Sermon: Living an Intention Life
I started thinking about our “walk with Christ” and what it is that God calls us to do.
One thing I think we are called to do is to live an intentional life.
Before I get started, I want you to think for a second about what you believe it means to live an intentional life or to be intentional. Anyone care to volunteer their definition?
Here is what the dictionary defines intent as. A determination to act in a certain way,
fixity of purpose, firm determination marked by boldness and steadiness
Determination, purpose, boldness and steadiness are the four key components of being intentional.
I think that being intentional and therefore living out these characteristics is essential to living a life in Christ.
The scripture for tonight comes from John Ch. 15 verses 4-5. This is Jesus talking to his disciples…
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing.
Jesus is commanding the disciples to live a life that remains in Him.
But what I want to explore is what does this mean to remain in Jesus?
After wrestling with this scripture, I think that essentially remaining in Jesus means staying connected.
This scripture is pretty challenging because maintaining that connection is not always an easy thing to do.
For me, the challenge is that this one is up to us. Jesus is always going to be there. But we must be intentional for us to remain in Him.
Compare it to a marriage or a great friendship.
These relationships require love, commitment, patience, and communication.
As many of you know, Jenny and I are getting married in May.
A lot of people have given us advice on being married and one thing that almost everybody has said is make sure you communicate with each other.
And I believe that is true.
If you don’t communicate with your spouse, how can you be in tune to them?
I think the same principle applies to our relationship with Christ.
If we are not being intentional in our relationship with Christ, how can we be in tune to what His will is for us. If we don’t communicate with God, how do we know what He might being saying to us.
Prayer is our means of communication with God. It may be kneeling at the alter or maybe your just talking to Him while your driving down the road.
Regardless of how you find pray, praying keeps you tuned in to God.
I think for me one of the biggest challenges to staying tuned in to God is just the fact that I’m busy.
You think about how busy most of us are.
We get up early in the morning.
Work or go to school all day.
Come home late and do homework or for many of you, take care of the kids, and get ready for the next day so we can do it all over again.
And by the end of the day, I’m exhausted.
And with such busy lives, it is really easy to stray from God or let Him become another thing on the to do list. Sometimes our busy lives make it difficult to remain in Him.
This is certainly something that requires us to be intentional because
God’s wants to be part of all areas of our lives.
We live compartmentalized our lives so that we have our…
¨ Home life
¨ Work life
¨ Recreational life
¨ School life
¨ Social life
¨ Too often, our Spiritual life becomes one of the compartments
But with God, there is no distinction between the differing areas of our lives. He’s concerned with all of it.
Our lives get filled up with a lot of stuff that just drains off the energy for today.
But for Jesus to work in our lives we have to be connected to him.
As he says in the scripture we read from in John, He is the main vine; all the nutrients and growth come from him.
We have to be very intentional about allowing God to rule over all of these compartments and layers of our lives.
This goes back to what Chris said last week at the end of his message. Don’t let us be “holiness clubs” who retreat from those who are not believers. Instead use all of the compartments of your life (school, work, recreation, etc, as a mission field). I think that this relates to what were talking about tonight because by living out our faith in all of our life, we will be remaining in Christ.
Another way we can remain in Christ is by abiding in Him.
The dictionary defines abide as
1. To remain in a place or
2. To continue to be sure or firm; endure
For our spiritual lives, Abiding is another intentional act.
An example of abiding could be devoting some of our day to grow our relationship with Christ.
Abiding is just another way we can stay connected.
A little bit further down in John 15 verse 11, Christ tells us that when we remain connected to Him our lives will be joyful. We develop a great relationship with our savior.
Paul says that we can be in Him as He is in the Father and He is in us. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us, to empower us, to encourage us, and to excite us if we abide in Christ. We can expect to bear fruit if we abide in Christ. And we can expect the Father to be glorified if we abide in Christ.
Jesus teaches that waiting, abiding and being open to the connection between ourselves and Christ will give us the results, the production of fruit.
Conclusion:
I’ve combined the actual definition of intention, and what Christ commands us in John to what I think helps to answer the question of what it means to live an intentional life. I think an intentional life is one with purpose. The purpose is followed with a bold and steady determination. An intentional life has purpose, discipline and vision whose goal is to remain and grow in Christ.
*I brought this plant with me to use as an illustration to help visualize what Christ says in the scripture from tonight.
Jesus says I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.
With this plant we can see this analogy.
Christ is the vine. The vine is the center from which everything grows. The vine is the source of nourishment and life for every branch. As long as the branches remain connected to the vine, they will receive all the nourishment they need to live. Eventually the branches will blossom and in essence, they will bear fruit.
But, if a branch is not connected to the vine, it will no longer receive nourishment. It may appear to be healthy right now, but in time, it will wither away. It will never blossom or bear fruit because it isn’t connected to the vine.
Fortunately for us, our fate can be different from that of this branch will undoubtedly wither away.
Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we are invited to join back to the vine at any time.
Jesus, the vine, is always there for us. He is waiting to give us the nourishment we need to live. All we have to do is be intentional about asking for it.
If we remain intentional about being connected to Jesus, we will receive nourishment and will eventually blossom and be fruitful.
