BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Check In, Not Out! Several months before this ordeal, the Lord had begun to deal with me about spending a little extra time with Him and His Word. For me, this meant one very clear thing: I was going to have to turn the television off. Without realizing it, I was watching two or more hours of TV every day, and most all of it was at night when I got into bed. You see, by the end of the day, I would be so tired in my mind and in my body that all I wanted to do was turn my brain off and “check out” as they say. I distinctly remember reaching for the remote on several occasions and hearing that familiar voice on the inside say, 'Jeremy, it’s time to press in.' I knew exactly what it meant, but in my mind, opening the Bible meant I would be preparing messages, which meant I’d be working; and I was too tired to work. Time and again, I ignored the voice. Then, one day in October, I went to have lunch with my grandfather, Kenneth Copeland. As we sat there and talked, he began to tell me how the Lord had been correcting him about how much TV he, too, had been watching. He told me that he wasn’t going to be feeding on anything but the Word of God night and day with the same sense of urgency and expectation he had decades ago. Clearly, he had heard the exact same voice I’d heard; only he responded to it much more promptly than I did. I left lunch that day knowing this was God once again speaking to me. Before I got home, I called my wife, Sarah, and told her we’d be shutting off the television and the movies, and we’d be getting into the Word again. I deleted all the TV and movie-watching apps from my iPhone and iPad. I was serious...sort of. Despite my best intentions, three days later, I had added back all the apps and was lying in bed again, tired from the demands of family and ministry, trying my hardest to drown it all out with an hour or two of television. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I was still reading my Bible, and I was still praying; but the Lord was calling me deeper, yet I wasn’t yielding. In the time that I was spending in the Word, I was led again and again to John 15:7-8: Jesus says, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” ("New King James Version"). I knew Jesus was calling me back into a life abiding in Him, but my flesh was determined not to go there. Then came that night in December when Jessie, my sweet little girl, could barely breathe. And though my confession was good, I felt powerless against the attack. The next day, I asked the Lord what the problem was. I heard that voice again. 'Jeremy,' He said, 'you’re trying to bear fruit without abiding.' That was all I needed to hear. I turned off anything and everything that was not going to feed our faith, and this time I did it for good! Several other significant challenges arose during the same time that Jessie got sick, and I began to see clearly why Jesus had started months before calling me back into the abiding place. He knew I was going to need to bear some pretty big fruit, and there was no way I’d be able to do that without abiding in Him. A Living Communion To abide simply means “to stay, remain, or continue in one place.” Jesus said in John 15:4 ("Wuest"), “Maintain a living communion with me.” This train of thought began in John 15 by Jesus identifying Himself as the vine and us as the branches. As long as the branch stays connected to the vine, it’s going to bear fruit, because in that connection is a living communion between the two. Everything that branch needs to survive and bear fruit is flowing to it from the vine. But in the moment the branch is disconnected and that communion is lost, so is all the life that branch needs to survive. Jesus said it this way: “The branch cannot bear fruit of itself” (John 15:4). You’ve never once seen a dead stick lying on the ground with a ripened piece of fruit on the end. For that branch to have any fruit on it, it must stay connected to the tree. Jesus went on to say, “neither can you [bear fruit] unless you abide in Me” ("NKJV"). A Christian who won’t abide in Jesus is as powerless to bear fruit as the stick that’s been disconnected from the tree. But if you will abide, then you will abound. It really is that simple. 24 : BVOV

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