NOV 27 2016 | John 15

Sea Change Church · "John 15" · Ryan Pfeiffer · November 27, 2016
John 15
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Thank you. All right. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor. When I cut my first chicken heart open, I said, that's it. I'm going to be a doctor. It's awesome cutting things open. I loved it. You know, but as I got a little older, it wasn't really about cutting things open. I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to make a difference in people's lives.

I wanted to kill people and save people. You know, this is something that we all have in common as human beings is that we all have this deep inner compulsion to live a meaningful, satisfying, fruitful life. I mean, all of us want to know that our lives are making a difference. For a lot of us, we define that meaningful life by our career that we're going to have.

Maybe our income or possessions or the relationships in our life. I want to explore this idea of living a meaningful life. What does it look like for us to live the most satisfying, meaningful life possible? And what does Jesus have to say about that? Jesus had a lot to say about that, cared very much about that, and came to live that life that deep in our hearts we all long to live.

Let's look at John 15 and see what Jesus has to say about this topic. He says this, chapter 15, verse 5. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you're like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.

What a powerful statement. And, you know, in classic Jesus fashion, he teaches with imagery. And as he's talking about this idea of human life and the purpose of human life, living a meaningful life, he connects it to this image of being fruitful. And he has this picture of a fruitful branch, but also he has the antithesis, this image of a withered branch.

We'll talk about that in a minute. And one thing we can gather about, you know, Jesus from this passage is that God has created us to be fruitful. That's an awesome idea to think about. You know, if you walk out with nothing else, and I want you to grab a hold of this. If you're not familiar with God, you don't know much about Jesus, I want you to grab a hold of this idea that Jesus came to teach that God created us to live fruitful lives.

For some of us, our idea of religion is that God came to prune us down to live the most uneventful, boring, sort of like repressed life possible. And in that scenario, you are living a truly spiritual life. Take all the fun and exhilaration out of life, and you have the perfect Christian life. I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous, and I'm painting it as a caricature, but we can sometimes be fooled into thinking that's what God wants.

And yet Jesus is throwing that away and saying, no, God, your Father, created you to live fruitful lives. And in this passage, we're going to look to this morning, how do we follow Jesus into that fruitful life? Now, this desire, this yearning to live a fruitful life, if you're not convinced that it's deeply woven into all of our hearts, whether we're children, I asked my son, and he's 10 years old, going on 11, and I asked him, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And he told me, and I asked him, why? And he's like, because I want to make a difference. But if you're not convinced that this is something in your heart, no matter what stage of life you're in, in all of our hearts, think about this. When you take away that expectation that your life can make a difference, that your life can be fruitful, something in us literally dies.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is usually associated with feelings of hopelessness or pessimism, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness. When we lose hope that our lives can make a difference, when we feel helpless in living our lives in a way that feel fruitful, then we lose hope for even living itself.

Look at this. Every 13 minutes, someone commits suicide in the U.S. The second leading cause of death among 18 to 25-year-olds, that's the demographic I work with. I work with college students all throughout San Diego with InterVarsity. And the second leading cause of death among this demographic is suicide. Second, in the last 10 years, these are recent stats from the Pew study, there's been a 30% increase in suicide among 30 to 64-year-olds.

50% of those are among 50-year-old men. So you would think that, oh, you know, when you're 18 to 25, you're stressed, you got finals, you're just trying to pay the bills, and, you know, of course you're thinking about maybe you can't make it in life. But this stat about 50-year-old men is sure that even after people have established themselves in their life and in their career with their families, they get that moment where they're like, you know, I got all this stuff, but man, it is just not filling me up.

And it starts to gnaw at people. You know, my deepest sympathy to anybody who's lost somebody to this or who's struggling with this right now in this room. But what this shows us, among other things, is that our country is deeply confused about what it takes to live a fruitful, meaningful life. Can we agree to that? We're confused as a nation how to live a fruitful life.

Every area of our life is created to thrive in relationship with God. And yet, we can all relate to that idea. Maybe there's something I just want to keep away from God because I'm afraid to let God get his hands on it. When any area of our life is disconnected from God, Jesus describes it as a withering, like a branch that withers when there's any area of our life.

