Reverend Ray Osborne, Senior Minister
Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

A Worship Psalm and Prayer:

Psalm 22:25-31
"25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it."

We, like the Psalmist, cry out in praise and thanksgiving in response to God's eternal loving kindness, holding us, guiding us, enfolding us with grace. And, as we gather here as people of God, we pray that our worship will reflect that divine love. We offer our worship today with the remembrance of Easter still filling us with joy, and with the anticipation of Pentecost firing our devotion.

Let our praise for all that God has done, is doing and will do, truly resound within our hearts and our homes, within these walls and beyond. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen

I know I have shared with you the hectic schedule at the Osborne household; Paige has dance on Monday nights, Seth has dance on Tuesday nights, we of course have church on Wednesday nights, and Paige and Seth have gymnastics on Thursday nights. It’s a fairly sad statement to make but that ride to wherever we are going has become our family time together.

I told Stephanie on Wednesday that we desperately need some “quality” family time. Life’s busy isn’t it? I know as I stand here this morning I am making a connection. Your life is just as busy as mine is. When our lives and our schedules become so filled with “stuff” it’s hard to make any extra time for the family isn’t it? Even harder to make time for God and church isn’t it?

Let me tell you something I noticed many years ago; we always have time to do exactly what we want to do. The things that are the most important to us, we do and the things that are not that important to us, we tend to let those things go without being done.

Thomas Kelly, author of A Testament of Devotion speaks to our hectic and complex schedules, "It is not complexity that explains the hectic rush, but a lack of inner integration. Instead of being centered around one mastering Will within us, we are a whole committee of selves pulled this way and that." (p. 114)

You see today’s gospel lesson is about “being centered around one mastering Will within us,” that one being Jesus; it’s about abiding, and abounding, and unfortunately abandoning Jesus.

If I were to ask you this morning which of those three words describes your relationship with Jesus which one would you choose? Are you abiding in Him? Abounding? Perhaps abiding AND abounding, or have you abandoned Him allowing Him to lose out to those other things that fill your schedule and demand your time?

When I read the gospel lesson and when I study it I have to come away being bothered and troubled about my own struggles in my relationship with Jesus. I want there to be a fire in my belly, a burning in my soul to serve Him with my entire being. I must confess to you that sometimes I allow a busy and demanding schedule to steal that fire and quench the burning desire to serve my Lord.

You see, while I know that “quality” time with my family is important, I also know that “quality” time with Jesus is important as well, and that in reality my time abiding in Jesus ought to always come first and before anything else in my life. I confess to you this morning my own weakness and my own struggle in my spiritual journey.

So many times when I read the Scriptures the words leap out at me and grab me by my collar and this voice screams at me “ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? I AM SPEAKING TO YOU!!”

This morning He’s speaking to all of us, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”

You have often heard me speak to our being “present day Disciples of Jesus” perhaps even to ad nauseam. Jesus tells us that not only are we to be “abiding” in Him but we are to be fruit producing Disciples. I use to watch Tuesday night boxing on USA. Each boxer had a different style of fighting yet all boxers shared one thing in common. They all had a particular punch that was the “knockout punch.” They would fight the other boxer trying to wear down their opponent hoping that they would have the opportunity to carpe diem, to seize the moment!

Well let me read to you Jesus’ knockout punch again in case you didn’t catch it the first two times, “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”

What happens when you and I no longer make our relationship with Jesus the number one priority in our lives? We no longer produce fruit and we wither and die spiritually.

I attribute my white hair to the fact that a lot of students at the School of Divinity confide in me their loss of direction. Often someone will come up to me and say “You know Ray, I know that God has called me into ministry, but I sure wish He’d tell me what to do in the ministry.” Maybe you have asked that question in one form or another. What I am about to say to you can be either a blessing or a bane, depending on which side of this fruit producing thing you are sitting.

There is one common goal that Jesus have for every single life – to produce fruit! That’s it! We are each one to be producers of fruit – “fruity disciples.” If we are not producing fruit, then we are not living out the will of Jesus for our lives.

I don’t know about you but that hits me square between the eyes! My abiding in Him is the sole act the can carry out that mandate. When I include Him, when I make time for Jesus before I make time for anything else in my life, THEN and only THEN am I going to produce fruit in my life.

As I wrote this sermon it came to me that some of you here today might not truly understand what it means to produce fruit. That phrase may very well be a foreign concept to you. Let me illustrate this way.

Our goal in life ought to be to become more like Jesus. Wouldn’t you agree that is a good goal for us? One day John the baptizer was telling his parishioners about Jesus and speaking of Jesus he said, “He must increase and I must decrease.” That should be our goal in life. When that goal becomes a reality for us, an essential need in our lives, then in order for that to happen, Jesus says we must abide in Him. It is that abiding, that time that we spend in prayer, reading the Bible, coming to Sunday School and Wednesday night Bible Study, the time that we spend each day alone with Jesus, that abiding will cause us to produce fruit which in turn causes us to become more like Him. That producing of fruit is the taking on of the qualities of Jesus in our lives.

I meet so many people in life who are so unhappy. Let me share the key to happiness – abiding in Jesus. You want to be happy? Abide in Him. In my preparation for this sermon I read a verse from Romans that speaks to my heart:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13 NRSV)

Isn’t it a neat concept to realize that if we “abide” in Him we can “abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit?”

So let me ask you – are you abiding, abounding, or have you abandoned Him? There was an even stronger word from Jesus this morning that can stand on its own, “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

Let us pray:

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