A recent task in the garden reminded me of the fact that believers have to be, from time to time, shed of the old ways, however victorious they may have been, and prepared for a new season of effectiveness.
Yes, it’s time to be pruned. My job in the garden was to cut back old growth on some apple trees that had been neglected for a few years. We had just moved into a home with a lovely garden that needed some TLC, and the trees were looking pretty straggly, even though the fruit they carried was excellent.
One tree had what we would call cooking apples. Giant fruit perfect for apple pie. The other had delicious red apples that were very sweet and excellent for fruit salad. If they were so good why would we need to change anything? Let’s talk about this today.
Seasons
The gardening principle of pruning trees for better fruit and growth has similarities with our walk with God. We have seasons of effectiveness, and we get into patterns of life, even putting together systems and processes that work well; so well, in fact, that, after a while, we may be operating in our own strength rather than by the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Is this possible? Yes. The Holy Spirit is always in our lives, but we sometimes leave Him out of the conversation. He shows us how to develop the next phase of ministry and service, then we become used to the way in which it works.
We are so well trained by the Word and Spirit that we begin to do things by rote. We can even stop relying on Him for leadership and guidance and start leading ourselves. He is there, in our lives, but we can unwittingly consign Him to the spare room rather than the bridge or the engine room.
Everything still works, but not to full capacity, because God always wants us to be advancing, even if it is by increments, and always producing new fruit. If we’re not careful we can begin to do this apart from the Holy Spirit.
We need Him to be in our lives as more than someone we can call on when things go wrong. He is our Leader as well as our Helper and Counsellor.
Let Him in
This is where we need to yield ourselves to God the Father in the trimming season and allow Him to cut off some of the old ways and prepare us for a new period of growth. We will know when this is about to take place. We will start to become inwardly uneasy even if we are outwardly happy with the status quo.
This is a dangerous time spiritually. It’s a decision time. There is a stirring inside. We are wrestling with the prospect of leaving the familiar and entering into the unknown. Faith always holds some kind of mystery about how it is going to work out. We have a starting point, but each step is ordered by the Lord.
God will always take us on adventures. He is the Lord of the people who do exploits in His name; endeavours that take courage and enterprise. He will always lead us into faith projects. Being comfortable isn’t supposed to be part of who we are in Christ.
Being contented is fine, necessary, even, because godliness with contentment is great gain (1Tim.6:6), but becoming overly set in our ways can be our enemy. There are times when we are tempted to leave new faith projects aside and live in the success we enjoyed previously by the leading of the Spirit.
Then, inwardly, we start to experience a few days, weeks or even months of being unsettled; a nagging on the inside that there is something more we need to journey towards. Yes, faith is a rest, but there are seasons when we are coming face to face with the issues that arise when comfort sets in.
The problem with comfort is that it tends towards becoming slack. We drop our guard. We allow complacency into our lives. We become risk-free and inadvertently put our God-defined destiny at risk. Becoming static or stationary is akin to falling backwards, living on old victories, and reminiscing on past triumphs and testimonies, losing sight of current opportunities.
Adjustments
As God begins to work on us, we are confronted with certain flaws in our human makeup that need to be sorted through and, in some cases, eliminated from our lives. We have sudden realisations of shortcomings. We start to see some parts of our character than require serious adjustments. This is actually a good thing. We are being sifted, sorted and shaped.
Those trees I was pruning had to be seriously cut back from the previous season, even though some of the fruit was excellent. There were branches that had outlived their usefulness and would become a hinderance to future growth. They would take up energy and draw goodness from the root system and bypass stock that was vitally important to the project; the tree that produced good fruit.
When studying experts on how to cut back fruit trees it became clear that I had to be pretty aggressive with the trees I was pruning. It even seemed drastic to cut back so much seemingly healthy growth along with the dead wood, but pruning has to be strategic, with future growth in mind.
I remembered an Italian man who owned a house we rented when going through Bible College. He would come every year to cut back the trees in the garden. It was a well kept garden that always produced excellent growth.
When he came he cut back some of those trees so hard that I was sure they must die from the process. Yet they were fantastic when Spring arrived and gloriously fruitful all through Summer into Autumn.
Out with the old
We are like this. Sometimes we need to have our old branches, our old ways, cut back drastically so that we can be even more fruitful in the next season. It can feel painful, uncomfortable, and sometimes we are naked and exposed.
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:12-13
God is the Husbandman. He is the Gardener of our lives. He is the Expert Vinedresser. Let Him come into your life and cut back that unnecessary growth. Let Him look deeply into your very inner being and remove the hindrances to growth.
“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.
John 15:1-2
When the tree is cut back, the sap, the source, the nourishment can go to the vital parts and not be drawn off into the dying branches and non-fruit-producing wood. It will be focused on healthy fruit production through new growth, new experiences, new opportunities for faith to develop. A new season for a new day.