Maybe there's an area of your life that feels like it's withering. And maybe this morning, God wants to help you reflect on where he is in that area of your life and what it would look like for you to revive his presence in that area of your life. Reviving God in our life frees us to live the most fruitful life possible. Where do you want to revive God's presence in your life?

Where are you longing for more fruitfulness? Irenaeus from the second century said this, The glory of God is man fully alive. And God wants you to be fully alive. Let's read from John 15 to learn from Jesus a little bit more about this. In verse 9, Jesus is going to expand on this idea of living a fruitful life. And he goes on to say this, It's alright guys, you want to know how to live a fruitful life?

Well, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in His love. I've told you this so that you can live the most boring life possible. No, thank God He didn't say that. But so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

And my command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. We'll talk about this idea of obedience later. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

For everything that I learned from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And appointed you so that you might go bear fruit. What an awesome thing. Fruit that will last so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command. Love each other. How do we live the most fruitful lives possible?

Jesus offers us three secrets from His own life. Life, arguably one of the most fruitful, meaningful, enduring, impactful lives ever lived by a human being. Three secrets, all right? And the first one's going to come in verse 9. Let's go to verse 9 to get our first secret on how to live fruitful lives. Because no matter where we're at in life, what stage, what we're doing, we're in missionary work, we're lawyers, we're teachers.

Those things in themselves don't make us fruitful and don't give us meaning. So watch what Jesus has to say about living a fruitful life. Let's go to verse 9. In verse 9 it says this. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If we want to live the most fruitful life possible, the first secret that Jesus gives us is from His own life.

And how He lived His life, and it's this. Remain in my love. The first secret that Jesus gives us is that He lived His life in an ongoing connection to His Father's love. Love is the first secret. And being connected to God's love in everything that we do, in whatever we're doing, wherever we're going, that's the secret. So let me ask this question.

What is the Father, how did the Father love Jesus? What did that love look like? Because Jesus is saying, right here in verse 9, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. How did the Father love Jesus? And what can we learn about how the Father loves us? Let's go to Luke 4.21. It says this. When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.

And as He was praying, heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. You are my Son, whom I love with you. I am well pleased. Okay. So I want you to just turn in pairs and just share. What's one thing that you learn that you could describe about how the Father loves His Son from this passage right here?

This moment where Jesus is baptized. Turn to a friend and just share one thing. That you can see, man, this passage shows me this is how God loves His Son. All right? Go back to the Luke passage. Put the Luke passage up so they can see it. Go back. Yeah. What's one thing you would say? Go ahead and turn in pairs and share. Go ahead. Show one thing. Then I'm going to call on you.

And if you look confused, I'm going to really call on you. All right. You ready? I'm coming. Uh-oh. There's no stage, so I can just come right out and get you. All right. Someone, uh, got an idea? Something? Something? That just, this shows you about how the Father loves His Son? Anyone want to share an idea? Does anyone want to share an idea? Yeah? Unconditional love.

Yeah. Unconditional love. How do you see that unconditional love? What grabs you about this passage that shows that unconditional love? Yeah. You know what's so special about that? Is that this moment is before Jesus has done one miracle, taught one sermon, and done anything in His life. And the Father's like, son, you haven't done anything. You haven't preached anything.

You haven't done any amazing things. I'm pleased with you. Before we perform for God, before we do one good thing, God starts the whole thing with saying, I am so pleased with you. That's unconditional love. Anything else? About God's love for His Son? You else want to share? Yeah. Go ahead, Carol. He gave Him the Holy Spirit. He gave Him the Holy Spirit.

That's special. Yeah. No, if you're like, what's with the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit's like a ring, right? It's like a deposit guaranteeing something coming. And God gives us His Spirit to guarantee this future eternal life that we're going to have with Him, much like a ring. A couple of things I want to share about the Father's love. Number one, the Father expresses His love for His Son.

