What does First B Jackson teach about remaining in jesus?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on remaining in Jesus starts with a simple image: a branch cut off from a vine. Pastor Carl opened 2022 with a message from John 15 built around that image, and the point he kept returning to was that branches produce nothing on their own. The fruit described in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, is not something a branch strains to produce. It happens because the connection is there. Carl was also careful to say that the commands Jesus gives in that passage are not weight added on top of an already hard life. Keeping them, he said, is actually meant to free us.
Deborah brought the same passage into a women's study and pressed a harder question: why do so many people who say they follow Jesus not seem to change? Her answer was that real transformation does not come from a one-time decision but from daily habits, the spiritual disciplines, that close the gap between us and Christ. The Mary and Martha story from Luke 10 gave her the center of gravity for that point. Jesus did not say Martha's responsibilities were unimportant, but that she was so consumed by temporary details that she was missing the one thing that mattered. Mary had already tasted how good Jesus was and would not let anything pull her away. That hunger, Deborah said, is what the study is trying to stir up.
Both teachers pointed to joy as a marker of whether someone is actually remaining. Deborah noted that genuinely joyful Christians are rare, and asked whether that absence of joy might be a sign that people are not truly abiding in Christ. Carl, working through the same promise in John 15, heard it as an invitation: remaining in Jesus and having His words remain in us is the condition under which a person is filled with the fruit that matters for eternity.
Taught from John 15:1-17 · John 15:4-11 · Luke 10:38-42 · Galatians 5 (implied) · Matthew 7:13-14
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- September 20, 2023 Women's Bible Study - September 20th, 2023 Deborah teaches First Baptist Jackson women how spiritual disciplines close the gap between us and Jesus, turning belief into real, lasting change.
- January 4, 2022 Remain in Jesus Carl walks through John 15, where Jesus calls himself the true vine, and shows why remaining connected to Him is the only way we bear lasting fruit.
Mentioned along the way
- January 11, 2021 You Didn't Choose Me, I Chose You Jesus warns his followers that the world may hate them as it hated him, but the Holy Spirit walks with us as we bear lasting fruit and testify about Christ.