Secrets of the Vine Devotional (Hardback)

"You did not choose Me,
but I chose you and appointed you that
you should go and bear fruit."

John 15:16

Day 1

The Great Exchange

"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full."

John 15:10-11

This is a book about grapes as a metaphor for supernatural abundance in your life. Big, beautiful, juicy grapes-bushels of them! But since I'm from Georgia, where we grow a lot of peaches, could I talk about peaches first?

One spring years ago, when our family first moved out to the country, I heard about a prize-winning local orchard. "Famous Georgia peaches," my neighbor said proudly, "big as melons, sweet as nectar." But the first time I saw the orchard, I was shocked. It was early spring, with not a peach in sight, and under every tree a thicket of long, unsightly poles propped up each branch.

Had a twister come through? Had some invisible disease attacked a once-famous landmark? I didn't know. I went home thinking it looked more like a tree hospital than a famous orchard.

When I asked my neighbor what had befallen the orchard, he laughed. "Just wait a few months," he said. "You'll get the picture."

I went back to the orchard in midsummer ... and I got the picture. The peaches were the largest, most beautiful I'd ever seen, and the crop was so heavy that the purpose of those poles became immediately clear. Without them, the sheer weight of ripening fruit would easily have snapped the branches.

As I walked through the rows of trees, I found myself praying. Lord, may my life someday look like this orchard for You. May the fruit of my life be so heavy that You'll need angels to hold up the branches. And whatever You need to do in my life to make me a person who can produce that kind of abundance-Lord, please do it!

That spontaneous prayer is at the heart of this little book-a plea for supernatural productivity for God's kingdom, and a plea for His work in our lives to make it possible.

These are requests God promises to answer. But there's a catch.

To get to the life God has in mind for you, you have to be willing to make an exchange. You have to be willing to go against the grain of what you may have assumed to be true, to be willing to respond to God in new ways that won't feel at all safe or smart, at least to begin with.

Bumper crops don't just naturally happen. So in this book, where our conversation is set in a vineyard, we'll be talking about things like mud and mildew, cleaning and restraining, and cutting away perfectly good growth. We'll also be talking about trying again in areas you may have tried hard in before.

But please don't hear the words and lose the picture. The words are about how God tends your life. The picture is what He's preparing you to produce-a harvest so extraordinary that you'll need His arms underneath you just to hold up your branch!

Are you willing to cooperate with how God works in your life at a deeper level? If so, then you are signing up for the great exchange. Jesus promised it to His disciples in the vineyard the last night He was alive. Jesus said you and I can expect to have this rarest abundance of all-an abundance of the heart-as we produce a harvest for Him. He said we can have it in full and should settle for nothing less.

He called it joy.... These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

As you go through your day today, try this: Pull out all your old assumptions, worn-out expectations, and broken ideas about how God works in your life. Empty the junk drawers of your spirit.

Then find a moment to stand in the presence of Jesus and lay down your worthless collection. Tell Him it's time you made the great exchange. Accept His offer. And set out with me on the path toward a joy that remains.

My Vineyard Journal: "Lord, lead me into a life of extraordinary, joyful abundance for You. Help me to desire it passionately. Today, show me a glimpse of what my harvest could be like this time next year."

* * *

Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose
for which I was created and born again,
not from successfully doing something of my own choosing.

Oswald Chambers

Day 2

Pictures from the Vineyard

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. I am the vine, you are the branches."

John 15:1, 5

If you've read Secrets of the Vine, you know that Jesus chose a dramatic moment and a memorable word picture to tell His best friends what they could expect in their future. The conversation occurred only minutes after He had dashed all their hopes for earthly glory and power (John 13, 14) and only hours before He was to be crucified (John 19).

On their late-night walk from the upper room to Gethsemane, Jesus had led His disciples into a vineyard outside the city walls. There, Jesus paused. As torches flickered in the night air, His friends waited. Perhaps they wondered what else remained to be said that they could possibly want to hear.

But surrounded carefully tended rows of grapes, Jesus began a most surprising conversation.

