Desperate times call for desperate prayers.
Abiding in Jesus when everything else is falling apart.
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I once posted on social media about my youngest son’s invention of the word “yesbody” (as in the opposite of “nobody”) when he was two.
For example:
“Is yesbody coming to my birthday party?”
“When is yesbody going to get here?”
People commented and shared all of the funny vocabulary words their kids have come up with. One kid says “last day” instead of yesterday. Another uses “snowman” for boys and “snowma’am” for girls. (We agreed that “snow persons” is probably the most politically correct.) One parent said their kid thinks the opposite of inappropriate is out-appropriate.
Amy reminded me that our son went through a phase where he called it YouTube when someone else was watching, but MeTube when he was watching. Honestly that one makes a lot of sense to me and I’ve started doing it, too.
Little kids have a way of connecting the dots in our world in ways that most adults can’t. They have a way of cutting through all of the fake pleasantries and societal pressures to say exactly what they mean.
The most vivid example of this for me occurred during the winter 2020/2021, when our youngest son insisted on saying the prayer before every family meal. His prayer was simple and the same every time:
“Oh, God. Amen.”
At first, we all thought it was the funniest thing. Amy, our older son, and I would get so excited before every meal knowing it was coming and then try to stifle our laughter when he said it. But after a few weeks, I realized that my prayer life was starting to sound a lot like my son’s. We were still reeling from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, we were coming off of a very contentious election cycle and the aftermath that followed, and we got hit with the worst winter storm Texas had seen in a century, all while still navigating a global pandemic.
Desperate times call for desperate prayers.
Sometimes we know we need God’s help, but we don’t know where to begin when it comes to praying for that help. This was true back in 2020/2021 when my son invented this prayer and it’s still true today—ICE is grabbing people off the streets, wealth inequality is on the rise, democracy is under attack, the “Big Beautiful Bill” is set to take away healthcare from millions, and wars rage all over the world.
At times like these, desperate prayers are more than appropriate… they are powerful.
“God I need you… God help me… God do something… Oh, God… Amen.”
When I pray prayers like that, I always think of something the persecutor-of-Christians-turned-church-planter named Paul wrote to the church he helped start in Rome.
The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
Romans 8:26
The Holy Spirit, God in us, helps us when we’re desperate and prays for us when we don’t know what to say. It’s a really beautiful thing in the midst of a hard time.
But what if we didn’t just desperately depend on Jesus when we were really struggling? What if we desperately depended on Jesus all of the time? Every day. Every moment.
At the risk of sounding trite, desperately depending on Jesus day by day, moment by moment, is everything. It is the foundation upon which the entirety of the Christian life, is built. Loving God, loving our neighbor, and living from our identity in Christ all starts with depending on Jesus. With him we can do everything, and without him we can do nothing.
Jesus said almost this exact thing to his closest friends the night before he died. As always, the context is important. Jesus has just shared the Last Supper with his disciples and is now giving them what many scholars call his “Farewell Discourse,” the last major teaching time before his death on the cross. He’s covering a myriad of topics, but his speech mostly centers around promising hope for the disciples and giving them instructions for when he’s gone. Then, in chapter fourteen, he promises to send them his Holy Spirit.
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
John 14:16-21
Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as his Spirit and says that through it, He will indwell every believer. Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus.
Abide in me, as I abide in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in them, will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5
There is a popular sentiment among Bible scholars that Jesus did this part of his teaching while on the move. Remember: Jesus is in the middle of his Farewell Discourse which mostly took place around the Last Supper table, but there is a little break at the very end of chapter fourteen.
Come now; let us leave.
John 14:31
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
John 15:1
Between these two lines, Jesus and his disciples got up from the Last Supper table and began to make their way to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus would be arrested just a few hours later.
According to some scholars, Jesus might have paused at the Temple with His disciples after leaving the upper room, before they went to the garden of Gethsemane. At the entrance to the Holy Place in the Temple, there was a grapevine made of gold, which symbolized Israel. Commentator Gary M. Burge notes that “wealthy citizens could bring gifts to add to the vine (gold tendrils, grapes, or leaves), and these would be added by metal workers to the ever-growing vine. Josephus claims that some of the grape clusters were the ‘height of a man.’” In the days of Christ, the wealthy could, in effect, buy their own fruit and have it etched in gold for time immemorial.
Beth Moore
What a powerful contrast. Upon the Temple wall hung a golden grapevine, available only to the wealthiest people, but humbly walking toward death on the cross is the living grapevine who makes himself available to everyone. The former bringing power and prestige to a select few, but the latter brings love and life to anyone who wants it.
Whether Jesus paused at the Temple to make this dichotomous illustration or not, the point remains. Jesus is the true vine, the true source of life; everything else is a poor imitation.
So what does it look like to stay connected to the true vine as our source of life?
Abide in me, as I abide in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in them, will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5
Five times in two verses, Jesus tells us to “abide” in him. When a word is used that many times in rapid succession, we need to pay attention to it. So what does it mean to “abide?”
In The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson translates “abide in me as I abide in you” in this way:
Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.
Jesus
Peterson uses terms like “live” and “home” because abide is a word loaded with themes of hospitality.
In the days of Jesus, when a weary traveler was passing through a city, barely able to put one foot in front of the other, a hospitable homeowner would walk out with a simple invitation: “abide here tonight.” This phrase is literally translated, “stay in the house.”
