Today I was struggling all day, nothing went wrong but it was a day of condemnation.  That voice in the back of my head whispered all day long "you're a failure, you cannot do anything right"  Anything anyone said or did I read into convincing myself that they hated me, convincing myself I was totally unloveable.  One thing the Lord really has been teaching me though is I do not have to care!  My value is not in what others think of me, how many friends I have, what i do, or what i am like.  My value is solely in Christ Jesus my Lord.  I am beautiful and wonderful in the eyes of my Creator and it has nothing to do with anything I have done!  It is because Christ is living in me!  This is so amazing and I'm nowhere near understanding but then tonight I had to write a paper on John 15.  I'm not a very good writer and so it's not well written but it taught me so much so i wanted to share it.  Read on if you desire...

It has happened again, you have tried the live the "perfect Christian life" but once again fell flat on your face.

"But I was doing so great!" You cry out as the plates you were spinning fall crashing to the floor. You are tired. You are weak. You are sick of playing this game. "I give up! I cannot do it anymore!" you tell the Lord.

"Ah" sighs the Lord, "You are finally where I want you to be!"

John 15:5 says, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." This small parable holds the secret to the Christian walk. Jesus is explaining in this verse that we are nothing more than branches, we are absolutely worthless and unable to produce any fruit on our own. Just take a look at a branch apart from the vine, shortly after being broken off it dies, it can no longer produce anything of value. Branches cannot produce fruit. No matter how much a branch prettied itself up, no matter how convincingly he glued plastic fruit to himself, he cannot produce anything. We as Christians are no different than that silly branch. We might possibly fool the world for awhile by trying to create our own fruit apart from our source, but our Father in Heaven knows the truth and before long everyone else will know too. We cannot do it, no matter how charming, strong, intellectual, or seemingly spiritual we are, we cannot do it.

"So what's the secret?" You ask. The secret my friend is to give up! The secret lies apart from the branch, search the branch all you want but you will not find it. Look away from that pathetic branch and transfer your eyes over to that vine. There it is! There is the secret to life! The vine is the one that produces the fruit all the branch has to do is be connected to that vine and it will bear fruit! We have a seemingly unattainable goal ahead of us, to be "like Christ." We cannot do it, but the Lord has commanded it and He would never assign us a task without providing a way for it to be accomplished. That is just it though, He provided the way for it to be accomplished, we have to stop looking to ourselves to get the job done. No matter how much we try, it is only in vain because God never expected us to do it. We are not called to try to imitate Christ, if we tried it would be ugly. God provided a way for us to be like Christ and that is through Christ living out His life through us. It is not us doing the work, it is Him! He is our vine and all we must do is abide in Him.

What does that mean? What does it mean to abide? It is simple, do not be confused, to abide is simply to remain. Just as we did nothing to save ourselves, we do nothing to bear fruit Christ has already done the job and there is nothing left to do, we just have to accept it. In Christ we have all, we do not have to strive to be patient, or loving, or produce any of that fruit because we have it all in us, we have it because we have Christ. It is done, we just need to take it and believe it as truth and rest in our new life! We have an amazing God who has done the most amazing thing for us, I stand amazed!