Living Stones – Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Pruning
John 15:2
“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.”
Well, now it gets tough for the fruitful branches. We understood that the branches that are unfruitful will suffer removal and the furnace. We now must come to grips with what the fruitful branches will go through.
At the beginning of the passage, as Jesus set up the vine imagery to teach this concept of fruitfulness, He personified the vine. “I am the true vine,” he said. But he continued and had His Father represent the vinedresser in the image.
The vinedresser is the one who cultivates, trains, and prunes the vines in the vineyard. Again, we are aware that not many of us are familiar with vineyards and the work of the farmhands or vinedressers, but the concept is not that difficult to grasp. The vine needed to be guided as to where to grow, whether to run along a fence or on a constructed arbour, for example. And then, as we learnt already, dead and fruitless branches must be stripped away and carried off to the fire.
But there is also another job for the vinedresser, tackling the fruitful branches. The fruitful branches weren’t just left to grow as they please. These branches were subject to pruning.
Pruning involves the selective removal of parts of a vine, such as branches, buds, or roots. Plants are pruned to remove deadwood, to shape the plant or control the direction of growth, to maintain the overall health of the plant, and to guarantee good yields of quality flowers and fruits.
The experts say that regular pruning is essential for controlling the vine and producing quality fruit yields. According to these experts, the most common mistake inexperienced vinedressers make is not pruning hard enough. Light pruning is not effective for adequate fruiting. However, heavy pruning provides the greatest quantity and quality of fruit. When pruning the vine, vinedressers cut off as much of the old wood as possible in order to encourage the growth of new wood. The new wood is where the fruit is produced.
And this is where we are. A fruitful branch, is a branch that could bear more fruit. To bear more fruit it needs to be pruned hard. You need to be pruned hard. Once we demonstrate the potential to be fruitful, God, the vinedresser, will go to work on us to remove the deadwood in order to encourage the growth of new wood for us to bear more fruit.
God does not go to work on us with a vinedresser’s pruning shears, but, given the role Jesus says He plays, God is at work shaping us, training us, removing old and dead things from our lives, and making room for fresh new growth.
It is obvious that God’s pruning takes place through the circumstances of our lives from day to day. Obstacles and challenges often determine the paths we are going to take. Some challenges and events cause us, from time to time, to make different choices. And, open doors and opportunities draw us into new directions. As these events unfold we often don’t immediately recognise that our direction for growth has changed, and we have been transformed.
We must be sensitive to how all the events of our lives are shaping, or reshaping, our lives in order to discern what God is at work to do in us, with us, and through us. There would be no high quality and quantity of fruit in our lives if we don’t come through this reshaping with a clear sense of God’s purpose for us.
Think on these things:
- How have you responded to closed doors or obstacles in your life?
- Can you look back and see how opportunities you took have reshaped your life?
- How could you be more fruitful given where you are now?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be sensitive to God’s pruning actions in our lives.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex