Pruning Time....Again

Did your mother ever tell you, "It is not polite to point. Remember when you are pointing at someone that you have four fingers pointing back at you."? Obviously mine told me and it has stayed with me all of these years. Recently the Lord has been convicting me of a parallel observation. When I am thinking something about someone else that is not kind, uplifting, positive, etc., if I am totally truthful about the matter, there will be four fingers pointing back to me about some aspect of that situation. In fact, while on the surface the initial reaction that I was having may have been about that person, God was really working on me and trying to get my attention. My precious Abba had put on His gardening gloves, pulled out His pruning shears and was beginning to work on some growth that needed to come off. Ouch!

Inevitably we enter seasons of our lives when our loving heavenly Father has to become our disciplinary Father if we are going to stay on the path that He has set before us. It is natural. If you have ever grown a garden, maintained a yard or landscaped at all, then you have an analogy to what the Lord is talking about in John 15:2 when He said, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." Any productive plant must be pruned in order to maximize its fruitfulness. To allow it to grow in any direction that it chooses without the gardener tending to it will result in a wild bush with skimpy fruit. Sound like your life at any point in time?

When I was at the end of one significant chapter in my life and entering the next, I was studying Bruce Wilkerson's book, Secrets of the Vine. A timely study of which I was only beginning to understand the relevance as I made the transition to a new state and a new life. God revealed to me, page by page, how He was pruning everything out of my life so that eventually I would bear Him more fruit for the kingdom. I can tell you that it was a painful pruning process as I watched people, relationships, material possessions disappear from my life as the pruning shears kept snipping away. However with each cut I also began to rely more and more on my source of life itself, the True Vine, to keep me alive. Since I was no longer expending energy to keep those old branches that were not bearing fruit alive, I could focus on the nourishment that was coming from the Vine which was intended to bring life to me.

Pruning brings about another kind of fruit to our lives. Hebrews 12:11 "Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." When we are going through the pruning process, we can experience a myriad of emotions - hurt, rejection, anger, disappointment, etc. Yet once we release the flesh and soul, surrender ourselves to this process and to our Lord, proclaiming, "Your will, not mine, Lord!" a sweet peace will begin to ebb into our being. It is seldom a flood as we have to recognize that those emotional bruises will have to heal and to be treated by the loving touch of Holy Spirit, our Comforter. He is true to His name and will bring us that comfort, if we are true to Him and surrender the flesh and soul to Him.

Pruning... do we have a choice? I don't believe we do. When God decides it is time to cut away dead wood out of our lives, it is going to go whether we like it or not. What we do have a choice about is how we are going to proceed during and after the pruning process. Do we accept the pruning knowing that our Gardener is lavishing His loving care on every branch checking as to whether this is a fruit bearing branch; checking how far back to cut before He reaches the point of division where the branch is going to multiple and reproduce itself making an even greater harvest than before? Or do we reject the pruning, becoming angry and depressed developing a victim mentality listening to the lies of the adversary and beginning to lament to anyone that will listen to the tale of woe that will pour forth from our tongue? (Please remember Proverbs 18:21 "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.") The choice is yours when your pruning season is upon you. If you are going to bear fruit for the kingdom then you will be pruned. It is proof positive that God has His hand on your life!!!