John 15:1,2,4,5

John 15:1,2,4,5

1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. 4 Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. 5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me.

Like Bill, I enjoy gardening. As I have mentioned before, we bought a old house that obviously had been very well taken care of at one time, but now has had years of neglect. One of the things I tackled last fall was pruning the fruit trees. The pear tree is fairly small (12 to 15 in diameter), but the apricot tree is huge. It has at least a 30 in diameter and sprawling branches that can hold 5 or 6 kids at a time.

It was full of gnarly old growth, branches intertwining and lots of small twigs. It produced almost fist sized apricots last year, but only about 12. When I started cutting away "perfectly good branches", my husband accused me of trying to kill the tree. "You're taking too much out" he said. "Why don't you just let the poor thing be?"

How many times do we tell that to God? "God, there is nothing wrong with _____! Why do You have to take that? Ouch God, this pruning hurts! Why don't You just let me be?" Or the big one...."God, I'm already producing fruit. Why do you have to keep pruning?"

God is always calling us to come up higher, become more Christlike and produce more fruit. As you mature in your Christian life, God is going to expect more. Luke 12: 47-48 And that slave who knew his master's will, and didn't prepare himself or do it, will be severely beaten. 48 But the one who did not know, and did things deserving of blows, will be beaten lightly. Much will be required of everyone who has been given much. And even more will be expected of the one who has been entrusted with more.

Yes, pruning hurts. It's not one of those things that get any easier either. But aren't you grateful that our Father loves us enough to keep working on us?

Sincerely,
Deborah