Featured How do you deal with people you are trying to help who wont repent.

Plant a vineyard. See how long it takes them to produce grapes suitable for wine.

Plant an apple tree. Tell me how many seasons it is before you can pick some that will make a decent pie.

Plant pecans. Let me know when you get nuts that are edible.

There is a reason Jesus compares believers to branches in the vine. Perhaps we should all learn what that reason is.

It takes some trees, some plants, some vineyards, some believers longer than it takes others. Don't doubt her salvation. Disciple her.

 

Excellent response. Dealing with a family on our church right now. Their choices pain me. All I can do now is advise and love them and continue to plant seeds of truth.

 

Jordan gave you scripture and you answered with human reasoning, I'll take scripture any time. There are many types of apples, some apples are naturally sweet to the taste why others are naturally sour regardless of the age of the tree and never will be suitable for a apple pie. I have a pecan tree and the first crop of nuts were edible.

 

I gave you for Scriptural backing for what I said, though I admit it was a general reference rather than with the Scripture address. Suffice it to say, Scripture doesn't tell us to judge her. It tells us to love her. We can take or leave that, but Jesus did compare us to branches in the vine, if you remember.

John 15, NASB
1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
2 "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
3 "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you." ​

Virtually all translations make the mistake of making the Greek airo in v. 2 "take away." It isn't. It is "lifts up." Verse 3 makes clear that is the correct meaning, stating that "you are already clean" in reference to the vinedresser's process as set out in v. 2. Many aren't aware of this because few have studied it, apparently. Go to a vineyard to watch and learn. After a thunderstorm, the vineyard keeper -- in this passage, God the Father, whom Christ called "the Vinedresser" -- walks through the vineyard with a bucket of mild soapy water and a soft-bristled brush. Vineyard keepers have done this same thing for thousands of years.

When the vineyard keeper finds a branch lying in the muddy waters beneath the trellis, he/she picks it up off the ground, washes it with the brush, and carefully ties it loosely back into the trellis with twine or string. The branch will literally drown in the muck if this is not done. It will die without producing any fruit. By washing and tending it, the vineyard keeper restores it to cleanness and the ability to produce fruit.

So does the Father gently pick us up out of our own muck and mire, cleans us off, restores us to productivity and allow us to grow and produce fruit. Neither you nor Jordan know if this young woman is "abiding in the Vine" or not. You make judgments based on poorly developed observations gleaned from Scriptures taken out of context.

Preferring Scripture over "human reasoning" is obviously wise, but we can also miss Scriptural reasoning when we leap to conclusions without considering the deeper meaning of what someone says.

I'm sure that's true. But that "first crop" took a minimum of three to ten years to appear, and if the tree came from a seedling, it took fifteen years.

 

From personal experience this is very telling. It's not definitive, but it's pretty close. Back in the day, I walked the aisle at an ole timey revival. I prayed the prayer, they patted me on the back and dunked me the next week. I was going to heaven. But not much changed. And every time someone asked me about my salvation I was really annoyed. Had an excuse for every sin.

It was years later before I finally got it. It took a while for me to walk away from some sins but I couldn't just party through life with no guilt and when people asked me if I was saved I was overjoyed with the chance to tell people about my salvation.

It might be time to do as RD2 suggested. Shake the dust from your feet. I have had to do that with most every person I used to hang out with back in the day. It is very difficult. You want to grab people by the ear and drag them to heaven, but it just doesn't work that way.