try harder, do better. Hey, I've got good news for you this morning. You can't do it. Let me just, I'm gonna tell this side guys, okay. I got good news for you today. You can't do it. See, they're better, they're fruits popping right over here, let me give you a try. I got good news for you guys. You can't do it. They beat you. I can hear portage all the way over here in Richland. You can't do it. Jesus says, a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it, everybody say it, abides. Let's try it together. Abides, say that word out loud. Abides. Constant ongoing relationship between the branch and the vine, constant ongoing living relationship between the disciple and his or her Lord that produces fruitfulness. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you are not enough, but Jesus is. That's the good news of the gospel. You can't do it in your own strength. You can't make yourself better, stronger, faster. You can't do it in and of yourself, but Jesus can. Jesus, you and Jesus and Jesus in you is the power of heaven come to earth. It is eternal, it is forever, it is saving, it is redeeming, it is restoring, and it is otherworldly. When your life has absolutely no reason for it to look the way that it does because of the righteousness of God bearing through you, that is the fruit that Jesus wants you to bear so that the world sees it in you. Jesus is the true vine, is the life source, and our responsibility is we have to be rightly related to the vine. The father is the vine dresser. Jesus is the vine, and when we get saved, we make Jesus the Lord of our lives. We're plugged into that vine and his life flows in us just like that extension cord on a vacuum. We wanna stay so close to him because we need that life of his spirit, that Zoë life flowing in and out of us, his holy spirit on the inside of us. But then we also trust this that Jesus says very clearly that the father is the vine dresser and that he has a role in our lives as well. You see, fruit is the goal. It starts off in verse number three by saying he wants you to bear fruit, and then again in verse number three, he wants you to bear more fruit, and then ultimately in verse five, it says that you might bear much fruit. Notice there's a progression. This is a picture of Christian maturity. I want you to bear fruit, and then bear more fruit until you bear lots of fruit. Well, how do we get to the place? How do we go through the process of maturity? While we're staying in relationship with Jesus, avoiding the traps of religion and self do-it-yourself, self-improvement mentalities, how do we stay in Jesus and actually live fruitful lives to where we're abounding in fruitfulness? We're not just bearing a little bit. How does that work? That's where the father steps in. The father's the vine dresser. And Jesus says about the father, it says that he prunes those branches so that they may bear more fruit. So I want you to think of Jesus like this vine and you and I as the branches and there's fruit. In our human mentalities, here's what we often think. If I bear fruit, God won't have to prune. If I bear fruit, then I'm good. Hey, I'm doing the right things. God's gonna leave me alone. But can I just tell you something today? I wanna change your paradigm related to this. You and I don't want God to leave us alone. I know in our flesh sometimes we're like, I think there's a subtle attitude that we have with God. It's like, okay, God, I'm doing the right things. All right, I'm going to church. Are we good? I'm reading my Bible. Are we good? I prayed the right prayers. Nothing's gonna go wrong, right? Nothing's gonna be difficult. Nothing's gonna be challenging. If I just do the right things, God will leave me alone. Do you know where that mentality originates in the garden of Eden? After Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were open. They began to see through a different lens. Now God, the father comes down into the garden. Notice God is a gardener from the very beginning. He comes down into the garden and what does he want? Ongoing, active, living relationship with Adam and Eve. But what's their response? Now that they've eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they hide behind a tree. They're hiding from it. Because what they don't want is they don't want God to prune them. And this is the mentality that oftentimes we get into. It's like, hey, if I'm doing the right things, God's gonna leave me alone. But Jesus said, no, when you're doing the right things, when you're growing and in the seasons where you're bearing fruit, I want you to know that the father is going to be involved in your life. And here's how the father is going to be active and involved in even a fruitful life. He's going to prune us. Now if your immediate response to that is, oh, then what you don't really understand is why the father prunes. It's not him coming to cut the vine to destroy it. It's him coming to mature the vine so that it reaches its