What is with the Branch?

I started thinking people reading this may want to know why on earth I chose the name "Abiding Branch".

For those of you who know school house rock and remember the tune to how a bill goes to Capital Hill to become a law...sing it with me "For I'm only a branch, an abiding branch and to the vine I am attached." Ok, that was fun. I became a Branch the day I met my Lord Jesus Christ as Savior but I did not realize its meaning until I went to Brazil on mission trip last year with Macedonia Baptist Church in Longview. I learned what it is to simply abide in the Vine and allow Him to do all the work.

This does not mean that I just sat around and moved as if with a remote device or puppet strings. The branch does hold the fruit out there after all. But see the BRANCH does not produce the fruit it only bears witness to it...do you see where this is headed? Jesus, the Vine, and God the Vinedresser are in the fruit making business. We as branches get to hang out with these awesome fellas and show off their produce.

I saw this while in Brazil when our schedules went by the way side and appointments changed or cancelled, yet over 700 brothers and sisters were added to the Kingdom that month. The first two weeks produced 480+ in Caxias, just outside of Rio, and the others are now your kin from a place called Natal.

I truly saw the sap flow from the Vine that July of 2007 and I praise God for every soul saved. There was nothing in us or even in our control that produced this outcome but if we had not rested and abided in HIM then there would have been less. The branch still has a job to do and that is to abide so closely with the Vine that you can't tell them apart. Well I would not give myself that much credit ever but I did get a huge life lesson that will stay with my heart forever.