​John 15: 1 – 11
 
The apt metaphor of ‘vine dressing’ used by Jesus to describe His Father’s responsibility in stimulating Christian growth implies a clear-cut goal that life in Christ is not one that stagnates. The natural grapevine pruning process commences within weeks of it being planted and progresses through the year as the vinedresser relentlessly pursues the pruning process till the vine bears its choicest fruit (with at least two major pruning seasons: one in late winter and another in late spring). And in the event a branch bears no indication of being able to bear fruit, it will normally be severed, so it does not compete for the plant’s precious nutrients. The metaphoric configuration identifies Christ to be the plant and believers as branches (John 15:1-3), and the rendering seems severe, but clear. The critical focus here is the Father’s desire and expectation for ‘fruit.’ Biblical ‘fruit’ is commonly referenced to one’s character in terms of changes to one’s dispositional traits (Gal 5:22-23).
 
The logical prerequisite, however, is that the branch in order to bare good fruit must organically be part of the stem; implying that on one’s own, spiritual character growth is well-nigh impossible when an ongoing relationship with Jesus is not in place (John 15:4-5). And it is based on this bond that two very essential ‘fruits’ mentioned here are developed: love and obedience (John 15:9-10). Both are divinely appointed qualities that are at the opposite end of the spectrum to man’s innate self-centeredness and willfulness. The acid test for love is its near fatal addictive component with the love object, where one’s entire energy, time, and focus is devoted to another. And when it is mutual, as we abide in His love, there are no limits to what one can achieve. 
Divine obedience, a core lifestyle, and unlike anything we may have learnt, only proceeds out of a growing love and honour relationship with God; an inner dynamic as we delight and embrace His laws’ demands (John 15:10; Ps 1:2-3). Obedience in this sense, arises from a way of life in Christ, certainly never a matter of normal compliance that is usually temporal and a response to our fears and pride. So, by implication, to not seek to obey God (i.e., including His laws) is to disobey Him. 
 
As in any vineyard pruning exercise, the Father’s focal perspective is always towards productive growth, and He skillfully axes anything in us that stands in His way to reach His goals in our lifetime (John 15:6-8). This can be rather disconcerting and painful, but the key to understanding this inevitable process is the heart of God - that He has always our best interest in view. Let us have eyes to see that He is patiently conforming us to His Son (Rom 8:29). It is crucial to realize that our perception of what is important may differ from God’s, and by stubbornly holding on to our preferences, we would certainly not learn to trust Him. An inability to distrust one’s own capabilities is a dangerous signal that one invariably cannot trust God, and in turn, His pruning process. There are no other ways for us, except Jesus’ own exemplary obedience when He obeyed His Father and gave Himself up for our sins (Rom 5:19) and laid the foundation of Christian living for us. And it is only through obeying that one discovers growth. Therefore, accepting willingly the Father’s sustained purifying process in our lives, as this passage reminds us, is to embrace the friendship, love, and joy of God (John 15: 7, 9, 11).

Genesis 28: 10 – 22
 
The story of Jacob is fraught with mishaps and crafty ingenuity that plays out like a tragicomedy, interspersed with morsels of God’s gracious interventions. With the discovery of Rebecca’s nefarious plot stealing Esau’s blessing from Isaac, Jacob's mother immediately sent him to her brother’s homestead, away from the murderous intent of Esau. The speed with which Jacob was dispatched indicated that he left literally empty-handed, arriving at a deserted nameless terrain at sunset, tired and possibly with little to eat, he lay down with a rock as his headrest for the night (Gen 28:11). 
 
Despite divine prophetic preferment over Esau (Gen 25:23), the intra-family parental dysfunction of favouring one child above another over the years, with Isaac unswervingly esteeming Esau over Jacob, it created inadvertently a deep-seated desperation by the latter to be accepted by his father, thereby entrenching sibling rivalry. Further, with a conspiratorial mother who modelled a dubious ethics of defrauding her husband of Esau’s birthright, it did not aid in Jacob’s attachment bonding with his parents. The bottom line illustrated the human capacity to distrust God notwithstanding the circumstances. Now destitute, Jacob finds himself alone, seemingly bereft of family and God, and his destiny of prophetic fulfillment in shreds. It is unlikely that he knew God personally now, with all the shenanigans he was involved in. 
 