maximum fruitful potential. And that's God's desire for us. As followers of Jesus, he doesn't just want us saved and going to heaven. He wants our lives to bear fruit. And part of what he does is he says, abide in me, Jesus, abide in me and I'm gonna abide in you. And then realize the father is not a distant, removed, neglectful or even angry father, but he's a good gardener. And he's gonna bring pruning into our lives. If you look at the life of a vine, especially a grapevine, and this is most likely what Jesus is referring to. And part of the reason why Jesus uses this metaphor in John 15 is if you look in Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel in the Old Testament, Israel as a nation is oftentimes typified as a vine, a vineyard or a vine. So when Jesus is talking to the nation of Israel, he's like, look, you're a vine, but you are a failed vine, you're not bearing fruit. So the father has sent me to be the true vine. And everybody who hears my words and believes and chooses to rely on me and not just religion is gonna be tapped into me and given access to eternal life. But remember, the father is the vine dresser. This is the context of it. It's for Israel, but it's for every single one of us. But if you understand the life of a vine in a vineyard, there's three primary seasons. There's the first season, the primary season, which is the fruit season. This is where, man, if you've ever seen rows and rows and rows of grape vines, like in Napa or in some place that's well known for their grape yield, these purple, beautiful clusters of grape, just pulling down on these branches, on these vines, they're just heavy with the fruit. And it's an awesome season. It's leading up into the harvest time in which the grapes are gonna be picked and they're gonna be smashed and the juice is gonna then be stored and it's gonna go through a fermentation process. And it's the goal. That's the goal, but it's not the only season. See, after the fruit has been collected by the gardener, vine branches go into a season of dormancy, a winter season. A season where the branches that once bore great weighted fruit now go into a season, into a time of dormancy, and oftentimes some of the branches that bore the best fruit now become old, they become thick, and they are no longer going to bear fruit. But it's in this dormancy that that becomes clear. That then leads into the third season, which is the spring season, that the farmer then goes out into the vineyard and he looks at the vines and he can measure it by the bark and the skin on it. The old branches, the old branches that once upon a time were great, bore great fruit, now have to be cut back. And other vines that are new vines need to be trimmed as well. And it is a setup for more fruit to come in the season. And what will happen is a new vine will bear a little bit of fruit, but old vines produce the most fruit when they are care taken. But when vines are left unpruned, eventually what can happen is vines that one time had great yield no longer bear any fruit because they get blocked from the life force. You see the root system goes down deep into the soil and it brings up the water and it turns it into life when it's mixed with sunlight and then it begins to oxygenate and it puts forth its blossoms and then it's fruit and it's a beautiful process that happens. But here's why it's important for us to understand the three seasons. It's because you and I as Western-minded, technological, post-modern people, we think in terms of semesters when it comes to growth, knowledge and advancement, we've been trained from the time we go to preschool to think in terms of semesters. But God thinks in terms of seasons, not semesters. What God teaches us, He doesn't teach us in semesters. He teaches us in seasons. And sometimes the seasons that seem to be the hardest seasons in our faith are actually the setup for the most fruitful seasons in the future if we do not grow weary and we abide in Him. In 2008, we had pastored Radiant Church for, well, it started in 1996, so we were about 12 years in. 2007 into 2008, we had just come off the heels of a pretty major building campaign. Our church was growing really quickly. I was a young pastor in the first 12 years of pastoring. I had, I used to preach three Sunday mornings. We had Wednesday night service every Wednesday. And then I also taught a young adult ministry up in Grand Rapids on Thursday nights. And on top of that, Jane and I were raising three kids, three children at that time. And we were also building a house at the same time that we had just built the sanctuary. We just had all kinds of stuff going on. And I thought, I thought, man, this is light. I mean, life and ministry are good. It's been great. And look at all the fruit that we're producing. Look at all the fruit that's going on. It was a good season. And then in 2008, coming into 2008, hit one of the most difficult seasons of my life. You might think to yourself, pastors don't