“The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.” James 5:16
A branch is a growth of the vine, produced to bear fruit. It has only one purpose: that through it the vine may bear and ripen its fruit. As the vine lives to produce the sap that makes the grape, so the branch receives that sap and bears the grape. Its work is to serve the vine so that, through the branch, the vine may do
its work.
The believer, the branch of Christ the heavenly Vine, is to live exclusively so Christ may bear fruit through him. A true Christian is to be devoted to the work of bearing fruit to the glory of God.
With our life abiding in Him, and His words abiding and ruling in our heart, there will be grace to pray as we should and faith to receive whatever we ask.
The promises of our Lord’s farewell discourse appear to us too large to be taken literally. We rationalize them to meet our human ideas of what we think they ought to be. We separate them from the life of devotion to Christ’s service for which they were given.
God’s covenant is: give all and take all. One who is willing to be nothing but a branch of Christ, the Vine, will receive liberty to claim Christ’s riches in all their fullness and the wisdom and humility to use them properly.
From: ‘Teach Me to Pray’
Used by permission.
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