Pruning

 As with most Sundays now, I got to preach yesterday.  In a series on the Church, I took up the image of the vine and the branches from John 15.  If you're looking for extra credit, or even just curious, you can check it out here.  There seems to always be more to say and today it occurred to me that I could write it down and share it.  You might forgive me for forgetting.  It would appear that my last post was a day or two before the 2016 presidential election!

Back to pruning.  In the sermon, I called attention to the fact that the passage says that God prunes every branch that produces fruit (every Christian) but I didn't have much time to explain what that looks like.  Three areas of pruning jump to mind: sin, pursuits that steal our attention from God, and good and godly things that distract us from God's main purpose for us.

Sin.  Our base nature is selfish.  I want what I want and I want it now.  This will always draw us away from God and others.  As Christians, we generally get this but we usually shoot for managing our sin (keeping others from seeing it) rather than eradicating it.  In the botanical illustration, we see sin as an ugly part of our branch that needs hiding.  At least two problems exist.  First, sin grows so hiding will become more and more difficult and will usually lead to self isolation so others don't get too close.  Second, sin is an infected part of our branch, not just an ugly part.  The Master Gardener knows that sin will eventually kill the whole branch so He wants to cut it out entirely as soon as possible.  It rarely works this quickly in our lives but this is the correct goal.  The process takes time because there is more sin than we want to see.  The Gardener knows best.

Pursuits that steal our attention from God.  These are morally neutral items that tend to grow out of control in our life.  Lots of things vie for this kind of attention.  Sports, career, leisure, golf, Candy Crush . . . oops, I veered off into my own examples!  The point is that these are not bad, they just get way more time and resources than they deserve.  In extreme cases these may need to be removed completely but, usually, they simply need to be trimmed back to a reasonable size.  Again, the Gardener is the one who knows best.  We must listen to Him and allow Him to prune these activities to the correct size.  These things can lead to godly goals, like meeting people who need to hear about Jesus, but they must always be seen in light of the real goals of the Christian life rather than the goal of my pleasure.

Good and godly things that distract us from God's main purpose for us.  This is easily the most difficult area to discern.  God has created good works ahead of time for each of us to do (Eph 2:10).  I think much of our thinking about "God's great plan for your life" has resulted in many of us trying to discern the one purpose God has for us.  I try to think more in terms of what is God calling me to right now.  There are lots of things that need doing.  The more involved you get in ministry and your church, the more things you are tempted to do.  This is a good inclination but we are not called to do everything.  Sensing God's call to the main thing and allowing Him to prune back even other ministries for the main thing is a difficult but necessary thing.  Are you already thinking about how you could relax now that a preacher has given you an excuse to say no to ministry opportunities?  You might want to back up a couple of paragraphs.  We are not called to laziness and there's no retirement age for growing in the Spirit.  We are called to follow Jesus with every fiber of our being.  Following Him requires us to ask how much we are doing for Him and how much we are doing for the approval of others.  If you think I'm going to sort that out for you, you have entirely too much faith in me.

"No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."  (Hebrews 12:11, CSB)  Submitting ourselves to the pruning of the Gardener is a scary proposition.  You will find Him, however, to be the most patient and loving Gardener imaginable.

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