Today I'm Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. If it's true that hope is oxygen for the soul, joy is the spark of emotional connection. Today I want to help you learn how not just to add, but to multiply joy in your marriage. It's what sustains you. That's what we're going to talk about today.
Stay with me. Welcome to Living on the Edge. I'm Dave Druy, and today Chip Ingram tackles one of marriage's most common yet unspoken struggles: disconnection. not anger, not conflict, just distance. In this message, Chip takes us to John chapter 15, where Jesus uses the metaphor of a vine and branches to teach his disciples how to stay connected when he's physically absent.
The same principle applies to marriage. You'll learn why you can't give what you don't possess and how abiding in Christ becomes the source of love that transforms your relationship.
Well now here's Chip with today's message, Connecting, How to Multiply Your Joy. Let me give you two quick pictures. Um I'm driving in the car with my wife. Uh I've been, in my case, I travel quite a bit, so this last year I think In about 14 months, I was in China three times and in the Middle East and then some domestic travel. And you all probably understand this more than others.
And I come home, and she's had a busy life, and I've had a busy life, and I've really missed her, and she's missed me. And then I come home, and it's weird.
Okay? I don't know how to say it. It's just weird. I love her, she loves me. We told each other for like two weeks how much we missed each other.
And then I come home, and then it's like.
So how did it go? How do you tell someone You know, what happened over the last two weeks and where you were and And then, you know, you're trying to catch up and You know, she starts telling me about, you know, which grandkids came over and what they did and something. And, you know, you sort of try, but it's just the word I use is you just don't connect. Anybody get that? And you're not mad at each other.
But you so want to be connected. But you're not. And um And so you try to have a conversation and me, I'm going to go like deep, fast, let's get connected now. And This will be a shock, but it doesn't work. And so we've had to learn different ways to sort of ease into when one of us has been away and reconnect.
Um Another Little moment is: I've had times where they really, really small. She's not done anything wrong, but a little something irritated me that I didn't say anything about, or I did to her. And then there was another little something, and then it wasn't big enough to bring up. And there's been times where I have been driving in the car, and she's been sitting right there, and we're kind of talking, but I feel disconnected. And I feel like I don't really want to talk, which scares me because I know that's not, those are beginning signs of not good things, right, when you're doing this instead of when you're doing that.
And so the question is. How do you get connected and how do you stay connected? Because we're talking about four biblical practices that great marriages have in common. Biblical practice number one is you, with full court press, serve your mate. John 13.
You humble yourself, find your security in Christ, and you serve your make. The second biblical practice is about hope, and you plan. You plan little times during the week, little times for the month, bigger five and ten years. You plan. God can change your plans, but there's hope.
This is where we're headed. This is what we're gonna do. This is what we feel called by God. Here's how we're going to build our relationship. And the third thing that you see.
is connecting great marriages Connect. And it's interesting to me that when Jesus with his bride, he serves John 13, then he gives them the plan of heaven and then what's going to happen until he comes back for us or until we go to be with him. And then in John chapter 15, he asks and answers this question. I'm leaving and you're not going to see me. How do we stay connected?
How do we stay connected? How do we keep our love flowing back and forth? How do you hear my voice when I'm not here physically anymore? How do you get direction from me when I'm not here physically anymore? How are you going to feel my love and experience my love because I'm not here physically anymore?
And the answer to that is in John chapter 15.
So open your Bible, if you will. The supper is over, they've sung a hymn.
Okay. And as they've gone out, they are passing through a garden. And in John 15, he takes the opportunity to give them a very clear picture from their day. about a vine and a branch. And it gives them this metaphor, and the entire purpose is to teach them.
This is how our hearts are going to stay connected, even though. Quote, geographically. God the Son and his resurrected body will be at the right hand of the Father. And all these disciples, and all those will come after him, including us in the body of Christ. We'll be here on Earth.
And so, this is what he says to them, and what he says to us: I am the true vine. And my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. Literally, he lifts up. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it.
so that it bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Command. Abide in me, it means continue in. Stay connected to Me and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, stays connected, so neither can you unless you abide in me. Repetition, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, notice two-way street, he bears much fruit. Why? For a part from me You can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in me, he's thrown away as a branch, and dries up, and they gather them, cast them into the fire, and they're burned. By contrast, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you can ask whatever you wish. and it will be done for you. Verse 8: My Father is glorified by this, that you bear not just fruit, much fruit. And so prove or demonstrate that you're my disciples.
Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love.
Well, how?
Well, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. Purpose clause. Why are you telling this? whole story about vines and branches and abiding. Answer, these things I've spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.
This is my commandment that you love one another how Just as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. And then this is an amazing, amazing passage. No longer do I call you slaves.
For a slave does not know what his master is doing. but I have called you friends, for all things I've heard from my Father I've made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. and your fruit should remain. that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give to you.
And just in case you missed the core of this, this I command you, that you. Love. one another.
Now, we could spend an awful lot of time on this passage, and I have in the past, and we have a series talking about Jesus Unfiltered where we go through every chapter of John. But let me just give the highlights of what this passage teaches. Number one: Jesus is the true vine, and we are the branches.
Okay? First of all, in other words, I'm the true vine. I'm the source of life. I give life. My father is sovereignly orchestrating the vine dresser.
The Father positions and prunes us for fruitfulness. That little word takeaway, if you know anything, in Napa they have a lot of vines. And when I studied this, I did a lot of research about how they do it. And if a vine gets on the ground and it's not producing any fruit, what they do is they have a little pitchfork type thing and they lift it up and they reposition it so it can bear fruit. Other times you get too much growth and the energy doesn't go into the fruit and so they prune it.
And it looks pretty painful, but it produces a lot of great fruit. Jesus is divine, but God the Father is sovereignly orchestrating, positioning, and sometimes repositioning our life.
Sometimes it feels kind of painful, but the whole goal is to produce. fruit. And the fruit I think he's talking about here is primarily first and foremost character. You know, how many times did the word love come here? Right?
You abide, you bear much fruit. Keep my commandments. Abide in my love.
As I kept my Father's commandments, abide in His love. He's talking about the very life of Christ being formed in you. You do understand that's the agenda. Jesus didn't come and die upon the cross and raise from the dead to make you a little bit better moral person who goes to religious services and hears someone talk once a week and sing a few songs. That is not the agenda.
Okay. There's a role for that. Jesus Came because you were lost and far from God in and of yourself, and he paid the price for your sin, and then he rose from the dead, and he offers as a free gift, he paid for the sins of the whole world. And whosoever would repent and turn from your sin and receive that gift, he takes up residence in you, takes you out of the kingdom of darkness, places you in the kingdom of light. His Holy Spirit comes in and it seals you.
He deposits spiritual gifts inside of you. He gives you an inheritance. He has a purpose for your life. And his whole goal is to make you more and more like himself so that you are the salt of the earth and the light of the earth.
So there's little Jesus or Christ-like ones everywhere. The word Christian was a negative connotation and it started in Antioch. It was when the Gentiles came to faith and they lived such radical lives, the only explanation, they're as weird as their founder. They greet one another with a holy kiss. They share their property with one another.
They forgive their enemies. I mean, we try and kill them off and they go arm in arm and sing praises to their God. They're idiots. And by the way, they're cannibals as well. They talk about someone's blood and they drink blood.
And they're atheists. They don't worship the emperor. They're little Christ ones. And that was that's the goal. And the means by which you become more like Christ are certainly the raw material of God's Word.
But the only one that can live the Christian life, are you ready, is Jesus? But if you have trusted Christ, Jesus lives in you. How? by the person of the Holy Spirit.
So, your only real job is to figure out how you can stay connected to Jesus so his full access. can have control in ways where he can produce his life through you. Through your personality, your uniqueness, just the way he made you. And Jesus is explaining, by way of the metaphor of this vine, how that works. Our sole responsibility is simply to abide.
Stay connected. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and there's more coming up in just a moment. If you missed any part of today's message, or if you'd like to share it with a friend, you can find it anytime online at livingonthege.org. And while you're there, you'll also discover a full library of Chips teaching series, small group resources, and practical tools to help strengthen your relationships. Take advantage of all we have available at livingontheedge.org.
