“What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?”
(Isaiah 5:4).
If we must live a life of value in God we must be willing to pay the price. If there is something to always bear in mind, it is that we can’t live the Christian life on our own terms and expect rich rewards from God.
There is a transactional aspect to grace even though salvation is free: we must keep asking ourselves what we are willing to trade off to keep growing in grace and abundance in Jesus Christ.
To grow in grace requires trade-offs and how does God compel us to grow in grace? It is through an act called pruning.
Every Christian who would grow in grace must be ready to be pruned and it’s not a comfortable process though at the end it produces fantastic results.
In Agricultural terms, pruning is the action of trimming a tree by cutting away dead or overgrown branches or stems, especially to encourage growth.
Why does God prune the Christian? We mentioned earlier that we can’t run the Christian race on our terms but only by the laid down principles of God. One principle that cannot be negotiated in growth is the painful process of pruning.
Jesus clearly teaches that God removes unfruitful branches in our lives and prunes others to make us more fruitful. Therefore the Christian race is about bearing fruit and not being barren and unproductive.
God by the action of the Holy Spirit is constantly inspecting our lives for growth, because he has invested in us his Holy Spirit, and he will prune us from all dead weights so that we may keep growing and be luxuriant.
God can deny us many things that can serve as an idol in our hearts or that can take our focus away from Him in order to make us grow as Christians.
Sometimes God can delay good things in our lives that are not in consonance with his season for us. We could be praying to God for a big breakthrough but God may be asking us to wait. Why? Because God’s main objective in pruning is for our spiritual growth and not our immediate material gains.
Unfortunately, the painful process of trimming has been terminated in many lives, because many of God’s children have their hearts primarily fixated on the things of this world and they, therefore, become easily discouraged wishing the Lord would just stop pruning.
And because they are lacking in spiritual wisdom they may even jubilate when the Lord stops pruning half away allowing them to continue to pursue worldly benefits over the deep blessings of the spirit that would have accrued had they allowed God to conclude his work in their life.
So, when these Christians later run into a ditch, they quickly conclude that God is silent to their cries, they are baffled when God is unresponsive to their pain and suffering or their barren lives. Why? Because they refused to be pruned and preferred the pleasure of Egypt to the discipline of God. They forget that an abuse of divine grace for so long can only invite divine judgement.
The salient question to you today dear reader is this –
What is the gentle hand of the Holy Spirit compelling you to do in order to further your spiritual growth?
What is that compelling truth of God that is drawing you closer to God so that your life may bear much fruit for God?
Are you yielding to the voice of the Holy Spirit or shunning him as you run headlong through sin without giving a second thought to its destructive consequences?
Search your heart now and God will give you understanding and the grace to follow through with God, amen.
Reading
John 15: 1-8
