I don’t know anything at all about farming.
My wife and I were staying with her parents, who at that time had many acres of blueberries that they farmed. Early one morning, my father-in-law asked me to come out and help him prune the bushes. I didn’t even know what ‘pruning’ was, so I declined, because I didnt want to look like an idiot. I didnt mind a little bit of work, I just didnt have a clue how to do it. But he persisted, so eventually I caved in and joined him.
He handed me some pruning shears and started me off on a row of bushes right behind him, gave me a quick lesson on what he expected, and left me to myself. I had no idea what to do. All the branches looked the same to me, so I figured I’d do the least damaging thing. I started clipping away the smallest branches.
After about an hour, he came to check on me. I seriously thought he was about to have a heart attack. I ruined a lot of bushes! I kind of suspected that I wasn’t doing the best pruning job he had ever seen, but I didnt know that I was actually clipping away the very branches I was supposed to be protecting.
The whole point of pruning is to cut away useless branches and allow the young shoots to grow and bear more fruit. Someone who knows what they are doing carefully and intentionally prunes those branches that do not bear the desired fruit so that the nutrients will go to those branches that do, and so he will have a greater harvest.
God does the same thing to you and I. Jesus said this about God’s pruning of us in John 15:1,2 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
You and I are branches of the true vine, Jesus Christ. We are supposed to be bearing fruit in our lives for God.
Those of us who bear no fruit, Jesus says will be cut off! Yikes! Do you bear fruit for God, or are you a useless branch? Scary thought if you are spending your life on yourself.
For those of us who do bear fruit, He prunes us. Like a master gardener, He cuts away those things in our lives that don’t bear fruit for Him. Things that aren’t even necessarily sinful, but just use up our time, talents, and resources. There are many things in my life that God has taken away simply because they were getting in the way of what He wanted to do with my life.
We may wonder at the time what He’s doing when He’s cutting something out of our lives, but He has purpose behind His pruning, and the purpose is so that we bear even more fruit. It might be painful for a moment, but in the end it will yield a greater harvest of righteousness.
The cool thing about God is, unlike me, He doesn’t cut something out and then say, “Whoops, I didnt mean to do that!” God isn’t a rookie. He knows what He’s doing.
Are you going through some pruning? Is there something in your life that God is cutting away but you are fighting it? Ask yourself, will you be able to bear more fruit for God in the end? You can trust Him, friend. His purpose is for your good.