It was an invitation to rest and regain strength. It was an offer of food, water, and friendship. It was an invitation to stop trying to do everything on your own, even if just for a night, and allow someone else to meet your needs.
This is the same invitation Jesus extends to us today, except it’s not just for one night and it’s not only when we are struggling. Jesus invites us to abide in him and have our needs met by him every moment of every day.
This brings to mind a harmful ideology, one which I don’t buy into: the idea that “God helps those who help themselves.” Honestly, I think this idea is directly juxtaposed to what Jesus is teaching here.
God doesn’t help those who help themselves; God helps those who realize they can’t help themselves. The myth of self-sufficiency is the enemy of abiding in Christ. It’s also the enemy of living in community with your sisters and brothers in Christ.
None of us are truly self-made. No one has big enough bootstraps to pull themselves up without some help.
There is no such thing as a self-constructed life. There is only being in Christ, or there is the nothingness that others create for us.
M. Craig Barnes
If you think you got to where you are today without the grace of God and the help of people around you, you are living in a fantasy world. We need Jesus and we need each other. Depend only on yourself at our own peril. Refuse to abide in Christ to your own demise.
Choosing not to abide in Jesus makes as much sense as ignoring the invitation of a hospitable homeowner when you are a weary traveler. It makes as much sense as collapsing in the street instead of a warm bed because you are too proud or self-reliant to admit that you need help.
So, how do we do this? What does abiding in the vine and depending on Jesus really look like?
As I’ve already insinuated, it starts with humility. It starts with recognizing that true weakness comes from relying only on our own strength. Conversely, true strength comes from placing our weakness in the hands of Jesus and relying on his strength.
Don’t miss it:
True weakness comes from relying only on our own strength.
True strength comes from placing our weakness in the hands of Jesus and relying on his strength.
[God] said to me, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
When we are weak, we are actually strong. This formula, counterintuitive though it may be, only works in the Kingdom of God.
The first step to a life of dependence is humbly realizing our inability to be self-sufficient and asking Jesus to help.
The second (and final) step is simply to follow after Jesus, allowing him to lead you in everything you do. This one is a lot harder to describe, because we really don’t have an exact science for what this looks like. My old pastor and mentor, Pete, used to always say it’s more like a dance than a march. In a march, we all get the exact same orders and execute them exactly the same way. But dancing is different. When we dance, we all hear the same music, but every person’s response is a little bit different.
That means I can’t give you the exact steps to take, but I can tell you what the results should look like.
Whoever abides in me and I in them, will bear much fruit.
John 15:5
If you are depending on Jesus, you will bear much fruit. What exactly does this mean? Thankfully, Jesus keeps teaching.
This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my 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 one another as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s 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 so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love one another.
John 15:8-17
“Want to have a fruit-filled life?” Jesus asks. “Love one another.” He actually says it twice, just to make sure no one misses it.
I love how Beth puts it in the book I referenced above:
Love God. Love one another. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. That about covers it. In Christ’s meticulous census, the community exempt from the love of Christians has a population of exactly zero… Love God. Love people. That’s what we’re here to do. Without love, all fruit is plastic.
Beth Moore
“Without love, all fruit is plastic.”
Depending on Jesus will always yield the fruit of love. Depending on ourselves yields plastic fruit that’s good for nothing.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Galatians 5:22-23
A few questions to wrap up:
What fruit do you see in your life?
Are you loving well?
Do you experience peace?
Are you extending kindness and patience toward others?
Are you being faithful, gentle, and controlled with those around you?
What goodness is coming from your words and deeds?
What joy are you experiencing (or bringing to others)?
Our fruit is not a checklist, but a well check. If we are not experiencing these things, we need to check in with ourselves and the Spirit that lives within us. What is preventing us from the abundant life Jesus desires for each of us? How is he working in and through us, no matter our circumstances?
Take some time to take inventory, then take one small step toward love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, or self-control. Not out of shame, but into wholeness.
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Love this piece. Our young daughter used to cry when we would say, “Meanwhile…” (as in, ‘meanwhile, back at the ranch’). Then she would say, No! No! “Nicewhile!!! Nicewhile!”
Also - an interesting, life-giving translation point regarding the vine and the branches! John 15:2 is often translated “every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away” or ‘casts off.’ It is an often-used translation in many Bible versions that induces fear. It communicates to us that if a vine (us) doesn’t produce fruit, the vinedresser will throw it out, ‘cast it into the fire and burn it.’ (John 15:2,6). This translation is consistent with a demanding, punitive God and puts the emphasis on our effort; Produce or be cast out. However, ‘airo’ (the word translated ‘cast off’) can also be equally translated “lift up.” Vinedressers will tell you this is much more consistent with what they actually do! When a vine grows long or falls into the dirt where it cannot grow well, the vinedresser lifts it up - every vine is precious - and re-attaches it to the trellis where it can receive sunlight and nutrients and bear fruit again. When we are struggling, God’s heart is not to turn away or cast us off! His heart is to lift us up, to encourage us, to bring healing and restore us to a place where we can thrive again. If you’re struggling…be patient. Seek God rather than fear Him. Our loving Vinedresser will lift you up, restore you, and empower you to bear fruit again! When you have friends or family members who are struggling, rather than judging or ‘casting off,’ pray that our Father, the vinedresser, will slowly and carefully lift them up to a place where they can be fruitful. This is God’s heart for each of us!!
This post comforted me. Thank you for this. It gave me hope. Bless you.