Cut-Flower Christians

Read: John 15:1-8

Without Me you can do nothing. —John 15:5

I enjoy buying or receiving a fresh bouquet of cut flowers. After admiring and smelling them, I waste no time getting them into water. Even though fresh and beautiful when I get them, their days are numbered. Because they've been severed from their life-source, they will soon wither and die. I know that one day I will have to throw them away.

Author Lloyd Ogilvie sees in this a picture of the Christian whose spiritual vitality has faded and shriveled. Such a person has become a "cut-flower Christian." Jesus used a similar illustration about a vine and its branches to describe our relationship to Him. Just as a branch can't bear fruit by itself, He explained, we can't bear spiritual fruit unless we abide in Him, the true vine (John 15:4).

If a branch could speak, it wouldn't apologize for its need to depend on the vine for bearing fruit. It would say instead, "For this I was made!" Jesus knew we were made for dependence on Him, our life-source—no apology needed! In fact, such dependence is the only way to avoid becoming a "cut-flower Christian."

Let's embrace His declaration, "Without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). As we depend on Him, we will bear much fruit—and for this we were made. —JEY

Closer yet I'd cling, dear Savior,
You're the all-sufficient Vine;
You alone can make me fruitful,
Blessed source of strength divine. —Bosch

Fellowship with Christ is the secret of fruitfulness.

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