When we talk about how God loves us, the Father loves to express His Son. Maybe some of us came from households where our fathers did not express love to us. They expressed their love by bringing home a paycheck, and that was the extent of their love. But the Father expresses His love beyond that for His Son. He expresses His love verbally. Out loud, publicly, communicating verbally.

I love you! Man, I love this kid! And number two, not only is it verbal, but it's public. And in that, He expresses three things. Let's go to the next slide. Number one, He expresses, back one? He expresses His identity. When the Father loves us, He speaks to our identity. He communicates, and He bestows on us confidence in who we are at the core of ourself.

This is the foundation of a fruitful life. We know who we are. Some of us are defined by what our boss expects from us, or our families expect from us, or our parents. But look at Jesus. You are my Son, whom I love with you, my place. And so, number one, He expresses and communicates Jesus' identity. His love expresses the next one. You're the one whom I love, His place in the Father's heart.

And number three, Jesus is standing before Him. I am well pleased with you. It's personal. It's intimate. And it's the foundation of Jesus' life. The Father's love for Jesus was the fountainhead from which everything that Jesus did drew from. Think about His miracles. Think about His teaching. It all flowed from this fountainhead. Everything was flowing out of this place.

And everything that He did, He was walking around with this thought ringing in His mind. I love you. I love you. I love you. Do you wake up with that in your mind? Do you wake up? Imagine waking up every morning and the first thing that comes to your mind when you sit up and you wake up. This is God. And I love you. And I'm so pleased with you. Imagine what that would mean to your life.

The impact. What thoughts play through your mind in your life? What are some of the dominant thoughts that play through your mind? Think for a minute when things are going badly. When you fail. When you are struggling. When you're in pain. What kind of thoughts run through your life? I know one time someone came to minister to me. It was helping me with some anxiety I was struggling with.

And it actually had to do with preaching. I didn't mind being in front of people. But it was the preparation. And this minister was ministering to me with skill. She asked, when you're struggling to get your sermon organized, what kind of thoughts run through your mind? And I said, well, and she said, just write down whatever. There's nothing. Don't feel any inhibition.

Write whatever comes to your thought. And just write it all out. And the first thought that came out of my mind onto that paper was, you're an idiot. When I struggle to organize my thoughts and get that sermon organized, my mind goes through, you can't organize it because you're an idiot. You know, but we all have these thoughts. When you lose your temper with your child.

When you have a fight with your spouse. When you can't get a job. We have these thoughts that run through our mind. What's interesting in this passage is about the father's love is that it's a voice. Notice, it's not like a physical presence. It's a voice. What voices are running your life? Is the voice of the father's love running your life? That's what it means to remain.

No matter what's going on in our life, that's where we go back to. The voice of the father's love. How does God love us? What does it mean for God to show us his love? Listen to this. 1 John 4, 9. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. So we're not trying to live through another means.

We're living through Jesus' way. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. When you choose to believe that Jesus died on the cross for you. To heal you from your sin. What is sin? Sin is the inability to hear the father's voice of love in your life. Let me ask a very pointed question.

Are you familiar on a daily basis with the voice of your heavenly father's love for you? Is the voice of your heavenly father a familiar experience? Or right now, does it seem abstract and strange? And you're going, what is this guy talking about? Some kind of obtuse, unattainable, mystical experience for super religious people who hide off in a cave for 20 years, never eating ice cream?

The difficulty that we have in hearing the father's voice of love in our life is not because you're not a spiritual person. It's because you're a broken spiritual person and it's called sin. Sin is the inability to connect with the father's love in our life. And it leaves us as slaves to live by other motivators. So that we do jobs that we hate because we're afraid to do anything else.

Because we have no confidence that our identity isn't anything bigger than our job. That's one. Painful things that people have said to us in our past haunt us still today as grown adults. It's sin that keeps us from hearing the father's love. And Jesus, when you believe in Jesus and you place your faith in him, he begins to clear that old tape.

And he begins to introduce and clear the pathway for the father's love to begin to flow into your life. You know, for others of us, we know God's love. We made our home in God's love. But the voice of the father, his love in our life is not filling our life these days because we've wandered from God. And some of us, you know, we just go through painful things.

