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Paul's powerful prayers for the church in Colossae teach us something important about praying and the remarkable potential each of us has to please God himself. In fact, in this brief passage Paul reveals what it is about us that pleases God!

If you had to boil down your role at work or at home – your job description, so to speak – to one line, what would that line be? What if you were asked to boil down to one line your role as a follower of Jesus? How would you do it? One text that could help would be John 15:1-8. Read it and see if you can come up with a one-line description of the Jesus-follower’s role.

To get the most out of this week's sermon, I AM the Vine (John 15:1-8), it would be good to read some foundational Old Testament passages. Start with Isaiah 5:1-7, then read Jeremiah 2:19-21 and, finally, Psalm 80:8-19. When we understand how Jesus's claim to be "the vine" is founded upon these important passages, we'll realize just how extraordinary a claim it is. Not only will John 15:1-8 help us know who Jesus is, it will help us know who we are and how we should live.

I suspect the shepherds in the familiar Christmas story had a "What just happened?" experience. In the midst of cascading impressions – a light too bright for the eyes, a loud noise emanating from heaven, then the impression of a crowd of thousands, an army even – they asked themselves, “What just happened?” However one answers that question, what just happened was part of a series of happenings, part of a plan, a pattern. And when that plan is consummated, when the pattern is completed, the result will be breathtakingly beautiful, and better than anyone has ever dreamed.

Jesus unveils the sixth of the seven great I AM statements in the Gospel of John: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” It's the evening before Jesus's execution and he says something that shocks and frightens the Twelve: he won’t be with them much longer. He is going to leave and they can’t go with him. It was in this setting that Jesus spoke the now famous words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

We’ve got to learn to live backwards. That is, we need to learn to live out of our future and not just out of our past. Most people are driven by the unalterable past into an unknowable future, but Jesus’s people can be pulled into the future by the call of the knowable – though always more than comprehensible – God. People who are driven by the unalterable past are frequently filled with regrets over former days and fears over future ones. They are haunted by would-haves, could-haves, and should-haves and threatened by might-be and could-be possibilities. Only people who learn from Jesus how to live out of the future can be fully alive in the present.

What does it mean that Jesus is the resurrection? Real life - our real life, with all its joys and sorrows - is where we meet Jesus. It is where Martha and Mary met him - in the midst of the biggest crisis of their lives - when Jesus introduced himself as the Resurrection and the Life.

Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd by contrasting the good shepherd with bad shepherds and with contract employees who don’t know or care about the sheep. If you are a sheep, you have only a few possibilities: You have a good shepherd; you have a bad shepherd; or you have no shepherd. We have a Good Shepherd who has freed us and made us his own.