I'm a try-harder guy. Always have been. If something isn't working, the answer is more effort, more hours, a better plan. It works at the dealership. It works at the fire department. It does not work with God.
I know, because I tried it for a long time.
Read more. Pray more. Be better. Fail. Feel bad. Try harder. Fail again. Anybody who's been in church a while knows that loop. It's a thistle with a Bible verse on it. Looks great from the road.
Then one day this verse stopped being a verse and started being a diagnosis:
"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5, ESV)
A branch doesn't try harder. A branch has never tried anything. It stays connected, and the fruit shows up, because the life was never in the branch. It was in the vine.
That's the whole book in one sentence, and it's the sentence I have to hear again every single week: stop trying harder. Be closer.
Closer is not a program. It's not a new system. It's ten minutes in the truck before you walk in the house. It's reading four verses instead of four chapters and actually thinking about them. It's telling Him the real thing instead of the church thing.
You will still have thistles. So will I. But a branch that's connected doesn't have to grow its own fruit anymore, and that changes what you reach for when you pick up the can.
So, what are you watering this week?