You ever gone through something painful? And you're just like, man, that old tape comes back. You're going through something painful because God has abandoned you. You're going through something painful because you are unattractive. You're going through something painful because you are the most unlucky person on the face of the planet. You have that distinguished honor.

And we get there, right? We get to these thoughts and you begin to feel this distance from God. And for some of us, we just get distracted and we wander from God. We lose touch with God's love in our life. We begin living for other things. And maybe this morning, you need a revival of the father's love in your life. Is that you? You need that? Maybe you do.

Well, then listen to this next point. How do we revive that love in our life? Let's go to the next secret. Jesus' second secret to living a fruitful life is in verse 10. Listen, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Do you want to remain in the father's love no matter what comes your way in life? No matter what failure you find in yourself or in your spouse or in life?

Listen to this. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Come hell or high water, my father's love will stay anchored in your life. Just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. And didn't Jesus, on the cross, rejected, abandoned by his closest friends, misunderstood by everybody, but still anchored in his father's love.

That's the life that the father wants for you. And no matter what comes your way, the father's love is still with you and that anchors you. Let's talk about this. Jesus reveals to us that his second secret to a fruitful life is keeping his commands and its obedience. Just like his fruitfulness has come from keeping his father's commands, our fruitfulness comes from keeping his commands.

Jesus is not saying here that the more you keep my commands, the more I'll love you. Like, okay, all right. My son Diego right here has been obeying me about two out of ten times. I love you about two percent, you know, 20 percent today. Can you imagine that? Or, hey, man, ten for ten today, I really love my son today. Woo, son, I'm loving you more today.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll love you. Let's hope that love sticks around, son. You better keep that good stuff going. My kids know that no matter what goes on at the home, in the end, we love each other. Jesus is not saying that the more you obey God, the more God's going to love you. Now, some of us Christians know that theologically. We know this in our minds, but we don't live this way.

So what is the purpose of keeping God's commands? If God doesn't love us anymore, think about it. There's nothing that you can do to obey God right now to make him love you anymore. Then what's the point? Doesn't that make you kind of ask that a little bit, if you really think about it? What's the point? Why obey God if obeying him doesn't at all add one ounce of his love?

That means you could just go off at him and do whatever you want, man, and God's not going to stop loving you at all. Go off and just do all those things maybe you want to do that you know God wouldn't want you to do. Just go off and just pillage and just take what's yours. And God will still love you. Is that true? Well, you can see why Jesus got himself killed saying stuff like this.

What is the point of keeping God's commands? Keeping his commands grows our love for God. Because when you experience God's love, you get hooked and you don't want anything else more than you want that love. Do you know God's love like that? When I first became a Christian, I told God, I'm not spiritual enough to become a Christian, God. You've got to be better than the stuff that I've been doing in my life.

I was not a Christian. I had a good friend who was. We were in high school. And, you know, there were just things that I was into, like going to parties and hooking up and doing all that stuff. And, you know, I was like looking at my Christian friend going, man, I don't know if I could be a Christian. It's like I'm not spiritual enough. I told God, you've got to be better than partying to be for me to follow you.

You've just got to be better, God, because I've just got to be honest. It looks pretty boring. Bible study. Party. You know. Prayer group. Partying. I mean, you can just see how, this is absurd, right? I'll just become a Christian when I'm like older and I can't have fun anymore in my life. And it's just, it's a bygone, you know, thing. And I said, God, if you're better than that, I'll follow you.

And then one night, I was listening to Christian radio. I put it on because, you know, it's boring. It would put me to sleep. I put on Christian music. I don't mean to be offensive. That's what I did. And I was listening to this Christian music. And this song came on. God, you're so good to me. You've always been so good to me. And it was just this guy on a piano.

And all of a sudden, I don't know how to explain it, man. I don't want to explain this. I just felt the love of God come into my heart. I just didn't know it here, but I knew it here that God loves me. And I got on my knees. I was crying. I'd never cried about anything religious in my life. I'm like, why am I crying? This is weird, you know. But God's love was so wonderful.

