I’m hitting a nerve already. I didn’t have 2 sets of friends and was holding onto both of them at one time. I had to let go of relationships I had built a personal loyalty to. We fought together. We had each other’s back. And I remember a terrible season of having nobody. I don’t know how God gave me the internal fortitude to make those decisions at the age of 18. I just knew I had to make them.
The problem is, I watch people flounder in life and never achieve purpose because they are unwilling to make that decision right there. And it is a sad thing to watch people get old and purposely be sabotaged because you don’t have guts to be lonely for just a little while. I feel the Holy Ghost right now.
John 15:13-16 (NKJV)
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if
you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know
what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I
have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you
should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My
name He may give you.
“I chose you. This is when you showed up, but I’ve already chosen you.” You might have accepted Jesus
at age 31, but you were chosen the whole 31 years.
John 15:16
You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit,
and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.
You are choosing and your appointment was ALREADY made. God said,
‘I not only chose you and not only appointed, I chose you and appointed you to be successful!'
My God. All those folk out there that hate that kind of preaching… take it up with Jesus!
‘I chose you and appointed you to be fruitful and bear fruit.’ Okay?
John 15:17
These things I command you, that you love one another.
Go to chapter 16 [John]. I’m skipping around in this order for a reason. I kind of got to go backwards
to frontwards to make my point. No, let’s go back to verse 18 and read it all. I’m tired of skipping.
I’m going to preach it ALL!
John 15:18-19
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the
world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.
[Some people say,]
‘Well, why do I get such injustice and mistreatment in the world?’
Because you’re not one of them. And it ticks them off when you walk in the room because they know you’re not like them. And they don’t know what it is you got on you but they know they don’t have it. And the Bible says if the world loves you, you’re in trouble because to be in step with God takes you out of step with the world. And I get a lot of heat from the world but that lets me know I’m in step with God.
John 15:19
If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I
chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
You are going to struggle in arenas outside of church. When you are blessed, people who aren’t blessed don’t like it. When you have favour, people who have to labour with what you got with favour don’t like it. When you go further in 6 months than they did in 10 years because God keeps promoting you, they don’t like that. When you overcome things that destroy them, they don’t like that. But the reason it didn’t destroy you because you were chosen and they’re not chosen.
John 16:1
“These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble.
Go back to chapter 15, verse 1 [of John]:
“I am the true vine…”
Thank you Jesus. That means there’s imposter vines. There’s too much revelation in this..
If there’s a true vine, that means there’s false one. In other words, Jesus says,
‘I’m the true source that should be feeding you.’
But He said,
‘There’s other things that will feed you if you let them.'
John 15:1-5
“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. You are already
clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. “I am
the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me
you can do nothing.
[To be continued until tomorrow…]
Ron Carpenter, Redemption World Outreach Church