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Episode 7 – Vine Grafting; special guest Ray Hollenbach

Show Notes Episode 7 – On Grafting Grape Vines and Special Guest Ray Hollenbach

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Life As Prayer: Revive Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety

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Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to affect lives today.

It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.

And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.

Wine segment:

Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?

There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:

The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.

The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.

They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.

It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.

André_Thouin_1 — (how to graft plants and trees)

Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.

Sparking your Muse

An interview with Ray Hollenbach

Ray Hollenbach writes at Students of Jesus.com

He does the Deeper Seminar nationwide.

View his YouTube Videos on his new channel.

Interview Notes –

Minute: 4:30

Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

4:48

“Fruit of the Spirit is not a gift that we get; but come as a result or outcome of natural (spiritual) health”. -Ray Hollenbach

6:30 – How parenting matures us in the same way that “making disciples” matures us.

7:30 – The Impossible Mentor

8:30 –

“The goal of the Christian Life is NOT to get to heaven.”

9:47

The Vineyard Church

• John Wimber

10:06 –

12:20

Grape Vines

13:50

Grafting

14:40

“Jesus taught practically and transpositionally.”

(i.e. interacting with the transcendent in a practical way)

15:30

Student of Jesus Videos

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How-to MEASURE Maturity

(creative common photo) — (creative commons photo)

I used to think that people got better as they aged. They learned things and got more mature, and became better people.

As a kid, especially, I thought of how little I knew in comparison to my mom and dad, and other adults. I was changing and learning and growing in every way, every day–and I just supposed that growth and improvement were part of the deal in exchange for aging, and not being able to pull off wearing trendy clothes anymore and loose fitting skin.

Nope.

Now, of course, I realize that maturity has very little to do with time spent alive.

Hurts happen.

Wounds can fester.

People can grow bitter and nasty.

People can stay petty and insecure.

They can get lodged in a cell of shame and self-protect or start a habit of attacking others.

True maturity is rare.

Wisdom is a gift received through awareness and often through suffering, but it is not a pension that is received across the board and acquired like Medicare.

Time can work you over like a expert boxer works over a fresh challenger with body blows.

Nevertheless, there is a kind of measure you can employ to see where you stand.

Of course, the temptation will be to first, or more thoroughly, measure others with it. (The more the temptation to do it, or actually doing it, means what? Can you guess? Yes, the more you lack on the scale.)

9 Categories Measure True Maturity:

• love

• joy

• peace

• patience

• kindness

• goodness

• faithfulness

• gentleness

• self-control

Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you doing?

All 10s?

If you’ve noticed some gains and big improvements in these 9 qualities over the last few years, you are getting more mature!

If others have noticed, you might actually be right.

If you sense some problems with a few (or more) of them, then you might be stuck in arrested or delayed development. Ultimately we all should try to grow up…

BUT, that’s not to say “grow old” … There’s a big difference.

The surprise twist is that a spiritually (and in all other ways) mature person usually has a youthful timelessness to himself or herself.

Mature people have a humility that keeps them in a state of learning and growing. They don’t allow themselves to take themselves too seriously or suffer from sustained flare-ups of self-importance. So, in them you see a lack of arrogance, self-righteousness, or aloof disposition.

What should you do if you don’t measure up?

1. Admit it.

2. Ask for help (from God and others).

3. Keep trying and learning as you go.

4. Never think “I’ve made it!” or “I’m better than someone else.”

Galatians 5:22-23

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

HOW Confession Heals

One aspect of the pre-Easter season (Lent) is confession…

Well, not really. The majority of Evangelicals avoid or ignore the command to confess and even the concept of confession. One great excuse is that we don’t have to be like Catholics who have to answer to a priest for our sins and then do penance. We don’t need a mediator between us and God. How empowering!

But, ignoring or avoiding confession also gives us a chance to hide in our sin and deceive ourselves and others…hum…not so empowering! That’s like putting our soul in jail.

True and thorough Healing and transformation come in and from the context of community.

Jame 5:16
International Standard Version (©2012)
Therefore, make it your habit to confess your sins to one another and to pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

But –Why would confessing heal us?

There is a kind of cleansing that happens in confession. That’s why it’s not optional. It’s not just a purge from our end either.

Revealing ourselves to others has transformative power. Thousands of 12 Step followers will tell you countless tales of life-altering transformation that came through this route.

Simply put–God purposefully makes healing real and possible when authenticity happens with others. It will not happen on our own. This is by design because it makes us healthier to be connected in such a way.

There are no AA groups with 1 member because that would ensure failure. Healing works the same way for all us in that regard. Isolation keeps us stuck and unwell. Blind.

