Without Him, We Can Do Nothing

Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. Jn 15:5-6

In my usual simplified focus, I always talk about the only thing that matters. It is always about doing everything according to God's ways because this is the purpose for our lives here on Earth. When Jesus tells us to remain in Him, it is what St. Paul writes: those who keep his commandments remain in him, and He in them. He says that we know that He remains in us by the fact that He has given us His Holy Spirit. Of course, this must start with Baptism. We will do as He does, with Him and in Him. We can then do what God has created us to do, which is to LOVE. This covers the whole requirement of our entire purpose for living on earth.

Jesus carefully outlined that it is not possible to live a full, abundant life without choosing to make God number one. He said that we can do NOTHING without being grafted to Himself, the vine. He went further to say, “Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.” WOW! So, He promises to give us anything that we ask if we remain in him . . . but we will end up with total destruction if we discard His ways to go our own way. There is nothing to worry about IF we let God be our God. We can have confidence, that is, we can trust God’s judgment because He knows everything, even more than we know of ourselves. We can trust God in any matter and in all matters.

When the term ‘trust’ comes up, most people today make no connection to their will, only to their feelings. The will is who we are and it is what and how we DECIDE. Many good people think that to trust in God has to do with having a nice secure feeling and that if there is a feeling of a little worry then this is ‘not’ trusting. Most seem to believe and act as if their feelings are their bosses.

To clarify what trust means, it is absolutely necessary to couple two terms: “trust” and “obey.” OBEY is the action; or deed; or the bearing of ‘fruit’ in this passage. To trust God means that you will do everything His way. It means that you can trust that what you are doing will be the best way, if it is God’s way. Following His will means following His commandments; this is ‘acting’ on the knowledge that His ways are trustworthy. It is to live His will, without making any exceptions. This is trust: To act on the belief that God’s will is the best way because He said so.

If a person continually questions whether God knows what He is doing by rebelling against what is known to be God’s way, how can that person possibly trust God for any matter, let alone giving full control of his life to Him? He is not going to let God do anything, let alone let Him do everything. Jesus was emphasizing that everything can be left in the hands of our Heavenly Father, all we need do is to remain in Him by seeking to do everything His way. That is, to depend on all that He surely provides in every present moment in order to do His will. Leaving everything up to Him imeans accepting everything that He allows to happen to us with our action, our 'Yes.' This means allowing Him to arrange, to prune, to assist, to guide and to enable us to live the full lives that He intended for us ALL ALONG. This is a love relationship of Father to child, or it is more like a Father to a tiny baby. We can feel confident that He is a good Father and desires to be everything to us. For me, it is hard to understand why people do not trust such a trustworthy God. Is it that people believe that their contrary ways can possibly be an improvement on the perfection of God’s will? That is an oxymoron. You cannot improve on PERFECTION.

I use my favorite analogy to compare the difference in what a human being is to who God is, by imagining the difference there is in comparing an amoeba to a human being. In an imaginary conversation we might hear the amoeba complaining about how the human being is taking care of it. This fantasy of an amoeba complaining to a human that he is not doing it right becomes almost as silly as when in real life we dictate to God how we shall live outside of His loving and perfect will. To top off this sheer nonsense, we humans actually refuse to turn back to God even when we have made a complete mess of our lives and our world. Our rationalization that ‘we are perfectly capable’ instead of God, makes us forget that we are completely dependent on the loving God who not only created us out of pure love but that He must sustain our existence in every moment. This delusion that we can actually be ‘in charge’ blurs our sense of the reality of our total helplessness without God.

God’s will is always perfect. He is perfectly loving, perfectly powerful, perfectly present, perfectly aware, and perfectly capable as the Creator and Lord of the Universe to be in charge of all that you personally need and this means that there are no exceptions to His ‘Perfect Goodness.’ And you know what? That means that He perfectly ‘loves’ you. That can only mean that when some pain or seeming tragedy occurs to you, this ‘bad’ thing, obviously cannot be the one time, that one exception in the Universe, when God is not being loving, or is not fully in charge. It is because He is not part-time loving, part-time smart, part-time powerful nor part-time present.

God knows what He is doing and we do not know what we are doing. This is my frequent prayer and spontaneous declaration a few times per day, “God, You know what You are doing, but, I do not know what I am doing.” I never dream of saying, “God, You know what you are doing but I don’t know what You are doing.” I never say that because, OF COURSE, I do not know what He is doing; I am an amoeba. He not only calls us from the outside, but He also unites Himself to us so intimately that His very life flows through our veins. “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Where does the vine stop and its branches begin? Their union, this graft, is too complete to tell. It is the same sap that gives life to the vine and to its branches.

Bearing this fruit requires our own efforts to stay united to the vine, through prayer, gaining grace through the sacraments, attending to each present moment by loving obedience to God’s will by never making an exception to trusting that “This, too, is God’s perfect will for me.” This also requires our being pruned – the purification of our selfishness that comes through suffering and sacrifice. Without being totally attached to Jesus, we can do nothing. It is a pretty simple lesson but with pretty dire consequences if we don’t get it: trust and obey. Separated from Jesus Christ, no one can live in communion with God, the only source of lasting fruit. The undying fruits of the Spirit are: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control.” This is what God wants for us and this is called HAPPINESS. This is what each one of us wants because we are hardwired to have this as our ultimate desire.