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Being Vines, Not Sap Suckers

Baptist Campus Ministries: Brad Simmons
Friday, February 25, 2005

Over Christmas break, I went with eight students to Passion in Nashville, TN. Passion has been around since 1997 holding conferences that focus on "spiritual awakening among college students." This year's conference included great speakers like John Piper, Beth Moore, and Louie Giglio, the founder of Passion Conferences. It was a great time of worship and encouragement with 11,000 other students and student leaders.

The greatest thing I brought away from the conference came from John 15. If you're not familiar with the passage, go ahead and read it. In this passage, Jesus talks about Himself as a vine and us, His followers, as the braches and discusses the importance of remaining connected to Him in order to be fruitful.

J.D. Walt told the story of a college pastor friend of his who spoke on that passage to his students. He talked about how they should be "sap-suckers." Using the analogy of branches on a vine, he said that the students (branches) should suck everything they can from Jesus (the sap carrying vine) so that they can be full of Him. When he was done, a student, who was a Botany major, approached him. He knew that he was in trouble. The student said, "I enjoyed what you talked about tonight, but I thought you might find this interesting. The branches on a vine don't really suck the nutrients from the vine. Actually, the vine pushes into the branches the nutrients that they need. The nutrients flow from the vine into the branches due to the effort of the vine, not the branches."

The idea that it's not up to me to pull or "suck" from Christ that which I need to live in him is a bit of a relief. He wants me to succeed in my "remaining" or "abiding" in Him and so he is more than willing to give me what I need. What is up to me is how open I am to being "flowed" into. Am I living a life that is open to receiving that which I need? I hope so.