The Holy Spirit uses our honesty and uses our transparency and does his good work. Transformation! A confession is not just an apology (“Hey, sorry I made you feel that way.”) but rather it’s a careful decision to be authentic, to expose one’s self to the light of truth, to change, and to take a new course. So it is blessed.

This is the power and efficacy of prayer and repentance.

In the next post I’ll cover who we should or could confess to…

Do you think it matters who we confess to? (leave me a comment or voicemail)

Do you confess your sins and shortcomings regularly? (leave me a comment or voicemail. Yes or no and why or why not.)

It’s easy to forget to visit this blog, because you’re busy. I know how that is. I update with new content about 3 times per week. You can get the new stuff sent to you AND you can use my content as well. So, click in the side bar for new content delivery and please check out the Permission Policy page for the rules for fair usage. Thanks for spending some time here today. :)

LASTLY- Is there anything you should confess? You are invited to do that here, or simply admit to confessing to some other human here (if you want to confess in another venue).

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Protected: Discernment Series: Being Found (Final Post)

Sin and Riptide?

I love this handy-dandy safety chart on riptide. As you swim inland a rip current will prevent you from coming to shore. It will pull you under and drag you out to sea. Even in shallow water a strong swimmer can drown in rip current, so get wise to the wicked water and read it!

In the start of a new series leading up to Easter, my pastor (Jeff Byerly) began on Sunday talking about Recovery. Using themes from the 12 step program (and the Celebrate Recovery organization) he mentioned that even though we don’t all suffer the torments of pronounced addictions, the path to healing remains the same. This is one of the benefits of a support group like Celebrate Recovery. It functions like a life guarding outpost when the rip current is subtly strong.

Whether we tend to get into co-dependent relationships, spend time looking at pornography, succumb to retail therapy (shopping), fixate on eating too little (or feel the compulsion to eat too much) our compulsions and hang ups read like a similar story, a human story. A normal story.

The most piercing portion of the talk came when Jeff referenced some thoughts from C.S. Lewis…here I’m paraphrasing from Jeff’s paraphrase…but it goes something like…

–Bad people really don’t know that much about their badness— (maybe some of you Lewis fans can point me to the exact reference)

In sinning (which is the normal but deadly stuff of life), we go along with things as they come. We don’t distinguish much as we do mostly what we please. It’s only when we resist, try to consistently do what is right and good and when we try to go against the opposing and fierce force within and without that we run into a kind of riptide trying to pulling us under and kill us. Goodness then is a right mirror showing what still needs work in us. It reflects an ugly picture we don’t care to look at.

Paul really fleshes this out in Romans….What a great devotional read this makes. (Go on and click here for that)

So, it is in doing right where we come against the reflecting pool that shows us how bad are really are. Simply because we have terrible failures. We hit a snag. The contrast our need of rescue. Without the challenge of doing what we know is right, we never really assess the weight and scope of our sinful ways. But, my, how unpopular this concept is. Off-putting and out of vague. Time for a few reassuring pats on the back… But try to be unwaveringly good for a while, and we see how true it is.

And how you’ve ever noticed how self-satisfied people are? It’s probably because they aren’t making much of an effort at consistently doing what is right. They haven’t been humbled by failure. They’ve rarely seen felt this opposing monster for themselves because the room is too dark.

Maybe you’ve felt the same way too at times, “Well, I’m not so bad. I’m certain not as bad as most people.” Trust me, the day will not pass before this thought is likely to cross my mind as well.

It’s that kind of subtle self-dellusion that can thwart our willingness to be a part of the ongoing sanctification of the Holy Spirit. He works us over and makes us over. It’s that mauling process, if you will, that does the hard work. So, Jesus said, “Only the sick need a doctor.” He was of course talking to sick people at the time, only they didn’t think of themselves that way. There’s nothing more hopeless than that.

If we ever went a whole week noticing and noting all the strays from what we know is right and good and set about to only do right…WATCH OUT. The proof of our weaknesses, problems, and short-comings will pop up like an angry bee sting.

Fatigued then, in a fight to do what’s right, sometimes we realize it is in he surrender to our powerlessness that we find rescue. It’s counter-intuitive as much as swimming out to sea is when you’re almost drowning. But it works. This is part of the powerful of observing a season of Lent.

The great relief from sin and that sort of deadly riptide comes from repentance and forgiveness. This theme is never more potent than when we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday. More on this sort of thing in posts to come. Please click for updates (right sidebar)

Have you felt this kind of riptide?

(You can leave me a voice message with your thoughts, if you’d like. Click the voicemail tab on the right)

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