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Leading With an Ordered Heart: Day 3

What do you make of Jesus’ assertion?

by David Joynt on August 23, 2016

Leading With an Ordered Heart: Day 3

JOHN 15:4-5

Jesus reinforced this dependence of human life and divine relationship in a stark assertion, “I am the vine, you are the branches, apart from me you can do nothing.” The freedom to live apart from God, in defiance or neglect or indifference, never implies the ability to succeed or flourish apart from him. Everything that is separated from God withers, like a plant deprived of water in the desert. Christian involvement in the work of society, in spheres of life, is crucial, lest they gradually come to exist in a futile independence. Institutions and activities that cease to have a referent beyond themselves cannot address the hard problems of existence with the faith and hope they require, and will move between an unreal self-confidence and a devastating despair. Politics, education, the arts—they all depend, finally, on inspiration and insight that lives beyond their own perspectives.

What do you make of Jesus’ assertion?

Tags: leading, ordered

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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