Cultivating Spiritual Growth Through Spiritual Pruning
Every avid reader of God’s word surely knows and understands that Jesus Christ was a masterful teacher. Time and time again, the pages of the Gospel compellingly proclaim to us the adept skill in which Christ was able to beautifully illustrate deep spiritual truths with ordinary everyday things. We see a great example of this skill in Jesus’ allegory of the true vine in John chapter 15. In this analogy, not only does Christ teach about the essentialness of having a relationship with Him, but he also teaches us a very important and essential principle concerning spiritual growth – spiritual growth cannot be obtained without spiritual pruning. Jesus stated in His allegory that, “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 it so that it may bear more fruit… I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit… If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” (John 15:1-7 NASB).
In these verses Jesus reveals to us a truth that is universally understood by every farmer and cultivator of fruit who desires to be successful in their occupation. The success of any crop’s ability to develop and maintain it’s fruitfulness is only possible through the process of pruning, which is the process of ridding the crop of it’s unfruitful parts. Jesus is essentially saying that this fact, which is consistent throughout nature, is also consistent in the spiritual realm. He states that the Father pruned bad fruit from the vine in order to produce good fruit (v. 3), He also pruned the unfruitful branches from the vine so that it could produce fruitful branches (v. 8), and within this concept lies the point that I want for us to think about in this article. If this is a practice used by God to produce growth in His vine, shouldn’t it also be practiced by us to produce fruit in our spiritual lives? I believe, without a doubt, the answer to this question is yes.
Hence, we need to follow the example set before us by God the Father and become pruners of our spiritual lives. I believe this concept is expressed to us in various ways throughout the Scripture. Paul taught that the kind of life that is pleasing and acceptable to God is one that strives to prune worldliness out of it (Romans 12:1-2), and is one that strives to prune out every evil desire and sinful act (Colossians 3:5-11). Likewise, this concept should be attached to other areas of our Christianity, such as our time and money. If we want to grow in our ability to give more time to God, we need to prune things out of our life to make room for that growth. The same thing applies to our finances. If we want to be able to grow in our giving to God, we need to prune areas in our finances to make room for that growth. I believe that Scripture reveals to us a clear principle when it comes to spiritual growth. Growth takes sacrifice, and we need to be willing to make those sacrifices in order for growth to happen. A vinedresser would never expect maximum growth and production from his crop without first pruning it. Similarly, God doesn’t expect maximum growth and production from His spiritual vine without first pruning it. Therefore, we also shouldn’t expect the same in our spiritual lives if we are not pruning it. Have you been practicing spiritual pruning?
— Sam Barclay
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