My Reflections on Spiritual Emphasis Week: Chocolate Morsels and the Living Vine

This week during spiritual emphasis week, there were many things that Brent preached that really jumped out at me and helped me to think about common spiritual concepts  in a new way.  This whole week I have felt God speaking to me through so many points made in the sermons.  Today especially, the sermon was very powerful to me. Today Brent preached on John 5:1-9.  Relating to these verses, Brent gave us a great analogy about what it really means to live in Christ.  When every human being is born, he is like a "branch in a vase" that is dead and has no life.  But when we become Christians, we as dead branches become attatched to a vine (God) that gives us life.  When we become attatched to this vine, the life in the vine becomes the life in us, and "what is true for the vine is true for us."  This is a common analogy that I have heard a few times before, but Brent told it in a way that made me think about my life differently.  As Christians, we should not be of ourselves, the world, or anything else other than God; Therefore the life in us should be God living through us, and we should be trying our hardest to live in a way that Christ wants us to live.
Another analogy that Brent gave during chapel today was the "chocolate morsel" analogy.  The way many people snack and pick up bits and pieces of whatever they can find is how many people live: they take and consume bits and pieces of the world.  However, the world (or these snacks) will never satisfy us, and we will always remain hungry after this.  But once we "take a bite of"  Christ, or the semi-sweet chocolate morsels, our hunger will be satisfied.  Therefore, "we shouldn't be bloated by the world", but filled with Christ.  This also really spoke to me because it gave me an easy way to remember not to conform to what the world is doing, but to seek and abide in Christ in everything that I do.
My goal and  prayer after this week is not only that I will no longer conform to the world and act in a way that is no different from those who are not christians, but I also desire to let the Holy Spirit living in me reflect in everything that I do. I want it to be evident in my life that I am a part of the living vine, and my hunger is not for the world, or temporary snacks that won't completely satisfy me, but for God, the chocolate morsels.