{"id":159,"date":"2008-03-14T01:01:50","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T00:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=159"},"modified":"2008-03-14T01:06:29","modified_gmt":"2008-03-14T00:06:29","slug":"lent-devotions-2008-friday-14-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2008\/03\/14\/lent-devotions-2008-friday-14-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent Devotions 2008: Friday 14 March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I Am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser.<\/em> (John 15:1)<\/p>\n<p>Why the True Vine? Why not just \u201cthe Vine\u201d? This is because Christ is emphasising another I AM statement. The \u2018I AM\u2019 was a way that Jesus had, of drawing the connection between Himself and His Father, our Lord. The vine represents growth, life and fruit. What is the point of any plant unless it produces something? We are the branches of that vine, the fruit, and the growth. He feeds us and nourishes us. We grow and should multiply as more and more branches. The Greek word translated &#8216;true&#8217; in that sentence means &#8216;real; actual; not counterfeit, but genuine&#8217;. Jesus said: I am the real; the true; the actual; the genuine vine. There are many counterfeit vines in this world that we can attach ourselves to\u2014religions such as Mormonism, whose teachings many people cling to\u2014 or Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, but there is only one &#8216;true&#8217; vine who will enable us to bear fruit for God, and that true vine is Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prayer: Let us all grow in Christian wisdom, love and have desire for propagating Your Word and the knowledge of our loving Lord. Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I Am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser. (John 15:1) Why the True Vine? Why not just \u201cthe Vine\u201d? This is because Christ is emphasising another I AM statement. The \u2018I AM\u2019 was a way that Jesus had, of drawing the connection between Himself and His Father, our Lord. The vine represents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}