Okay.  Have chatted with my people.

Have thought and prayed through the difference between wanting to earn favor with God and, as our pastor says, “working hard.”

Effort, not earning.

As usual, one of my peeps reminded me of “living in the tension.”

And the importance of the motives of my heart.

I talked about abiding in the Vine last time, so I think we’ll start there again.  John always helps me stay in the motivation of love.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. 

Now remain in my live. 

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed the Father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends

You are my friends if you do what I command.

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 to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.

Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 

This is my command: Love each other.”

John 15:9-17

Why is love so hard?  Why is genuine community such a struggle?  Why do we treat strangers nicer than the people in our homes sometimes?  Why do we so desperately want to be known and yet fight with everything we have to show only the “good” side of our still-sinful-this-side-of-heaven hearts?

Anyway, even though Jesus is talking to His intimate friends in this passage and says He no longer calls them servants, I don’t think that means we get to throw away the stewardship parables.

Know what I mean?

But I think for my purposes and scars, I should stick to a friend motivation. 

Did you know that right before John 15, the last line is “Come now, let us leave”?

And they were going to the Mount of Olives?

Don’t you think there were probably vines around them as He talked through how His Father was the Vine and we are the branches?

Isn’t He wonderful?

There’s a lot in the above passage we could pull out and hammer on.  But taken as a whole it is seamless.  There is talk about obeying His commands.  But it is in the context of loving each other.  We are told we can bear fruit, but it’s because He chose us and it’s for His glory.

And He’s already gotten all the way down to the ground to show them “the full extend of his love” (John 13:1) and “the most excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31b).

From there we can handle Him talking about pruning us: yes, He cuts, but it’s so we are ever more fruitful. 

And obeying His commands: yes, we obey, but it’s because He loves us as much as the Father loves Him.  And because obedience is for our joy.

Now my heart can hear about how money shouldn’t be of primary importance.  Or how this world cannot fulfill me.  Or that heaven is my home.  Or that what I make is probably not mostly for me.

I can do that because He is Love. 

He doesn’t need “my” money.

But, if I’ll cooperate, He’ll show me how to honor Him in handling money and the absolute thrill that only giving can provide.