How hard does that peach work anyways...?

Chapter 8 - The Vice of Values
It is a hard adjustment to switch from seeing our relationship with the world and with God as one of values/deeds/doing/effort, etc to one based on relationship.  It is equally hard to get our minds around the reality that the answer to life's most profound questions is a person.  The answer is not knowledge, or insight, or understanding, or dedication, or commitment.  The answer is Jesus.  A relationship with Jesus.  That revelation turns everything upside down.

Our world is filled with the idea of the importance of having the right values.  Family values.  Christian values.  As if anything existing outside of Jesus Christ has any value anyway.  We seem to have gotten it all backwards -- if we have the right values and practice them in the right way we will grow closer to God and hopefully live a Christian life.  Agghhh!  God carved His values in stone tablets and gave them to the Israelites, knowing full well that no one could live them.  History proved Him right.  What has changed that we think we can!?

Only Jesus can live a Christian life.  By accepting His offer to live His life though us, all the values and doing and efforts originate from Him and play out through us.  The relationship comes first.  The results come from our recognition of God's call to rest; abide; surrender; give up all efforts to "do."  The "doing" starts with Jesus.  If we are not abiding in Christ; resting in Christ; allowing Him to live His Life in us, through us, as us, then everything we do is wrong!  There is no value in God's economy for anything originating anywhere than through Jesus.

Growing up in the church I don't ever remember any talk about the other tree in the garden -- The Tree of Life.  Everything was focused on the tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil.  It was almost as if the whole story started when Adam ate the fruit from that tree.  Adam had a choice.  He chose wrong.  Humanity has paid the price for his choice throughout history.  God fixed everything in Jesus.  We can accept His invitation to erase our sins and live His life through us, or we can continue to live lives focused on a corrupt version of good and evil.  We are offered the same choice Adam had -- eat from the tree of good and evil or eat from the Tree of Life -- self or Jesus.  God has given us free choice from creation and He continues to do so.

The eternal question is not about right and wrong.  It is about Jesus.  The wrong tree (self) cannot product the right fruit.  But because of our natural affinity for the wrong tree, we continue to struggle and wrestle and strive to accomplish the impossible.  All that work is worth nothing.

Gardens and growing and plants and trees flow throughout Scripture as metaphors for our relationship with God.  In John 15:5 Jesus tell us, "I am the vine and you are the branches.  If a man abides in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."   Does fruit struggle to grow on the branch?  McVey tells a story at his conferences of going out into the Georgia peach orchards at night to see if he could hear the branches grunting and groaning and straining to grow preaches.  Does the branch make any effort to grow fruit? No.  It just grows naturally off the branch, fed by the vine.  If this is a picture Jesus uses of how Christian fruit is produced, why have we turned it into such an effort?  The vine can exist without either the fruit or the branch, but neither of them can exist without the vine.  The vital component here is the vine.  Everything else flows/grows because of the vine.  Pinch, squeeze, flex...the branch cannot grow a peach disconnected from the vine.  Squirm, struggle, groan, moan...the peach cannot create itself without the vine.  Without the vine there is nothing!  Without Jesus we can do nothing!  And anything we do = nothing!  So where did we get the idea that the question revolves around whether we are doing right or wrong?  Many of us are still eating off the wrong tree!  The question at any given time is, "Are we abiding in Christ right now?"  or "Is Jesus living His Life through me in this moment?"

Those questions take care of the right and wrong issues.  If we rest in Christ and He is living His Life though us -- isn't the question of right and wrong almost irrelevant?  How did Jesus describe His life?  In John 5:19 & 8:28 He explains that He only does what the Father tells Him.  In John 18:21 He expands on the relationship we are invited into, "I pray that they will all be one, just as You and I are one -- as You are in Me, Father, and I am in you.  And my they be in Us so that the world will believe You sent Me."  Jesus' vine was God.  Our vine is Jesus.  Did Jesus ever have to wrestle with right and wrong?  As Graham Cooke says, "Could it be that this so close to fantasy that we can hardly believe it?"  I think that is part of our struggle -- it does sound too good to be true.  So we ignore it; modify it; explain it away; give it human (tree of good and evil) characteristics instead of seeing it for the GOOD NEWS that it is!

It is time to switch trees.  Accept Jesus' invitation for what it is.  Believe what He says about how it works.  Trust Him.  Fade-out the emphasis on right and wrong.  Fade-up your relationship with Jesus.