Fruit that Remains

I don't have time to say all I want to say today, but I will say this. My wife's aunt and uncle own a vineyard in Napa Valley. I teach John 15 a lot, and she showed me something.

One of the things that happens is if you don't prune the branches, the branches break off. They self-root into the ground. They can produce still, but they produce leaves, not fruit.

And they're green. It looks beautiful for a season before the leaves die and the branch dies. There are a lot of churches with a lot of activity, with a lot of green stuff going on, but not fruit that remains.

A lot of good, cool things happening. And you can spit out all the activity in your church and all the cool things and all the vision and all the dreams, but my question to you is, is it green leaves or is it fruit that remains? Because you can have green leaves that look real good, but they're already dead.

The branch is already dead. It'll last for a season. Still, I lived this early on.

Ministry was growing. Momentum was strong. Everything looked successful.

But inside I was drifting. Success on the outside was hiding collapse on the inside. I was building out of insecurity.

I was trying to prove something. I was managing wounds I had never actually healed. My father wound that I tried to manage had me doing ministry out of trauma instead of intimacy.

And ministry became the place I hid. When I took care of my trauma, I became a different person, a different leader. I had no boundaries.

I started creating followers instead of leaders. And I had to realize I was leading people to Mark, not leading people to Jesus. And when Mark got healthy, people got mad.

And rightfully so, because I was an unhealthy leader leading them to me and not leading them to Jesus. That was on me. I could preach and not pray, lead and not linger, strategize and not surrender.

And because everything looked successful, no one asked deeper questions. No leadership strategy can compensate for a starving soul. None.