Jesus Promises Pruning
What areas of your life need pruning?
Verse of the Day
‘I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.’
Today’s Devotional
Last summer I had a very pretty pot of flowers on my patio. It sat next to a small flower bed. I noticed at one point that the flowers I had planted in the bed were not thriving. They did not look dead or diseased. They just weren’t blooming the way the same plants were blooming on the opposite side of my patio. Same plants, same environment, same feeding and watering, but different amounts of blooms and vibrancy of the blooms. As I studied the situation, I realized that the pretty pot of flowers was blocking most of the direct sunlight that the bedded plants were getting on that side. So I moved the pot to a different location. In a day or two, the bedded plants started blooming again.
There was nothing bad or wrong with the potted plant. It was just in a location that was blocking sunlight from the other plants. They needed to be moved.
The above example is how I think God prunes us sometimes. There are things in our lives that are not bad or wrong, but their current presence is blocking God’s light from other parts of our lives. They must be moved.
Sometimes they must be removed altogether.
Jesus is using an analogy of a vine and its branches. God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. Here is a horticultural note about grapevines: “Left to itself a vine will produce a good deal of unproductive growth. For maximum fruitfulness extensive pruning is essential.”
The question then becomes, do we want maximum fruitfulness? Are we willing to submit ourselves to the Gardener for pruning? Are we willing to have “unproductive fruit” removed from our lives? In submitting to God, we must be aware that our definition of “unproductive” and God’s definition may be very different. We must remember that pruning involves cutting away part of us that are very much alive, which will likely be painful.
We are told in other parts of Scripture that we will be known for the fruit we bear. We are also told that we will be known by our love. So what if our ability to love is the fruit we are meant to bear? And what if we must be pruned in order to love like Jesus did?
You will notice that the promise of pruning is not in the warm-and-fuzzy category of many of the other promises of God. Pruning does not sound fun. It does, however, sound necessary.
I can’t make a list for you of unproductive fruit in the life of a Christian. This is individual work between each believer and the Holy Spirit. I can share what some of my unproductive fruit has been. My opinions about how church should be done. My need to be right. My desire for comfort. The amount of time I spend watching television. The news. My desire to use anything other than God as a coping mechanism. My pride.
Some of these things were removed swiftly. For a few of them, the Gardener continues to work on removal, as I seem to be stubbornly holding on to some of my unproductive fruit.
The promise here is our fruitfulness. The condition of this promise is allowing God to remove distractions and/or reorder our lives for maximum effectiveness for His Kingdom. Are we willing?
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
Where have you seen God prune something from your life in the past?
How can you submit everything about your life to God in order for Him to prune you?
Is there anything in your life that you can identify that is blocking other parts of your life from God?
What is the Holy Spirit prompting you to remove from your life?
How would you rate your own “fruitfulness”? If in doubt, ask the Holy Spirit and also a trusted friend.