Abide – but Act ?? There you go again – being oppositionally obtuse. (translate that as “I don’t get it!”)
Blackaby threw me a curve, no surprise. Henry Blackaby in his devotional Experiencing God Day by Day walked me through this verse in a way that had not really impacted me before. (yes, I have read his daily devotional book for several years now, off and on):
I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit; because you can do nothing without Me. John 15:5
Sadly, I fit in Blackaby’s description that there “are those who feel that they must be constantly laboring for the Lord in order to meet God’s high standards.” I have always shucked it off as being just my nature, my competitive and active nature. But note – it is all “me” taking action, moving and making things happen.
Here Blackaby comes with his wisdom. “Jesus gave a clear picture of what our relationship to Him ought to be like. He is the vine, the source of our life. We are the branches, the place where fruit is produced.”
And there I am, squeezing my branch for every inch it is worth, doing everything I know to make that fruit pop out. But as he pointed out, Blackaby says that in “our zeal to produce ‘results’ for our Lord, we sometimes become so intent on fruit production that we neglect abiding in Christ.” Nailed me, again.
Yes, I picture “abiding” as sitting with my Bible open, hands folded, in prayer and quiet. But hey! I have a pile of things I need to do, good things, productive things, FRUIT! But his reminder is timely – Jesus said that it is not our activity that produces fruit, it is our relationship with Him.
In fact, he warned his disciples that if they attempted to live their Christian life apart from an intimate relationship with Him, they would discover that they ceased to produce any significant results. No matter how much effort they put into it. When they stopped to account for their lives, they would find only barrenness. Ouch! That is too close to home for me.
And then it dawned on me what was really bringing this topic “home to roost” for me. Being the “family history enthusiast” that I am, I created a way to bring together all my inherited family photos, pedigree info, and add to it all that I had found in my years of genealogical researching and training. I had a lot of “stuff” and I needed to put it in one place.
So I did – in an online digital storage account arranged in personal albums so I could easily map out a single one of my ancestors (or a family group) to get a sense of their lives. Everything – photos plus birth and death certificates and census records and every scrap of info and stories I could gather. And this account is paid for up front so it passes on to my descendants for generations to come (they guarantee 100 years plus my lifetime).
Great – but the same lesson Blackaby was trying to get across is what had become my obsession as I worked with my family history structure and items within it. I could get a sense of some of the “fruit” in my ancestor’s lives, obituaries and family stories, war records and items I dug up helped outline that information.
But…what I really wish I knew about my ancestor was “relationship” information. And frankly, I yearned to know their relationship with the Lord type of information. How did they come to know Him? How did they live their life with respect to Him? How was their relationship with Him? And how did it impact their kids and grandkids – the descendants?
I knew my grandmother had a strong faith and relationship with the Lord because I was around her a lot. If Billy Graham was on the TV, we were herded into the room to listen to him. If it was Sunday, I would be going with her to the Sunday School class she taught and listening to her play the organ at the First Baptist Church of Slaton, Texas. In addition to love and care for me, her consistent humming of hymns as she worked in the kitchen, her making sure I had a Bible and being the only one who wrote me letters in college and would tuck a $10 check into it – these were a reflection of her Christian relationship.
Oh, how I wish I had asked her more about that relationship, when it began, what fueled it, and what she learned from her family. You see, it is her grandfather that I have become obsessed with in my genealogy work. I would love to know if he instigated a family faith that affected her.
My mother inherited and put in her scrapbook only 1 photo of this great-great-grandfather of mine (he and wife in front of house – stick figures, I call them), and she knew no stories about him. In my research on a trip with my genealogy teacher, I found a single page in a county history compendium – it was a treasure. I actually cried tears. It had 3 portrait-type photos of him and his wife at different ages on this page and a few paragraphs that outlined his “facts”:
–at age 19, joined U.S. Army Cavalry (with his older brother) fighting Indians and guiding settlers and killing buffalo for Fort Leavenworth inhabitants where he was stationed for 5 years
–on a trip through Texas, met the woman he would marry within a year of leaving the Army
–within another year, he joined the Civil War as a Texas Confederate Cavalryman where he experienced horrendous fighting for 2 years before being captured and imprisoned for another year until the Civil War ended
–then having 14 children along the way (10 lived to adulthood) – one of these was my grandmother’s father
–then at age 89 when he died, his obituary gave insight (just a bit) into the “relationship” question I had – it told of him “in early manhood” being converted and joining the Baptist Church where he served “for many years as a minister” while he was a farmer by occupation.
How I yearn to know what brought him to the Lord after years of battle, fighting, killing and the violence he must have seen and experienced. And how did he view the Lord – what made him so faithful to the Lord that he preached the gospel the rest of his life?
This spurs me on to write up all I know and remember about my grandparents’ faith story as well as my parents’ faith stories (as best I know from my experience with them since they have all left this earth). I must put those stories in their albums.
And here I will turn the tables on you (and me) – we must write our relationship-with-the-Lord stories to be handed down to our descendants. Yes, yes, I know you have TOLD them the stories, but guess what, they won’t remember them and if they do, it is only bits and pieces.
Back to Blackaby’s lesson that stirred me up. He sums it up by asking, “Are you comfortable in abiding, or are you impatient to be engaged in activity?” His wisdom: If you will remain steadfastly in fellowship with Jesus, a great harvest will be the natural by-product.
OK, I do pray we will be comfortable in “abiding” as Blackaby has pointed out, but I will ask you to engage in this activity – join me in the Family History Bootcamp: Bootcamp – Candy McCune
It is starting this week. You can set up the structure you need for your collection of family history, it will give you a place to put that “relationship” story (or stories) ready for a great harvest down the line of your descendants. I’m walking with you!
