For five weeks this space has been about conflict. What it means to go to a brother. Why elders are held to a different standard. How Scripture gets turned into a shield. What a church should have in place before trouble comes, and what it owes a man after he falls. It was heavy ground to write, and I suspect it was heavy ground to read.
I believe every word of it. But somewhere in the writing I kept running into the same wall, and I want to name it before we go any further.
Every one of those articles assumed something it could not provide. Each one described a process, and every process needs people to carry it out. A brother who goes to his brother gently. A board that can hear an accusation without flinching and without rushing. A congregation that can tell the difference between a verse and a shield. You can write the right steps down, have them adopted, and file them where everyone can find them, and still have no one in the room who is living close enough to Christ to walk them honestly.
A process can be exactly right and the people running it can be dry.
No process produces the people it needs. I know that because I have needed it myself. When I am honest, the thing I lack on most days is not a better procedure. It is nearness. I can know every right step and still be too far from Him to take one of them well.
So this week is not a change of subject. It is a return to where this whole conversation started. Wounded Shepherd began in February with sixteen short reflections on abiding in Christ, and the first weekly article here turned to John 15. Everything since has been, in one way or another, about what happens when that gets lost.
On September 9, I published a small book about it. It is called Near the Vine, and it comes in two editions: A believer’s eight-week devotional on abiding, and A shepherd’s eight-week devotional on abiding. Each is eight weeks long, five days a week, and each day is short on purpose. A passage of Scripture. A slow second reading. A brief reflection. A prayer. And one question or practice to carry with you after you close the book.
The two editions begin in the same place. Their first two weeks are word for word the same, because those weeks walk through John 15, and Jesus spoke those words to all His disciples, not to some of them. Then each edition turns to the passages Scripture speaks to its own reader. The believer’s edition goes to the Good Shepherd and the promises God makes to His scattered sheep. The shepherd’s edition goes to the charges given to those who keep watch over a flock. Neither one is the deeper book. The Vine is the same for both.
What follows is Day One, exactly as both editions print it. If you can, read it the way the book asks: the passage twice, the second time aloud. And one small thing before you start. When the prayer says “I,” it means you. It was written for your voice, not mine.
Day One—The True Vine
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
(John 15:1–2 ESV)
A slow reading. Read the two verses again, slower, and this time aloud if you can. Notice who is doing everything in them. The vine gives. The vinedresser tends. The branch, so far, has not been asked to do anything at all.
Reflection. Jesus begins with a claim, not a command. I am the true vine. Before He asks anything of us, He tells us what He is—and the word true is doing quiet work, because it means there are other vines, other places a branch might try to draw its life from, and they are not true. Most of us have spent seasons grafted into something else. A role. A reputation. A ministry. A church that felt like life itself, until it didn’t. The passage does not scold us for this; it simply says there is one Vine that is true, and the others were never going to carry sap.
Then the Father appears, and He appears with a knife—and here is where many of us flinch, because we have been cut before, and not by hands we trust. So look carefully at what the text actually says. The vinedresser cuts the fruitful branch that it may bear more fruit. The pruning is not punishment. It is not rejection. It is the attention of an owner who wants more life in the branch than the branch has yet carried, and it is only ever done to branches he intends to keep. Whatever has been cut away from you—and some of it may have been cut cruelly, by men, and that was not God’s gardening—the Father’s own hands do not wound to diminish. They cut toward fruit.
Prayer. Father, You are the vinedresser, and I have not always trusted Your hands. Teach me the difference between the cutting that comes from men and the pruning that comes from You. I am a branch, and today that is all I will try to be. Amen.
Abiding. Carry one question through the day: what am I treating as my vine? Not to answer it yet. Just to notice.
That is where the first day ends. Not with an answer, but with a question to carry. I would not rush it. The book doesn’t. Most days it leaves you right there, still inside the passage, with nothing to finish.
If you would like the other thirty-nine days, both editions are in paperback, and you will find them on the books page. The believer’s edition is for anyone in a pew. The shepherd’s edition is for elders, deacons, pastors, and anyone else who spends their days feeding others. Facing every entry in both books is a ruled page, left there for you to write on, or to leave empty.
And if you never open either one, the question is still yours. You do not need a book to come back to the Vine. You only need to come. He has not moved.