I told God, God, I would give up anything in my life to know you more this way. When was the last time you knew God like that? Like marriage, sometimes, you know, you just lose touch with that love. You think you fall in love, you get married, and you hold on to that love for the rest of your life? That's a ripoff. I call that the Big Bang Theory of Love.

It explodes, and we just kind of ride the wave. But what if it's more like what the scriptures say? The path of the righteous gets brighter all the days of their life like the rising sun. What if it's actually meant to get stronger and deeper our whole life? Not like, oh, when I first became a Christian, that was awesome. Now I'm just going to move on with my life and be a mature Christian now.

It's not about emotion. Of course it's not about emotion. But if you just told your child, I don't feel anything for your mom or dad at all, but I love them because I got to. That's not super awesome. It's like, eh. There's more. Do you know the Father is love like that? Obedience brings us into that love. How does obedience bring us into knowing God's love?

Listen to this. Jesus says this in verse 14. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't know his master's business. When we obey his commands, think of it like a treasure map. I think I've used this here before, but let me use it again. Some of us think of God's commands like a list of rules.

Okay, like, but think of it more like a treasure map. You have a map and it tells you, okay, forgive this person. Okay, I'm going to go forgive this person. All right. Now, take three more steps to the left and start praying and spending time with me. Okay, I'm going to do that. And God is just giving us these commands to guide our life into the fullness of his beauty, his power.

Think of a treasure map. You obey the treasure map because it's guiding you to a treasure. If you just decide, oh, forget the treasure map. I want to just do my own thing. You're never going to find the treasure. But obeying God's commands guides us into the experience of his power. Some of us have spent our lives memorizing the map. Learning the Greek of the map.

Meditating on the map. Having Bible studies or, you know, having little discussion groups on the map. But it's obeying and stepping out into the map and obeying God's commands and doing it that guides us into the incredible joy of knowing God. And that's when we begin to experience God. And his power and his generosity and his joy and his kindness.

I remember the first time I experienced this. I was down hanging out with the homeless. And it was a cold night. My wife's going to laugh when she hears this story. I don't know if she's ever. It's been a while since she's heard this one. I just got in a new jacket. And I see, you know, and I see this guy. And he's got no jacket. He's just got a t-shirt on.

And it's a cold night out. And I just get this thought. Give him your jacket. And I'm like, I just got this jacket. And I'm like, what is this crazy thought in my head? I've never had this before, you know. I'm thinking like, where is this foreign alien thought coming from? You ever get these thoughts? These thoughts that you're like, this is not rational me doing this.

No way would I ever do this. This is stupid. And nonetheless, it kept nagging me. And I kept ignoring it. And I could just feel my heart rate picking up. Like, man, I am just stuffing something. I'm having to fight this thing. And finally, I'm like, oh my gosh. Maybe I'm having like a God moment. Because I was a new Christian. And I was like, I think God's talking to me.

And I have this crisis. If I give this guy my jacket, I can't go out and get another one. I'm not going to have a jacket. So I kind of start battling. I don't know. I don't know. Give him the jacket. Not give him the jacket. You ever have, you know, these moments where it's about, God's just giving you this, do this thing. And you're like, I don't know.

So the biggest one was my wife and I were trying to buy a home. And we were saving up money. You know how hard it is to buy a home. And we were so far behind. And we had gotten this huge gift, like a scholarship to buy this home. And I just walked up to my wife and I, after a year of thinking this thought, I got this thought, I want you to tithe 10% of that gift.

I'm like, I still can't afford a home, much less tithe off what I've been given. So I ignored it for a year. For a year, I ignored this. I just stuffed it down, stuffed it down. I cannot give that money. That would be irresponsible. What about my family? What would the people think? Who gave me that money? Would they think I'm being ungrateful? And so finally, I told my wife, I think I have this really bad idea.

