I am the Vine

Jesus said, "I am the Vine." Life flows from the root, into the vine, into the branches, and intro the world in the form of fruit.

Life flows into the branches based on the connection with the vine. Life flows into God's family based on its connection with Jesus. The word in the original language means simply to stay. Life ebbs and flows according to where we stay.

The term "getting into God's presence" is usually associated with worship. I am not dismissing, or de-valuing worship, but people cannot attend worship meetings all the time. We need to sleep, eat, and work.

Prayer is another means to connect to God's presence. Even though there are numerous examples of men and women giving themselves to hours of prayer, the same issue holds.

Remaining connected to the Father seems to be more complicated than it first appears. There is no single activity that can define it. Failure will not permanently sever it.

We were designed to have a 24 x 7 connection to the Father. Worship and prayer  were meant to be a continuous, moment by moment experience. This would be possible because our hearts would be open to, and focused on the Father of All.

Sin broke the connection, and the open flow between us and our Father. Giving God our allegiance opens the way towards restoring that connection.

The connection is restored based on the condition of our hearts. Does it rest in Jesus? Is it open, inclined, and focused on the Father? We can shut out the world for a time, and concentrate on worship or prayer. But we cannot move into that state forever. So, instead, we return to a heart focus and openness, in prayer and worship, consistently, and regularly, all day long.

Computers are multi-processing. That is, they appear to perform many tasks at the same time. In reality, they focus on one task for a period of time, then they move to the next task, then the next, etc. Followers of Christ, in effect, need to multi-process, scheduling spiritual check-in's frequently in the queue.