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.... By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit." (John 15:1-2, 5, 8)

Think of how those words must have fallen on their ears. Instead of talk of legions of angels, Jesus talked about plants. Instead of insurrection, He spoke repeatedly of fruit bearing. And He told them that an ongoing relationship with Him was not only possible, but would be the key to producing more fruit.

Much more.

Notice how clearly Jesus identified what each part of the grape plant represented:

The vine is Jesus. The vine of the grape is the trunk that brings sap up from the roots into the branches.

The branches are His followers. Carefully tended branches grow out along trellises from both sides of the vine and produce the grapes.

The vineyard keeper is God the Father. The vinedresser in a vineyard has one purpose-to work on each branch individually so that it will bear the finest harvest of grapes.

The fruit is the good works of Jesus' disciples.

Are you beginning to see why Jesus left His friends with this picture of the vineyard? Here are several important truths from the vineyard that can change your life today:

1. The vineyard shows you God's purpose for you. Jesus wanted His
followers to remember that we have one overarching purpose on
earth-to bear fruit for God's glory.

2. The vineyard shows that you have been created and are regularly
being tended to succeed in this purpose. The fact is, with the proper
care, a grape branch is a wonder of the natural world-perfectly
suited for exceptionally high crop yields year after year.

3. The vineyard shows you how God will work in your life to
achieve His purpose. Clearly, the Father's activities in the vineyard
are focused on increasing our output for Him. The Vinedresser
is active, not passive; present, not absent; committed, not
casual or careless. 4. The vineyard shows that we are created for a living relationship
with God. Just as Jesus had earlier described Himself as the
Good Shepherd, here He again chose an image that conveys a
mysteriously interconnected relationship: The Vine gives its life
to the branch; the ever present, ever involved Vinedresser tends
the branch; the branch produces valuable fruit.

5. The vineyard is proof that God wants you to be clear, not
confused, about His ways in your life. Unfortunately, many
Christians misread His activities behind the scenes in their lives,
and therefore slide into doubt and mistrust. Or they assume that
real friendship with God is a spiritual accomplishment reserved
for monks and missionaries.

But Jesus came to tell you and me the "secrets" of God at work in His vineyard. I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart to learn about fruitfulness today. And listen for the footsteps of your Father, the Vinedresser, in the rows of your life.

My Vineyard Journal: Up to now, what have I imagined Jesus wanted from my life? How might my thinking change, based on the truths Jesus revealed that night in the vineyard?

* * *

Speak in my words today, think in my thoughts,
and work in all my deeds.
And seeing that it is Your gracious will
to make use even of such weak human instruments
in the fulfillment of Your mighty purpose for the world,
let my life today be the channel through
which some little portion of Your divine love
and pity may reach the lives that are nearest to my own.

John Baillie

We do not look at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporary,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

Day 3

What Is Fruit?

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.

Titus 3:14

Somebody says banana, you think monkey. Somebody says apple, you think homemade apple pie or maybe school lunch.

What do you think of when we talk about bearing fruit?

Fruit is God's picture of eternal results stemming from your life. Paul's instruction to Titus in today's verse shows what the Bible means when it talks about spiritual fruit. It's nearly synonymous with good works. Biblically speaking, we could define fruit as a good work that pleases God and that is done with an appropriate motive. In his first letter, Peter exhorted the early Christians to live in such a way that even hostile unbelievers would be persuaded to glorify God when they saw their good works (1 Peter 2:11-12).

So fruit is the yield of your life. Fruit is leading others to the Lord (John 4:35-38)-and it's much more. Fruit is teaching and encouraging other believers (Romans 1:13). Fruit is helping or giving (Philippians 4:16-17). Fruit is genuine worship (Hebrews 13:15). Some include fruit as the beautiful outward expression of the inward work of the Spirit in your character to make you more like Christ (Galatians 5:22-23; Colossians 1:3-8). Fruit, then, is any good work that brings glory to God (Titus 3:14).

The big difference between physical and spiritual fruit is that spiritual fruit blesses you now and lasts into eternity. Jesus invited His disciples to bear the fruit that would "remain" (John 15:16).

Yet even though you and I are chosen for just such productivity, our lives can easily add up to something tragically less. The truth is, we can struggle unknowingly for our entire lives against what God wants, all the while assuming we are living according to His will.