have difficult seasons, do they? I mean, life's pretty easy. I mean, all you guys do is drink coffee and read the Bible. How can life be hard? Now, I personally went into a season where I had never experienced burnout before. I didn't know it. Nobody shows up with a subpoena and says, hey, you're going into a season of burnout and depression. But all of a sudden I began to experience it. I began to experience anxiety. I'd never had anxiety ever before in my life. Panic attacks. I would cry for no reason. I mean, I had always looked at people who had experienced depression and thought to myself, well, they must just be emotionally kind of, there's some, maybe weakness there or something. I don't know. It's just some people are more melancholy than others. I was just kind of prided myself on the fact that, I just put my head down and kept going and plowed and plowed and plowed. Now, for the first time, my emotions felt like I was sad a lot. The only time that I did not feel depressed was when I would stand up into the pulpit. I would come up these stairs and as soon as my feet touched the platform immediately, the grace and the anointing of God came on me. But as soon as I walked back down, I walked right back down into depression. And it was a dark season. It was a winter season where places of my life that had borne fruit up until this moment, all of a sudden weren't bearing fruit anymore. And I didn't know how to, up until this point, I was just kind of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps type of person. I knew if I just prayed a little bit harder, it wasn't that I had sinned stuff going on. It wasn't like I had walked away from God and I started crying out to God, God, where are you? God, where are you? This doesn't make any sense. How am I supposed to do what you're calling me to do if I can't get myself together? And I started having this anxiety. It's like, maybe I've broken myself and I don't know how to fix myself. But through a series of reaching out to people that I trust that were overseers of my life, going to a counselor and crying out to God, I used to go up into the upper room here in Richland and I used to go up there and cry and pray the book of Psalms. And in that moment, the Father became a greater reality in my life. And I know that in that season, the Father drew near to me and he was saying, Leah, I love you so much. And you have borne fruit in past seasons, but this is a season where I've gotta cut back some of the insecurities, some of the ambition, some of the fears that have been driving you, some of the misconceptions about yourself, even about the church, about your role in it. I'm cutting those things back so that you can bear more fruit in this next season. And the question that the Lord asked me in that season was this, will you abide? Will you stay? Will you stay close? Will you harden your heart towards me or will you lean into me? Will you turn towards another vine? Because it's quick and because it's easy and you can get immediate relief from it? So oftentimes that's what we do. We might turn to alcohol or we might turn to drugs or a person or a relationship or some other thing that gives us an immediate out. And it's because the pain of pruning oftentimes causes us to no longer abide. It's like that cable coming out of the vacuum. It pulls out of the wall and we're looking for something that we can plug it into. But what we don't realize is that God's not trying to destroy us. God's trying to prune us. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11, it's talking about the season, this winter season of the soul. It says, for at that moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. Amen to that. But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. In the moment, pruning hurts. But God's design for pruning is not to destroy but it's actually to strengthen. In the words of the great theologian, the big Lebowski, God's looking for the dude that will abide. He's looking for the son or the daughter that will abide in him. Do not grow weary for in due season, in due season you will reap if you do not faint, if you don't lose hope. You see what happens is the seasons that you and I look at as our greatest failures, if we abide in him actually become the most significant growth seasons in our lives. And this is why Jesus said, abide in me. Because if you abide in me, I'm gonna abide in you, abide in my word, verse 70 says, if my words abide in you and you abide in me, you're gonna bear fruit. See what happens is when we're abiding in his word, even in those winter seasons of our soul, we're like, God, what are you doing? Why does this hurt? God's like, I know it's not pleasant, but I love you. I'm cutting away the bark, I'm cutting away the callus things, I'm cutting away the things that you depended on our previous season because I don't want you depending on anyone or anything besides me. I came out of that season with a stronger knowledge of God's