It's a bad idea and shoot me down because it's probably not from God. And I tell her and she starts thinking about it. And being the sensible person that she is, she's like, I think that is from God. So we tithed 10% of that gift and we gave it away. That was 10% farther away from ever owning a home. Two years roll by. We're about to give all the scholarship money back to where it came from because we could not buy a home.

And the back of my mind, I obeyed you, God. But I feel like, man, you just left us hanging. I said, all right. I just put it aside. I said, God, you know what? I'd rather obey you and have nothing. I just made this peace with God. And then out of nowhere, I'll tell you, I'll confide something in you personal. This family says, we want to help you buy a home.

Out of nowhere. And we'll go in 50-50 with you to buy this home. It was literally, what would we call it? 50 times what I gave in that time. Don't you think? It was 50 times that. More. Was it more than that? What was it? 100 times that? That's 100 times that. 100 times what I gave. It was awesome to give them money because I'd never been able to give a gift of that size.

But then I got to experience the generosity of God. The full circle of it. Where is God inviting you to obey him? Right now in your life, and you're resisting him. You're like, I don't know if I can give this up or give this away. Where is God inviting you to obey him? Because in obeying him, we experience God. And live the most fruitful life possible.

Listen, and I'll move on from this point. Obeying God is important because obeying God is inviting you to live a life you could never script for yourself. That's why obeying God is so hard. Because it's a lifestyle you would never choose to do on your own. Which is why it's an invitation into a life that is more fruitful than anything you could ever make for yourself.

Do you see the logic there? If you are only doing what feels reasonable to you, that feels convenient for you, you will never live a life beyond what you can make for yourself. But that defeats the whole purpose of living a life with Jesus. Because it's an eternal life. Think about that for a second. Where is he inviting you to obey him? The third secret is this.

Ask whatever you wish. You ready for this one? Last one. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. Answer prayer is Jesus' third secret. It comes up seven times in the Gospel of John between chapters 14 to 16. Seven times.

Jesus is like, whatever you ask for, whatever you ask for. Think right now. When was the last time you asked God for something that you can say concretely right now? I can tell you, God answered that prayer and give me what I asked for. Go ahead and turn to a neighbor and share. What was that thing? All I want to hear. Go ahead. What's something? And if nothing, don't be ashamed.

I got nothing. They're going to find I don't belong here. No, no, no, no. Don't feel bad. If you got nothing, say I got nothing. I can't remember. That's cool. That's cool. Share. What are you? What? How about you? How about you? How about you? How about you? Jesus finishes this thing by saying, ask whatever you wish. We want to live fruitful lives. But somewhere, if you're going to obey God, if you're going to fall in love with God, you're going to begin to want to obey him.

So watch out. Watch out. And when you start to obey him, he's going to ask you to do things that you would never in your rational mind do without being heavily influenced by some foreign substance. He's going to ask you to do things that are counterintuitive, that are irrational to you oftentimes. Things that are irrational to our world's views.

But once you get yourself out into obeying God, you're going to find yourself walking on water in the middle of a storm and go, oh my gosh, I'm going to drown out here. And I've been there. I fundraise for a living. I'm a campus minister. When you're a young 20-year-old, oh, no problem. I'll just do that. And you have this idealism as a 20-year-old.

But then you're like, oh my gosh, I want to, I have family. I have kids. I got soccer leagues to pay for. I want to get a house. And you're like, what have I gotten myself into? Ever gotten there with God? Have you gotten yourself to obeying God where you're like, was I just a fool for getting myself out here and doing what God asked me to do? I have made a terrible mistake.

I was naive. And foolish. If you have never felt that way, can I put out a general challenge? Most likely, you've not been obeying God. Think about that. If you don't every once in a while find yourself going, what am I doing here? You may not be following God. When was the last time you remember God answering your prayer? Because when you get yourself out following God, obeying him, he's going to get you into situations where you need him to come through for you.

But I want to illustrate this in a very simple way. God, let's talk about this for a minute. It says, so that whatever you ask for in my name. Now that word whatever in the Greek can be translated, it's used in the New Testament in multiple ways. That word whatever. It's translated whenever, whoever, wherever. It's like this all-encompassing term that means that there's no area of your life that God won't come into.