A grapevine's natural tendency, you see, is not abundance. In fact, one expert describes the plant's natural growing tendency as "undisciplined, scattered, and dispersed." Left to itself, a grape plant rambles through the underbrush. It straggles over rocks and climbs up any handy tree trunk. In the process, it manages to produce only small, often bitter fruit.

But in cultivation, the picture changes completely. One grape plant can easily yield sixty large, sweet clusters of grapes each season. One life can, God's grace, be a trophy for His glory.

Take the life of country preacher John Bunyan. In seventeenth-century England, he spent twelve years of his life in jail for preaching the gospel. When he was offered his freedom on the condition that he stop evangelizing, Bunyan replied, "If I were out of prison today, I would preach the gospel again tomorrow with the help of God."

Bunyan used his prison years to allow God to cultivate his branch. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, a spiritual classic that has been leading thousands to Christ every year since it was published. What Bunyan wanted more than freedom was a life that mattered for God. Looking back on his imprisonment, Bunyan said, "If I were fruitless, it mattered not who commended me; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who did condemn."

Notice how Bunyan evaluated his success. Were his efforts producing results for eternity? Then he was an unqualified success. His only goal was God's goal for him. That's how you produce spiritual fruit, my friend!

As you look over your life today, to what degree would you say it is entirely given over to accomplishing what God wants? Are you willing to submit to God's hand, to let Him cultivate you-even through adversity-so that you can bear fruit for Him?

If so, then you're on your way to a vigorous and purposeful life, magnificently weighted down with clusters of the most beautiful fruit you've ever seen.

My Vineyard Journal: How much do I truly desire fruitfulness? What can I point to in my life right now that is a sure sign of fruit that brings God glory?

* * *

The one thing He commands us as His branches is to bear fruit. Live to bless others, to testify of the life and the love there is in Jesus.
In faith and obedience give your whole life to that which Jesus
chose us for and appointed us to-fruit bearing.
Think of His electing us to this, accepting your appointment as coming
from Him Who always gives us everything He demands of us.

Andrew Murray

Chapter One

"You did not choose Me,
but I chose you and appointed you that
you should go and bear fruit."

John 15:16

Day 1

The Great Exchange

"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full."

John 15:10-11

This is a book about grapes as a metaphor for supernatural abundance in your life. Big, beautiful, juicy grapes-bushels of them! But since I'm from Georgia, where we grow a lot of peaches, could I talk about peaches first?

One spring years ago, when our family first moved out to the country, I heard about a prize-winning local orchard. "Famous Georgia peaches," my neighbor said proudly, "big as melons, sweet as nectar." But the first time I saw the orchard, I was shocked. It was early spring, with not a peach in sight, and under every tree a thicket of long, unsightly poles propped up each branch.

Had a twister come through? Had some invisible disease attacked a once-famous landmark? I didn't know. I went home thinking it looked more like a tree hospital than a famous orchard.

When I asked my neighbor what had befallen the orchard, he laughed. "Just wait a few months," he said. "You'll get the picture."

I went back to the orchard in midsummer ... and I got the picture. The peaches were the largest, most beautiful I'd ever seen, and the crop was so heavy that the purpose of those poles became immediately clear. Without them, the sheer weight of ripening fruit would easily have snapped the branches.

As I walked through the rows of trees, I found myself praying. Lord, may my life someday look like this orchard for You. May the fruit of my life be so heavy that You'll need angels to hold up the branches. And whatever You need to do in my life to make me a person who can produce that kind of abundance-Lord, please do it!

That spontaneous prayer is at the heart of this little book-a plea for supernatural productivity for God's kingdom, and a plea for His work in our lives to make it possible.

These are requests God promises to answer. But there's a catch.

To get to the life God has in mind for you, you have to be willing to make an exchange. You have to be willing to go against the grain of what you may have assumed to be true, to be willing to respond to God in new ways that won't feel at all safe or smart, at least to begin with.

Bumper crops don't just naturally happen. So in this book, where our conversation is set in a vineyard, we'll be talking about things like mud and mildew, cleaning and restraining, and cutting away perfectly good growth. We'll also be talking about trying again in areas you may have tried hard in before.

