(Audio Book) Abiding In The Vine

What has the vine to do? It has to do a great work. It has to send its roots out into the soil and hunt under the ground. The roots often extend a long way out for nourishment and to drink in the moisture. Put certain elements of manure in certain directions and the vine sends its roots there. Then its roots or stems turn the moisture and manure into that special sap which makes the fruit that is born. The vine does the work and the branch is just to receive the sap from the vine. The sap is then changed into grapes. I have been told that at Hampton Court, London, there was a vine that sometimes bore a couple of thousand bunches of grapes. People were astonished at its large growth and rich fruitage. Afterward, the cause was discovered. The Thames River flows nearby, so the vine had stretched its roots hundreds of yards under the ground until it had come to the riverside. There, in all the rich slime of the riverbed, it had found rich nourishment and obtained moisture. The roots had drawn the sap all the distance up and up into the vine. As a result, there was the abundant, rich harvest. The vine had the work to do and the branches had just to depend on the vine and receive what it gave. Is that literally true of my Lord Jesus? Must I understand that when I have to work, when I have to preach a sermon or address a Bible class or go out and visit the poor, neglected ones, that all the responsibility of the work is on Christ? That is exactly what Christ wants you to understand. Christ desires that in all your work the very foundation should be the simple, blessed consciousness, Christ must care for all. And how does he fulfill the trust of that dependence? He does it by sending down the Holy Spirit not now and then only as a special gift. But remember, the relationship between the vine and the branches is such that hourly, daily, unceasingly, the living connection is maintained. The sap does not flow for a time, and then stop, and then flow again. Instead, moment to moment, the sap flows from the vine to the branches. And just so, my Lord Jesus wants me to take that blessed position as a worker. Morning by morning and day by day and hour by hour and step by step in every work I have to go out to abide before him in the simple, utter helplessness of one who knows nothing. I must be as one who is nothing and can do nothing. Oh, beloved workers, study that word nothing. You sometimes sing, oh, to be nothing, nothing, but have you really studied that word and prayed every day and worshipped God in the light of it? Do you know the blessedness of that word nothing?