Jacob’s dream was the first recorded incident of God’s direct contact with him, at his emotional lowest. Its content was bizarre: innumerable angels traversing an interminable stairway into and out of God’s Presence to Earth, and in a moment, God Himself descended and stood before him (cf., Gen 18:1-2, standing opposite or beside him). No doubt, the scene of an open heaven caught Jacob’s attention, but the fact that God’s angels do His bidding among men was not the most important thing that struck him. Apart from the blessing of his inheritance, the Lord addressed his profound insecurities; “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go… for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen 28:14-15). In an instant, his encounter with his heavenly Father’s embrace of his personhood, which he was frantically expecting from his own earthly father but never received, Jacob’s spiritual journey began. Possibly for the first time in his life, God was no longer inaccessible and His power not illusionary. 
 
When Jesus Christ came, He reinterpreted Jacob’s dream with Himself as the stairway, the Person who reconciled man back to his Father (cf., John 1:51) by His death. The unconditional love of God formed the basis of Jacob’s acceptance, and although he had much to learn, which is reflected by his presumptuous and conditional reply (Gen 28:20-21), this was etched permanently in his heart as this new relationship with God developed. Our lack of spiritual insight must never lead us to assume that heaven’s gates are shut to the needs of our fallen world, as our gracious God invariably takes the redemptive initiative to draw near to us. But what instigated God to take this initiative in Jacob’s case? As God sees what is in Jacob’s heart, He is drawn to his brokenness, with its outlook in weakness (i.e., lacking in skill or capability, or knowing one’s limitations before God) and humility (1 Sam 16:7; Ps 51:17; cf., Phil 2:5-9). No relationship subsists on a one-sided track; it's a misnomer! However, contrary to all human interactions, we amazingly presume that our association with God can survive a dysfunctional one-sided relationship.  Therefore, we need to be realistic in our interrelationship with God: like Jacob, it has to be a two-way relational exchange in thoughts, words and deeds. Jesus had given up His life for us, surely there cannot be anything that would hold us back in relating with and following Him as our Lord! 

​Psalm 63
 
The brief geographical and political portrayals in this psalm of King David (together with Psalms 61 and 62) place them during the time when he was fleeing from Absalom, who had rebelled against him and successfully usurped his father’s throne (2 Sam 15-18). Driven out of Jerusalem, David’s entourage was playing hide and seek through the dry and barren Judean wilderness with Absalom’s marauding army. Nevertheless, the desolate environment reminds David of his hunger for God, who had so faithfully met and satisfied his deepest needs (vv.1-5).
 
When his closest courtiers were worried about his survival, David’s meditative mood gave way to a passionate effusive praise and worship of God that is marked by a flow of tenses back and forth, from the past to the present and to the future, in the Psalm. David’s focus and confidence in the faithfulness of his covenantal God (viz., my God; v.1) challenges our faith in the face of our dire circumstances in this present generation. Here, we face one of the ironies of human spirituality – a consistent relational appetite for God is indicative of closeness to Him. David’s expression to ‘seek’ after God (v.1; to reach for something one desires) does not imply looking for Him who is not there but is always on the Biblical basis of looking for someone who is already present. Hence, his ‘soul is thirsting and body yearning’ for an attachment that has been absent due to worldly concerns. Not unlike a child’s need for normal attachment or bonding to a parent or principal caregiver, the King’s historical bond with the Almighty drives him in his passion for God. The basis of spiritual hunger is our sense of fallibility and dependence in the absence of God (c.f., Rom 3:11). 
 
Often, man’s ‘passion’ for God is intermixed with his own self-centered needs, which appears to be the source of his coming to Him. And this is not totally unforgivable, but expected as our love for God is unconsciously conditional in meeting our desires. David moves us away from this perspective. He was not after what God could give him in his dilemma with Absalom, nor about the promises God made to him on the security of his inheritance and kingdom. His passion for God was purely centered in love for Yahweh Himself. Loving God as God will never assuage our thirst for relating with Him, as our hunger to know Him will grow on us over time.
 