But please don't hear the words and lose the picture. The words are about how God tends your life. The picture is what He's preparing you to produce-a harvest so extraordinary that you'll need His arms underneath you just to hold up your branch!

Are you willing to cooperate with how God works in your life at a deeper level? If so, then you are signing up for the great exchange. Jesus promised it to His disciples in the vineyard the last night He was alive. Jesus said you and I can expect to have this rarest abundance of all-an abundance of the heart-as we produce a harvest for Him. He said we can have it in full and should settle for nothing less.

He called it joy.... These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

As you go through your day today, try this: Pull out all your old assumptions, worn-out expectations, and broken ideas about how God works in your life. Empty the junk drawers of your spirit.

Then find a moment to stand in the presence of Jesus and lay down your worthless collection. Tell Him it's time you made the great exchange. Accept His offer. And set out with me on the path toward a joy that remains.

My Vineyard Journal: "Lord, lead me into a life of extraordinary, joyful abundance for You. Help me to desire it passionately. Today, show me a glimpse of what my harvest could be like by this time next year."

* * *

Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose
for which I was created and born again,
not from successfully doing something of my own choosing.

Oswald Chambers

Day 2

Pictures from the Vineyard

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. I am the vine, you are the branches."

John 15:1, 5

If you've read Secrets of the Vine, you know that Jesus chose a dramatic moment and a memorable word picture to tell His best friends what they could expect in their future. The conversation occurred only minutes after He had dashed all their hopes for earthly glory and power (John 13, 14) and only hours before He was to be crucified (John 19).

On their late-night walk from the upper room to Gethsemane, Jesus had led His disciples into a vineyard outside the city walls. There, Jesus paused. As torches flickered in the night air, His friends waited. Perhaps they wondered what else remained to be said that they could possibly want to hear.

But surrounded by carefully tended rows of grapes, Jesus began a most surprising conversation.

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.... By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit." (John 15:1-2, 5, 8)

Think of how those words must have fallen on their ears. Instead of talk of legions of angels, Jesus talked about plants. Instead of insurrection, He spoke repeatedly of fruit bearing. And He told them that an ongoing relationship with Him was not only possible, but would be the key to producing more fruit.

Much more.

Notice how clearly Jesus identified what each part of the grape plant represented:

The vine is Jesus. The vine of the grape is the trunk that brings sap up from the roots into the branches.

The branches are His followers. Carefully tended branches grow out along trellises from both sides of the vine and produce the grapes.

The vineyard keeper is God the Father. The vinedresser in a vineyard has one purpose-to work on each branch individually so that it will bear the finest harvest of grapes.

The fruit is the good works of Jesus' disciples.

Are you beginning to see why Jesus left His friends with this picture of the vineyard? Here are several important truths from the vineyard that can change your life today:

1. The vineyard shows you God's purpose for you. Jesus wanted His
followers to remember that we have one overarching purpose on
earth-to bear fruit for God's glory.

2. The vineyard shows that you have been created and are regularly
being tended to succeed in this purpose. The fact is, with the proper
care, a grape branch is a wonder of the natural world-perfectly
suited for exceptionally high crop yields year after year.

3. The vineyard shows you how God will work in your life to
achieve His purpose. Clearly, the Father's activities in the vineyard
are focused on increasing our output for Him. The Vinedresser
is active, not passive; present, not absent; committed, not
casual or careless. 4. The vineyard shows that we are created for a living relationship
with God. Just as Jesus had earlier described Himself as the
Good Shepherd, here He again chose an image that conveys a
mysteriously interconnected relationship: The Vine gives its life
to the branch; the ever present, ever involved Vinedresser tends
the branch; the branch produces valuable fruit.

5. The vineyard is proof that God wants you to be clear, not
confused, about His ways in your life. Unfortunately, many
Christians misread His activities behind the scenes in their lives,
and therefore slide into doubt and mistrust. Or they assume that
real friendship with God is a spiritual accomplishment reserved
for monks and missionaries.

But Jesus came to tell you and me the "secrets" of God at work in His vineyard. I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart to learn about fruitfulness today. And listen for the footsteps of your Father, the Vinedresser, in the rows of your life.