presence, a greater confidence in who I was in him and not just in me. And a greater understanding that God was the one who was producing fruit out of my life. It wasn't me. I can do nothing. One of the greatest revelations we can get in our relationship is how inadequate we are without him. How an utterly inadequate and insufficient that we are. This isn't like, I am great, I am good enough and people like me. That's not what this is. In Christ alone, I put my trust. On Christ the solid rock, I stand and I choose to abide in him. I'm drawing from his life and the way I draw life is I'm abiding in his presence. I'm abiding in his word. I'm abiding in his love. Look at that in verse number nine. It's one of the most beautiful verses in this whole teaching, this discourse that Jesus gave. He says, as a father has loved me, so I've loved you, abide in my love. God's perfect agape love. That means he loves you. Can I just tell you something? The father loves you when there's no fruit coming out of your life. As much as he loves you when the branches are weighed down with the clusters of grapes that you can't even contain. God loves you. He says, abide in my love. Religion, the vine of religion says, oh, God only loves you when there's fruit out of your life. No, God is in every season. He's in the fruit seasons of your life. He's like, yeah! Lest we think this is my fruit. God, didn't I do good? God's like, no, actually that's my fruit. Through you. Oh yeah, good reminder. And it makes it a lot easier when you go into a winter dormancy season where you're just like, I don't, I feel crusty. I feel like my bark is thick. Anybody ever felt like your bark is getting thick? Let the hearer understand and feeling a little thick these days. And it's like, I don't feel like there's a lot of fruit coming out of me. Jesus, I got a bad attitude. Things that used to thrill me don't thrill me anymore. I'm reading the word out of discipline and out of obedience. But I just, I feel dry. What did I do wrong? And the father's like, no, it's all right. Because now I'm stepping into a season where I, your father, am coming. I'm gonna begin to prune some things. I'm gonna cut off, I'm gonna cut some relationships that used to feed the vine, but don't anymore. Now they're stealing life from you. Things that you, that were, you know, things that were interesting to you in the last season have kind of grown, they're not bearing fruit anymore. So I'm gonna change that. Things that you used to depend on in yourself, belief systems, paradigms that you used to have. I'm trimming all that back. Why, why, Father? Why am I going through this? That's oftentimes what we ask, God, why, why, why? And God's like, you'll see in the next season. You'll see in the next season. You'll see when the grapes are bigger and the clusters are closer together and the branches are bowed heavier, you're gonna see the fruit. And can I just tell you, it leads right to what Jesus says at the very end. Verse 11, these things I've spoken to you. Why are you telling us this, God? That my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. I love that. Jesus says, I want your joy to be full. One of the fruit of the Spirit is joy. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, all the nine fruit of the Holy Spirit. But joy, Jesus says it's not just your joy. He says my joy in you will produce your joy to the fullest. God's goal for every season of our life is to not bring us into a place of regret or of depression or discouragement. It's to bring us into a season of joy that our joy may be full. Now, I don't know what season you're in. I don't know what season you're coming out of. I don't know what season you're going into. But here's what I know is Jesus invites us to abide in him no matter what. When it seems hard, it's time to lean in. When you're on top of the mountain top and it's just like, man, I feel the presence of the Lord all the time. I'm opening up my Bible and it's like I'm getting theological revelation of the ages. It's like I'm witnessing to people and I'm leading my neighbor's dog to the Lord. It's like I can heal the sick from across the county. I mean, it's, or in seasons where it just feels like God is taking the vine dresser's blades to places of your life and is trimming back. In every season, abide, abide in Jesus. Ongoing, living, active relationship with him. Jesus, what are you doing? Father, what are you doing in me? What are you saying to me? What areas of my life are you wanting to prune back, trim? What areas of my life can you see that are crusty, that are hardened, that are not producing life, that are stealing life from other places where you want fruit to be born? God, what are you doing in me? Do you know you can ask the Father what he's doing and he's faithful and just to lead and guide us and we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when it's all said and when it's all done, it's gonna be joy and speakable, full of glory. And