What did David really see in the sanctuary? (v.2) Was it like a spiritually supernatural sense of God that Moses and Abraham experienced? He did not elaborate. The ensuing references (vv.3-5), however, suggest that God’s tolerant graciousness in allowing man to draw near only because of a continuous stream of blood at the sanctuary’s forecourt would have been a reminder to David of the mercies available to him in this unusual relationship. The King was not unfamiliar with sin and knew how it displeased God as it denigrates his conscience and degrades his desire for proximity with God. Fundamentally, our idolatrous substitutes for God subvert our passion for Him and diminish our spiritual sensing towards Him. 
 
David then worships the Almighty. It is noteworthy that the focus was not on the exquisite experience (which would explain the reason for its lack of descriptive detail), but on the Person of God. David understood the repercussions of an exercised faith in God, as his soul clings to Him (v.8), with the glory and honour belonging always and only to Yahweh (vv. 3-8, 11). 

Ephesians 3:2 – 13 
 
The Ephesian Epistle majors on reconciliation and unity, both towards God and men, with the theological and applicative underpinnings focused on the nature and purpose of the church, the body of Christ. But as with all things Divine, the Kingdom’s perception of realities is at odds with what appears customary to us. Paul surfaced two such enigmas; his special divine gifting in reaching the Gentiles, and his broader concerns for the Ephesians in their adverse views on his continued incarceration. Both however, impact our acuity of normative Christian living.
 
Given his imprisonment in Rome where this letter was penned, it hardly seemed a triumphal testimony of heavenly power at work in the eyes of the believers (Eph 3:1,13). But Paul was not apologetic about his chains; instead, he explicitly portrays himself as a prisoner of the Lord. Is it not perceptually preferable to be in the latter than a prisoner of Rome? Jesus’ own passage through time that concluded with His crucifixion, invariably exemplified this paradoxical logic too: victory through apparent defeat, and when I am weak, then I am strong (c.f., Ps 91:1-10; 1 Cor 1:27-31; Eph 1:19-20). It was this fact that Paul was endeavouring to communicate to reassure the Ephesians, that despite his restricted circumstances, he was victorious in God. This insightful realization in the sovereignty of God over one’s life remains unchanged when persecution is unavoidable (cf., 2 Tim 3:12). As suffering comes along, Paul walks through it with Him, as His servant (Eph 3: 7-8, ‘a servant,’ ‘very least of all the saints’), with a mindset that posited how he could serve God better despite his constraints. The fact was Paul seemed upbeat about the opportunities available to him and his team of helpers in prison. This challenges us in our witness in an environment comparatively unrestrained in movement and expression. 
 
During his imprisonment, Paul recollected on his divine calling in bringing the gospel to the Ephesian Gentiles (Eph 3:4-9), which he referenced as the mystery of God, given to him by the grace of God’s power. This ‘mystery’ is the very constituent of the church. There was present between the Jews and the Gentiles of Paul’s day, a colossal racial and cultural barrier; illustrated by the disciples’ own deeply prejudicial perspective (Acts 9:1-2; cf., Peter in Acts 10:9-23), with no place within their Jewish world, even as Christians, for the Gentiles! In which case, divisiveness along ethnic lines would have been the norm, but for the eternal purpose of God in moulding the new man in Christ, where “the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:6-7). God miraculously transformed and chose Paul to overcome this obstacle (Eph 3:7) in giving expression to the early church a degree of inclusivity. There is an implied significance in this struggle, in that it was the Divine intention to witness to the evil principalities and powers that despite the Adamic fall, the body of Christ is to be the guiding light for human diversity and unity in this deign age of divisiveness (Eph 3:9-10). 
 
Realistic perceptions are critical in our expressed faith. And when perceptions are ungrounded in a devoted relationship with our Lord, they become positively naive and may even be spurious. Like Paul, to uphold a heavenly testimony on earth would require a Spirit-filled inside-out transformation of our heart and mind, with a consistent reversal of worldly principles for Kingdom’s priorities (Matt. 6:33).