Well now back to our message. How do you stay connected to a best friend? Let's get this off the theological realm and I want you to think of maybe a buddy, a girlfriend, or if you're a guy, a guy, someone that you're really close to, that no matter what, you've stayed in touch. I mean, maybe even when you're far apart, it's like three minutes and you reconnect. How do you stay connected like that?
What do you do? Why is it? You have a common heart, you have common values, you stay in touch. You communicate, you share your heart. They're the person that you can share what's really going on, where you're afraid, where you blew it, maybe a big mistake.
See, what God is saying is what I really, that's what I want with you. I want you to stay connected to me. I don't want you over here thinking that I need to do certain things to try to earn God's favor. I want you to understand That if you would allow your heart and my word to reconnect, and if you would keep your mind renewed so that you begin to take in your mind and your heart exactly what the truth is, that that truth, as you ponder it and think about it, and put it into practice, would actually do what? It would set you free.
Free to be who I made you to be. Free from addictions, free from pleasing people, free from codependency, free from getting your identity in work or looks or money or accomplishments. Free to be my son. or my daughter. See, that's the agenda.
And he says, I want you to stay connected. The consequences of the results are being connected are access. With vivid answers to prayer. Did you notice that? When you're connected to him and he's connected to you, your desires start aligning to his desires and you can ask whatever you want because what you're going to want is what he wants.
The second thing is fruitfulness, an extraordinary life with extraordinary impact. You just become one of those people. Don't we all have people like that? Like, she's like the most loving person in the world. He's like, I mean, someday, somehow, someway, I would want to be a dad like him or a friend like him.
Don't we all have some people like that? That's just the life of Christ that's been manifested. The third thing is that love, it results in heartfelt obedience. When you're connected, I don't know about you. There's a little verse in 1 John.
And uh 1 John says, And his commandments aren't grievous unto us. Has anyone ever read that one? I read that for years, and I thought they may not be grievous to you, but they're very grievous to me. I'm just being honest. It's like...
I mean, at the time I was single, no sex before marriage, that's grievous. I'm supposed to be in your word. That's grievous. I'm not very disciplined. I mean, It wasn't until I experience the heart of God.
and understood the goodness of God. and really grasp the grace of God. that I realized that Every single command in scripture is designed to keep me on a path.
So that I get the very best, the very best decision, the very best friends, the very best mate, the very best job, the very best future. All of a sudden, I got this word picture of: imagine, you know, like there's this kind of sort of beautiful house up on this high mountain, and there's all these windy roads, right? And on the roads, you know, there's drop-offs of a thousand feet, but there's guardrails. And you're in this car, and this car is your life, and there's a lot of twists and turns. And you know what?
If you go over the side, you're in trouble. You know what the guardrails are? God's commandments.
So they're not grievous. It's like You know what? It's like... I don't want you to get AIDS. Like, I don't want you to have the memories of seven or eight other partners to take into your marriage.
It's like, I don't want you to experience the loneliness and the emptiness of greed dominating your life and accumulating things only to find out that what you've done is alienated people that really matter. I don't want you to be old and lonely and have mortgaged relationships and have kids that are grown that don't even like you. And so I have commands. And if you obey the commands, See, they're not grievous because what they do is they allow you, don't you do this with your kids? I mean, you give them all kinds of grievous commands like, don't touch the stove, don't run into the street.
Why are you so restrictive, right? How come I can't play with the gun, Dad? You just what kind of parent are you? And why? Because you want the very best for your kids.
Sometimes the commands are hard to swallow, and so we by faith have to say. You know, Lord, the whole world is telling me that this is really a good thing, and you say it's not.
So I'm going to trust you. And what you'll find as time goes on is that God's ways are not our ways, but they're way, way better. Final thing he says that is the result of this abiding is intimacy and it results in supernatural joy. Isn't it interesting that in John 13 he serves them to demonstrate? and they experience love.
In John 14, he gives them the long-term plan and the intermediate plan and what to do next. and planning produces hope they know. You know what? We're not left alone. And now the reason he wants them connected is he wants them to experience not just joy.
What's it say? Verse 11. These things I've written unto you that my joy... might be in you and that your joy might be made full See, the joy of the Lord is your strength, but that comes when you're connected and abiding in Him. And in this passage, he's going to tell us exactly how to do that.
