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I Am Because You Are October 20, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on October 20, 2025


JOHN 15:5 | 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

Yesterday’s wonderful promise has a qualifying clause, a potent warning. Apart from Jesus, we cannot do “anything.” Now it is true, people do act independently of God’s will all the time, and some of them become famous, influential, and rich. It seems as if they achieve a great deal. They accumulate power and possessions, they attract attention and admiration, they acquire success on their own terms.

 

Yet none of these achievements last unless they serve the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Power and possessions are passed on to someone else, attention fades into memory, influence dissipates. Ego driven trophies fade to dust along with ego driven people. It is things done with and for God that have lasting meaning.

 

Does this saying of Jesus recalibrate the world’s hierarchy?

 

 

Gracious God,

Help me invest in things that last, in projects that advance Your gospel, Your truth, Your agenda.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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