then you're gonna have a season where the wine is flowing and your joy is complete and then you're gonna go into another season. But in every season, the goal is not the grapes. The goal is abiding in him. It's abiding in Jesus. Would you stand with me wherever you're at today? All of our locations. Father, thank you today that we can trust you with our lives. As we abide in Jesus, as we abide in the true vine, the faithful vine, we can be confident that the purposes and the plans, the destiny, the fruit that we want to see born out of our lives in due season, it's gonna be there because we're attached to you. And Father, we trust you with our lives. Trust you with our families. We trust you with our health, with our emotions, with our heart, with our dreams, with our plans, with our identity, with our purposes, with our sin, with our struggles, and with our weaknesses. Father, you're trustworthy. And every season, we know that you have our good in mind. You are for us. You are for us. And we're not gonna unplug from you. We're not gonna pull away from you. Even in the difficult seasons, we're not gonna hide behind trees, cover ourselves up with the leaves of our own making. Lord, we want your hand upon us. We trust you. We entrust the branches of our lives into the hands of our Heavenly Father, the Gardener, because you know exactly what's needed so that we stand in the fullness of joy. I wanna invite our prayer team to make their way up along the front this morning. And here's how we're gonna dismiss today. How many of you today, it doesn't matter what it is, but you just find yourself in a season, maybe now as I'm talking about it, you're just like, ah, that's what's going on. I feel like I'm in a dry, I'm in a winter season in my relationship with God. Anybody feel like that? But I just feel like, man, this just kind of felt like a dormant season. How many of you would say, I feel like I'm in a pruning season right now? How many feel like it's a fruitful season right now? How many are like, it's almost football season. And so here's what I know is that whatever season you know yourself to be in, maybe honestly, you just don't know what season you're in. But for those of you who do, there's things that you feel like the Father has identified that he's dealing with in your life. There's power when we recognize it and we submit to it and we ask for prayer over that. There's also incredible power and unity that's released in our lives. When we recognize that I'm not where I have been before, like David talks about, I remember going into the sanctuary with the throngs and leading the way in worship, but now here I am, I'm in exile, I'm running. I'm trying to save my life. It was a winter season for David. And there's no shame in that. God just says, even in that season, are you able to invite me into it? This morning there may be a thing that God is doing, a season, we use that term seasons, but it's very appropriate because that's how God works in our lives. We don't know the length of time, we don't know how far that goes, we just know that there's, that's the focus. But we can either pull away or we can draw near. And this morning I know that some of us may have some things that are going on situations that we need to yield and we need to surrender that we've been holding back from. Or even some trees that we've been hiding back from because he's calling us to abide. And this morning, whatever that is, I wanna invite you, we're gonna pray and we're gonna dismiss. But after we do that, after I pray, it may be appropriate for you to come forward and ask for prayer from our prayer team. You might think, well, I can pray on my own. Sometimes the season we're in requires two or three to come into agreement over that thing. Sometimes there's power and confession. It's what James five says and we just confess. It's like, right now I know I've gotta yield this. The father wants to prune this, he wants to trim this. Or I'm submitting to the Lord in the season that I'm in. We need to just tell somebody to pray and to consecrate that. Sometimes that's the most direct route from one season into the next. And I'm gonna invite you to come and receive prayer this morning before you leave and you go home. Father today, thank you, we submit to you, Lord. Our great shepherd who promised the lead and guide us and altered Jesus, you indeed are the true vine and we will not look to another vine. The places where our life has detached from you and attached to others, Lord, supernaturally, would you plug us back in? And we make the decision today, we will abide in you. Abide in Christ, you are our life. You are our strength, you are our shepherd and we will listen to the voice of no other today. Lord, let your life flow and your fruit grow through our lives today. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. Listen, we're gonna dismiss. Please come forward if you would like to receive prayer today. We'll see you, God bless you.