There's no area of your life. There's no area too small or too big for you to call on God for. My son lost a book. Let me finish with this. My son lost his book. School book. He was very stressed out. And as he's looking around in the morning before school, scurrying around looking for his book, stressed out, I hear from the top of the upstairs house, his sister shout out like a little angelic bean.

She's like, did you pray about it? Now, when we're stressed out and we're frustrated, how do we feel towards people who ask us if we prayed about it? There's a special disdain reserved in all of our hearts for those people. But we need those people. Now, how we deliver that question, we should do with thoughtfulness and sensitivity. We should be good listeners.

But here it is. My daughter, have you prayed about it? And my son, yeah, I've prayed about it. And I just kind of felt like, you know, he's frustrated, as I often am. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I kind of think maybe God's talking to you right now. And he's like, what do you mean? I go, did you pray about it? He's like, absolutely, I prayed about it.

I go, maybe we don't have the right idea of prayer. Can we pray for it right now? He's like, sure. So I said, I want to pray right now because I feel like God wants to talk to you right now. Let's ask that God would help you find that book. Nothing is too small for God. God, would you bring that book before your test? He's like, my test is today. I'm like, okay.

Let's ask God to give you that book before your test and before the end of the day. Before the end of the day and before that test. He's like, all right. And so we finished our prayer. He goes off to school. Later that day, I ran into my wife and she was like, oh, I got the strangest thing. I got a, I think it was a call from Starbucks or did you remember?

You remembered. She remembered. I can't remember actually how it went. I think she just remembered and didn't know about this prayer. And she remembered that the last place she had been and saw that book was Starbucks. And so she calls up Starbucks and they go, oh yeah, we have that book right here. And she's like, I found that book. I'm like, that's awesome.

God answered that prayer before the end of the day. So when I see my son later that day after school, he comes on up. I go, son, come here. I want to talk to you. Come to my office. And he sits down or he's standing up. And I say, hey son. So what happened today? Did God answer our prayer? And he's like, no, no. Did you get the book? And he's like, yeah, I got the book.

My mom got it. And I'm like, do you know what God did? He's like, we prayed earlier that you get the book before the end of the day. He's like, oh yeah. And I go, man, isn't that awesome? Wouldn't it have been, oh, I just wish we could have gotten it before your test. But still you got it. And he's like, oh my gosh. And he gets this look. And he just sits down.

And he says, I got to tell you something. I go, what happened? My test that was today was rescheduled for tomorrow. He's just sitting there like this. You know. In fact, I was sharing this story, preaching at a conference two weeks ago. And afterward, we were going back to our cabin at this camp. And I couldn't find my water bottle. And I told my kids, oh, I'm so frustrated I lost that water bottle.

And my son looks at me with a smile on his face. He goes, Papa, have you prayed about it? And I just felt that, oh, no, I haven't. I go, would you pray for me, son? He's like, yeah, let's pray right now. God, help my papa find that water bottle. In less than one minute, we found that water bottle. I look for it all day. You know, I just say this because there are areas of our life that literally are not fruitful.

Because we complain, we stress, we worry. We try to do all these things, but we're not committed to praying through in that area. I'm not saying don't do the other things. You still have to look. But are you praying? I want to wrap this message up by just saying this. God wants to fill your life so that it's fruitful. And he wants to fill your life with fruit that you could never bear on your own.

Abide in his love. Obey his commands. And ask him for help with everything in your life. Let me pray for us. God, thank you so much for guiding us into a fruitful life. Thank you that you came to save us from living a life that is withering on the branch. And you've came to save us for a fruitful life in you. I pray that, God, you would renew our faith in you.

Revive our faith in you. And if there's any place in our life where we are not experiencing your love. Where we are struggling and resisting obedience to your word. Or where we have just lost faith and have given up prayer in some area. That, God, that you would revive that area of our life again. In Jesus' name, amen. God bless you all. Happy holidays.

We're done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Merry little Christmas. Let your heart be. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, it's a great. healing. there.