Old Jerry

When Jesus says that “Apart from me you can do nothing” he is saying that we cannot promote the Kingdom of God unless we are in Him. The things that is done without Christ means nothing. When we die we can’t take that with us. The things done without Christ goes to nothing.

To abide is to obey what Jesus is telling us to do. The doctrine of Perseverance of the Saints is to abide in Jesus. These verses support it because it is saying that we need to abide is Jesus in order to bear more fruit. Abiding means that we have a personal relationship with the Lord.

We are pruned or cleansed by exposure to and obedience to Jesus by studying his word and by the difficult times we have in life but still hang on to Jesus. Since we study the Bible and know what Jesus wants from us and we love him then we willingly obey him which keeps us from sinning.

Judicious pruning benefits a grapevine because it gets rid of the dead or dying branches. The productivity and health of the vine goes downhill when it isn’t pruned. God uses burdens and difficult time to prune us and make us more productive. I think God also uses burdens and difficult times to prune the church congregations. We resist pruning because it hurts for a while. We should away go to God so that the eventual pruning isn’t too severe.

Satan takes advantage of our previous sins to control us or make us fearful because he is always pointing out the sins of the past. Jesus stayed free from bondage to Satan because he had no sin. So Satan didn’t have anything to blackmail him with. We can free ourselves from bondage to Satan and fear of exposure by confessing out sins.

Jesus peace does not mean cession of conflict in our everyday lives, he is offering peace of mind. We can be going through a conflict and still have peace of mind if you turn it over to Jesus.

That Jesus is going to send somebody to us that will remind us what we are supposed to be doing. I think that it is Holy Spirit. The teaching/reminding role is very important to apostles because unless we are minded all the time we will be forget or just ignore what is what Jesus had done for us.

The obedience to Jesus is linked to loving him because we don’t want to hurt those who we love and therefore we don’t want to disappointment Jesus. I think that when Jesus emphasized obedience he is talking about the love that we are going to give him. I don’t think that we can love Jesus and not obey him.

I think that the best way to describe the Paraclete is to call him a counselor because he is away counseling us in our daily journey. The Holy Spirit is another Paraclete because he is always with us. I think the initial Paraclete was Jesus. The Holy Spirit replaces him because he is with us always.

To pray “in Jesus’ name” means that we can ask anything of the father that is in his will and Jesus will back us up. Prayers that are out of his will and purpose will get answered but it will be a no. The practical limits to this promise of answered prayer is that it has to be in the will of Jesus.

The thing that happened after Jesus’ “glorification” is that the Holy Spirit came down on them which enabled them to be scattered and they had the gift of being able to express their beliefs to others. This promise was not limited to the apostles it was given to all who believed. I think that Christians are uncomfortable with this promise because we have been told that it doesn’t happen anymore.

Jesus is God son so trusting in Jesus is the same as trusting in God. Jesus’ portrays God’s action and words perfectly because God is always with him. The meaning of Jesus and the Father are one is that Jesus only does what the Father wants him to do.

Yes, it is intolerant to believe that no one comes to God except through Jesus because that is the way it is. The Old Testament saints gave animal blood sacrifices to God for the atonement of their sins and Jesus consummated that by giving his own blood. I think that the reason that some Christians are uncomfortable with the saying “No one comes to the Father but by me” is because that isn’t politically correct and there for they will be laughed at.

Jesus is the only way to God. If we follow Jesus and believe in him he is our advocator and will stick up for us when we face the Judgement seat. Jesus and God are one and therefore is the truth. If we follow him he is the one that we can dump our troubles on and make this world a whole lot better place to be in. This makes us want to speak about him all the time.

The “Father’s House” is that place that we call heaven. Verse 2 tells us that Jesus has prepared a place for us to stay and that is something that we can look forward to.

When we love one another it indicates our status as Jesus’ disciples because we care for one another. We are watching out for them. I guess the reason that we live in an intimate Christian community in favor of only a large-meeting expression of our faith is because we like to fit in and not be left out. I guess it is so difficult to love people in an intimate Christian community is because we don’t always trust each other. Our church does measure up the indicator of love for one another and I hope that I do.

Love is exalted to the level of a command because without love the world would be a terrible place to live in. If we love one another how would we be not able to kill them or wound them? If we love each other then we would not be will not hurt another person mentally. If we love them we will not want to steal from them or break any of the 10 commandments.

Habitual sin opens up to greater influence from Satan in our lives because it feels so good. We are always fighting sin and to just give into it seems to relax us. So then when we are habitually sinning we are losing our compass and drifting into more sin. Judas took the bread from Jesus just a friend would do and then betrayed him.

In the Kingdom of God we are to humble ourselves and be servants to others. The Roman Catholic Pope Francis set an example of humility be refusing to live a luxurious life and putting others before himself.

Jesus wanted the disciples to know that He is their king and being their king he humbled himself so that they would know how to act in this world. He established the value of being humble in his Kingdom. We are also to be humble.

The way that a “full bath” represent baptism is that we wash the whole body and get the dirt off of our whole body and in baptism we get dunked all the way under water. So the only thing that “foot washing” symbolizes is that we are getting repenting of the sins since our baptism.

The way that judging people get in the way of saving them is that you have already condemned them and don’t think that there is any way to save them. Jesus did not judge them he only wanted to help them. We need to stop judging people because of the way that they act and look, we need to see what Jesus sees if that is possible.

When I am quiet about my relationship to God out of fear that people will criticize me, this is saying then I don’t have my priorities right. It is also saying that I am not a good disciple because I am supposed to spread the word. When Peter denied Jesus in the courtyard is made him feel sad that he did it and he didn’t recover from it until he admitted that Jesus is the messiah.

The way that declaring the truth to a resistant person harden the heart further is they already have a belief in something and they don’t want to admit that they are wrong. I can see how the Pharisee can see a miracle and become even more determined to resist Jesus because he is going to lose his position in life when everybody believes in Jesus.

I think that Jesus is talking about being “lifted up” to heaven. I think that Jesus was “lifted up” both literally and figuratively. I think that the phrase is almost a copy of what it says in Isaiah 52:13, In Philippians 2:8-9 not only does it say that he was exalted to the highest place but it also says that his name is above every name.