So with that, let's go from sort of the teaching to the principles. Principle number one is you can impart what you do not possess. We must abide in him. to have his love to give to our mate.
Okay. Yeah. I don't get up and read a couple chapters, or three chapters, or a small book, or a little paragraph of the Bible in the morning and go, wow. Fair. Two chapters a day keeps the devil away.
Glad I got that done.
Okay, let me think. I'm gonna set my watch. I prayed for seven minutes yesterday. I'm gonna go for nine today.
Someday I'm gonna pray for 23 minutes. Is that how you sit with a best friend? I opened the Bible because God wants me to see myself. He wants to feed my soul. He wants to renew my mind.
And are you ready? Conversation is about two things, right? Listening and talking. This is God speaking to you and to me. This is our lips speaking to him.
And sitting quietly, very, very often the Holy Spirit will take his word or something he wants to say to you, if you're open, and strongly impress upon you so you can stay connected to him. And it can be sometimes just a little thing, like a little prompting. I want you to give so-and-so a call. That's out of the blue. And you call them and you find out they're really struggling.
Or, you know, in my case, sometimes it's a little prompting that, remember yesterday when you guys were doing this and doing that? Yeah. Did you realize you hurt Therese's feelings? Huh. You you need to apologize there.
Are you sure? Right? And you know, and it's amazing. When God asks you to do something that you're kind of uncomfortable, that's very helpful to another person that will embarrass you, there's a good chance it's the Holy Spirit, it's not you. Right.
Okay. And so my point is. as you stay connected. as you're in his word. As you talk to him from the heart.
As you have some guy friends if you're a guy and some girlfriends if you're a gal, and if you have some couples if you're a couple, that you build into one another's life so that Jesus living in them, right, faith is as much caught as taught. And as you abide, Then You have this capacity because you're receiving his love to give it away. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we're continuing our series, Choosing Love. Today, Chip revealed a powerful truth. To love your spouse well, you must first abide in Christ.
Chip will be back with more in just a moment. If you're inspired by today's teaching about biblical love, Chip's book, I Choose Love, takes you even deeper. In it, Chip explores what the Bible calls agape love. This isn't love based on feelings or romance, but love characterized by sacrifice and putting others' best interests first. Drawing from Philippians chapter 2, Chip shows how agape love gives, serves, obeys, and cares.
When you choose this kind of love, it transforms every relationship in your life. iChoose Love offers practical help to discover and apply this transformative love in all your relationships. Get your copy today by going online to livingontheedge.org. Friend, this teaching ministry exists because listeners like you invest in biblical truth. When you give to Living on the Edge, you're helping couples across the globe discover the secret to lasting connection through the unfailing truth of God's Word.
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Well now here's Chip with a final thought. As we close today's program, we're launching into the third practice that Jesus did with His disciples. that caused love to be fresh and alive. And he's modeling for us what he does with his bride is what we need to do for one another in our marriages. First he served.
Then he planned. And third now he says, I want you to be connected. And he gives this very classic passage in John 15 about the vine and abiding and connecting. What I want you to know is that you cannot impart to your mate what you don't possess. The most important thing that I have done in my marriage, that Teresa has done in our marriage, is spending time with God and being connected to Him so that we can give the kind of love that we don't have to give to one another.
It's supernatural. It's a love that's patient and kind and understanding, and it's not perfect. I have my ups, I have my downs. But what I want you to know is that connecting is what brings joy. We've been bombarded by the idea that happiness and self-fulfillment is what makes life wonderful.
And the fact of the matter, it's in great deep relationships where happiness is not the goal, but there's a byproduct. And the byproduct is joy. It's a sense of connection. And what he wanted to say to his disciples was, here's how you stay connected. I've given you only the first principle here today that you can't impart what you don't possess.
But next time, I'll share the principle of connection, that connection is built on communication. And then I'm going to help you understand that joy overflows as you learn to connect. And I will share with you a tool. I mean, a tool that Teresa and I have used for over 35 years that literally rescued our marriage. And that no matter where we're at, we know we can do this tool and we get reconnected.
I'll see you next time. What practical steps keep you connected to Christ and your spouse? I'm Dave Druy. Don't miss tomorrow's teaching as Chip Ingram continues choosing love here on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.
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