My Vineyard Journal: Up to now, what have I imagined Jesus wanted from my life? How might my thinking change, based on the truths Jesus revealed that night in the vineyard?

* * *

Speak in my words today, think in my thoughts,
and work in all my deeds.
And seeing that it is Your gracious will
to make use even of such weak human instruments
in the fulfillment of Your mighty purpose for the world,
let my life today be the channel through
which some little portion of Your divine love
and pity may reach the lives that are nearest to my own.

John Baillie

We do not look at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporary,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

Day 3

What Is Fruit?

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.

Titus 3:14

Somebody says banana, you think monkey. Somebody says apple, you think homemade apple pie or maybe school lunch.

What do you think of when we talk about bearing fruit?

Fruit is God's picture of eternal results stemming from your life. Paul's instruction to Titus in today's verse shows what the Bible means when it talks about spiritual fruit. It's nearly synonymous with good works. Biblically speaking, we could define fruit as a good work that pleases God and that is done with an appropriate motive. In his first letter, Peter exhorted the early Christians to live in such a way that even hostile unbelievers would be persuaded to glorify God when they saw their good works (1 Peter 2:11-12).

So fruit is the yield of your life. Fruit is leading others to the Lord (John 4:35-38)-and it's much more. Fruit is teaching and encouraging other believers (Romans 1:13). Fruit is helping or giving (Philippians 4:16-17). Fruit is genuine worship (Hebrews 13:15). Some include fruit as the beautiful outward expression of the inward work of the Spirit in your character to make you more like Christ (Galatians 5:22-23; Colossians 1:3-8). Fruit, then, is any good work that brings glory to God (Titus 3:14).

The big difference between physical and spiritual fruit is that spiritual fruit blesses you now and lasts into eternity. Jesus invited His disciples to bear the fruit that would "remain" (John 15:16).

Yet even though you and I are chosen for just such productivity, our lives can easily add up to something tragically less. The truth is, we can struggle unknowingly for our entire lives against what God wants, all the while assuming we are living according to His will.

A grapevine's natural tendency, you see, is not abundance. In fact, one expert describes the plant's natural growing tendency as "undisciplined, scattered, and dispersed." Left to itself, a grape plant rambles through the underbrush. It straggles over rocks and climbs up any handy tree trunk. In the process, it manages to produce only small, often bitter fruit.

But in cultivation, the picture changes completely. One grape plant can easily yield sixty large, sweet clusters of grapes each season. One life can, by God's grace, be a trophy for His glory.

Take the life of country preacher John Bunyan. In seventeenth-century England, he spent twelve years of his life in jail for preaching the gospel. When he was offered his freedom on the condition that he stop evangelizing, Bunyan replied, "If I were out of prison today, I would preach the gospel again tomorrow with the help of God."

Bunyan used his prison years to allow God to cultivate his branch. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, a spiritual classic that has been leading thousands to Christ every year since it was published. What Bunyan wanted more than freedom was a life that mattered for God. Looking back on his imprisonment, Bunyan said, "If I were fruitless, it mattered not who commended me; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who did condemn."

Notice how Bunyan evaluated his success. Were his efforts producing results for eternity? Then he was an unqualified success. His only goal was God's goal for him. That's how you produce spiritual fruit, my friend!

As you look over your life today, to what degree would you say it is entirely given over to accomplishing what God wants? Are you willing to submit to God's hand, to let Him cultivate you-even through adversity-so that you can bear fruit for Him?

If so, then you're on your way to a vigorous and purposeful life, magnificently weighted down with clusters of the most beautiful fruit you've ever seen.

My Vineyard Journal: How much do I truly desire fruitfulness? What can I point to in my life right now that is a sure sign of fruit that brings God glory?

* * *

The one thing He commands us as His branches is to bear fruit. Live to bless others, to testify of the life and the love there is in Jesus.
In faith and obedience give your whole life to that which Jesus
chose us for and appointed us to-fruit bearing.
Think of His electing us to this, accepting your appointment as coming
from Him Who always gives us everything He demands of us.

Andrew Murray