I am the true vine, and My Father is
the vinedresser. 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. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much
fruit; (John 15:1-2,5a)
Most of us
have some familiarity with these verses.
Talk of a vine, branches and fruit, along with the vinedresser who takes
care of his vineyard. How do we apply
this to our lives?
Bruce
Wilkinson, in his book Secrets of the
Vine, does a fantastic job in delving deeper into this topic. I highly recommend this book. I am not going to try and recreate it
here. I just have a few ideas I would like to share.
If you are
unfamiliar with these verses, here is a quick summary:
Here
we find Jesus talking to His disciples, using the metaphor of a vineyard to
describe our relationship with Him and God the Father. In this relationship, Jesus is the vine which
feeds the branches. The vine is the
trunk that grows up out of the ground and ends in a large gnarl from which the
branches grow.
We
are those branches which will produce fruit by our actions in serving Him. The branches are fed from the vine and grow
along a trellis. This is where the vinedresser focuses his efforts because that
is where the fruit is produced.
God
plays the part of the vinedresser who tends to the vineyard. The vinedresser lovingly tends to the
branches so they will produce as much fruit as possible. Basically the fruit represents our good
works. Thoughts, attitudes and/or
actions in which God places value because they bring Him glory. We bear this fruit when we allow God to work
through us to bring Him glory.
So why do
we need tending? What keeps us from
developing and bearing fruit? The easy
answer: Sin. The sin in our lives makes
us sick and dirty and therefore unable to bear fruit. So we just need to stop sinning, right? Now it isn't quite so easy. If we are truly seeking God, we are striving
to lead sin free lives; the problem here is that we are not perfect.
Even with
the best intentions we still fall short and find ourselves dealing with sin in
our lives. Yes, God understands we are
not perfect and gives us grace. But
sometimes it is not so much the sin as it is some other underlying issue to the
sin.
Here are a
few issues that may be standing in our way.
Disagreement with God in regards to something in our lives, this may
manifest itself in many ways including: doubt, fear, worry, hate, anger, impatience,
and lust just to name a few. How about
harboring unforgiveness in our heart?
Selfishness? Resentment? Maybe just something bad from our past we
just don’t want to give up; some vice we try to convince ourselves is ok to have
if the rest of my life is good.
Fortunately
for us, God love us too much to just stand by and not do anything. If we are truly striving to better ourselves,
God will be there to pick us up, clean us off and support us. This puts us in a better position to bear the
fruit that brings Him glory. This is
where He may start the pruning process. Think
scissors, gently trimming away the bad stuff to help us grow.
It’s when
we are not necessarily looking to Him that He may actually start taking steps
to address the issues. He may start with
some gentle prodding but if necessary he will start taking drastic, sometimes
painful measures to get our attention and move us toward repentance. This is commonly referred to as
discipline. Think God starting up His
spiritual weed whacker and diving in to remove the bad stuff from our
lives. This will continue until we stop
doing whatever we are doing that is drawing the attention of God’s weed
whacker.
Pruning is
the cutting away of dead or dying material or even trimming back the branch in
favor of increasing its health and vitality, thereby increasing its ability to
produce fruit. In our lives this is
cutting away immature commitments and lesser priorities or removing the parts
of our lives that drain precious time and energy. This is all done for our benefit.
Sometimes
we invite the pruning into our lives.
Have you ever asked God to help in addressing a problem in your life and
then suddenly you feel like your life is going all topsy-turvy. Areas of your life that are not related to
your prayer are upended. Now we
panic. Our next prayer is, “God, my life
is going from bad to worse, please make it stop.”
The
problem here is that God was in the process of answering our first prayer. And
the what-the-heck-just-happened-to-my-life is God pruning. We need to remember, God knows what we need,
much better than we do. So when this
happens it is because He is trimming what we need trimmed, not necessarily what
we expected, or maybe even wanted in the process of answering our prayer.
The good
news is the pruning does not last forever.
The pruning will last until God is done.
I’m not going to say that the pruning doesn't cause pain, in fact the
closer to the core of who you are, the more intense the pain will be.
I will
admit there have been times it felt like there couldn't possibly be any more
that could be trimmed away and I felt like I had been cut back to nothing more
than a stick. The key is how you respond
to the pruning. We can fight it or we
can trust that God has our best interests in mind through the entire process
and allow Him to work.
I like how
Michael DiMarco put it in his book God
Guy: “You gotta understand the job
of the vinedresser in order to really get the full impact. His goal is not to stress out the vine or the
branches. He’s not grabbing the stuff in
anger and just pruning willy-nilly, chopping haphazardly. He’s not even cutting just to make things
look better. He’s working with a
purpose, and each move he makes has one goal: to improve the production of the
plant.”
In
Philippians, Paul tells us God is going to work in our lives. “Being
confident in this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will
complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
(Phil 1:6) Don’t be afraid to
allow God to work in your life. This is
another demonstration of how much He loves us.
He knows what he is doing.
He is
tending His vineyard.
