This week week we continued looking at John 15:1-17. We learned that our love for God is tied to and verified by our love for one another.

Jesus is the true vine and those who are truly his — that is, those who are truly Christians — abide in him and produce fruit. This is how God is most glorified.

Christ wants his disciples to know what anxiety is, what can cause it, and how focusing on God’s Kingdom and righteousness can help us overcome it!

If the Kingdom vision that Jesus tells us of doesn’t reshape our approach to possessions, then we are not living out the Kingdom vision.

Fasting is the way — at least as it appears in the Bible — to act in solidarity and in true sympathy with those things — with the suffering of the world around us.

There’s so much more to the Lord’s Prayer than many of us realize and exploring its depths brings about a prayer that was both designed to be recited and aid in our spiritual formation.

We need to make time to spend devoted time in prayer and, remembering Luther’s words, make our prayers “brief, consistent, and intense.”

When we aim towards generosity out of a motivation of being seen and praised by others, or even to impressed by ourselves, then we fail to actually pursue the kind of Christ-honoring righteousness he calls us to.

Righteousness, according to Jesus, is whole-person behavior that accords with Gods’s nature, will, and coming kingdom.