I admit that I am not much of a gardener, but let me share what I know.
The best way to garden is to put on a wide brimmed straw hat and some old clothes. And with a hoe in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.
I’d be a great gardener if I could only grow green stuff in my garden like I can in my refrigerator.
Once I left a packet of seeds in my pocket and my coat turned into a Chia jacket.
I am terrible at weeding. I can’t tell a weed from a plant.
What is a weed anyway? A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.
When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
Last week we found one of the VBS kids outside chewing on a slug. After the initial surge of disgust I asked, "Well . . . What does it taste like?" The kid said "Worms".
Because the garden was a failure, Linda sent me to the market. I said: "My wife asked me to buy ORGANIC vegetables. Have these been sprayed with any poisonous chemicals?" "No," replied the produce guy, "you’ll have to do that yourself."
This is the third week in a four week series based on Bruce Wilkinson’s Bible study entitled “The Secrets of the Vine.” We are looking at a lesson Jesus taught to his disciples on the night of his betrayal and arrest. Jesus talks about himself as the a grape vine. God is the vinedresser. Every one who is “in Christ”, that is every believer is a branch. It is responsibility of every believer to bear fruit, which are good works.
According to Wilkinson, ever believer is in one of four conditions. Most, according to Wilkinson are not currently bearing fruit. Some are bearing fruit. Some are bearing more fruit. And a few are bearing much fruit. God is asking us all to move up this hierarchy from no fruit to much fruit.
Last week, Linda talked about moving from no fruit to some fruit. In that situation, something is wrong with the branch and the vinedresser is attempting to restore the branch to its natural state of productivity. Most translations talk about the vinedresser taking away branches that don’t bear fruit. That is a mistake. The word means, “to carry” and while that often has the connotation of “carry off” here it means “carry”. It refers to the vinedresser’s practice of taking fallen branches and reattaching them to the trellis. They are being “picked up” or “carried”, but not “carried off”.
Sometimes we fail to bear fruit because we are engaged in activities that separate us from the vine. Last week Linda talked about God disciplining us, just as we discipline our children, to move us away from destructive behavior and toward behavior that allow us to bear fruit.
Next week, Linda will talk about Christian’s who are in the third basket, the more fruit basket, and how they can move to real abundance – the fourth basket.
Today, I am talking about branches that are in the second basket – Christians who are bearing a little fruit – and how they move to more fruit. The passages says this. “Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. “
So what is pruning?
Most of us have pruned in the garden. I am a timid pruner. I clip here and there around the edges. It is as if the bush set down in my barber chair and said “just a little off the top.”
Real gardeners don’t do that. They lop off whole branches and cut others way back. Why? Don’t they like the plants? No, they just understand that pruning strengthens a plant and focuses its growth. Is there something wrong with the branches that get cut off? Usually no. Usually they are just growing in an unwanted direction. Under different circumstances those same shoots may have been kept while others were pruned.
Maybe I am so timid about pruning because I have a vague but enduring memory of a TV show that I saw a long long time ago. I know that it must have been a very long time ago because it was the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was still the host. Johnny’s guest had a bunch of tomato plants and a lie detector. He would hook up the lie detector to a plant and chart the plants’ reactions as he pruned them or as he picked tomatoes. Not only did he claim that plants were upset when they were pruned, he claimed that the reaction started as the pruning shears approached, before there was any actual contact.
This guy seemed to be claiming, not only that tomatoes and other plants feel pain, but that somehow they can actually anticipate pain and react in advance. Now I think that this guy was probably growing something else in his garden and smoking it, but that misses the point. How would the plants react if they could feel the pain of being pruned? Pruning is good for them in the long run, but would they be happy at the prospect? I don’t think so.
In the case of our story, we are the branches, God is the vinedresser, and it is pruning time. God wants to strengthen us. Instead of us sending out shoots in all directions, He wants to focus our energies into bearing the most fruit. The vinedresser is lopping off pieces of our lives. Do we feel happy about that? Not usually. At best we can recognize that we are being made stronger and that we will produce more in the end, but at the moment of pruning we are generally displeased by the prospect.
Bruce Wilkinson does not mention the story of the rich young ruler that we read earlier in the service, but I think that it is a wonderful illustration of the problem.
Do you remember that day when you first professed your acceptance of Christ as your savior? You probably came forward at a church service or a revival meeting or at summer camp. A minister greeted you and said something like “Do you accept Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life?”. The “Savior” part is pretty easy, but that “Lord” thing is pretty tough. Our rich young ruler learned about that.
On that day when you walked down that aisle, what would have happened if that minister had asked some more specific questions?
What about your possessions? Do you love God more than your money, your house, your furniture, your jewelry, your clothing, your 401k and your pension, your widescreen TV, or your computer? Do you love God more than those?
What about your position? Do you love God more than you love your position in your family, or in your church, or in your community, or in your business? Do you love God more than those?
What about you physical safety? Would you put your health and well-being on the line for God? Would you accept discomfort or exhaustion in God’s service? Do you love God more than those?
What about other people? Do you love God more than your relationships with your family, your friends, your co-workers, your classmates? Would you put your relationship at risk for God? Do you love God more than those?
What about your profession? Would you put your job and career at risk? Would you risk a demotion? Would you risk being fired? Would you be willing to change job or careers if that is what it took? Do you love God more than those?
What about your place – your physical location? Would you be willing to move away from family and friends and away from everything you know? Would you accept a job transfer? How far would you go? Do you love God more than those?
What about your plans? You may think that you have your future figured out. You may have grand ambitions. If God called you to go in a radically different direction and give up all that you had prepared and planned would you do that? Do you love God more than those?
When you first professed your faith in Christ, did the minister ask you those questions? Probably not. It really cuts down on the enthusiasm of new believers if you get into the details. Instead, we ask, “Do you accept Christ as your Savor?” and leave it at that. But the truth is that for every item I mentioned, there are examples of followers of Christ who have been asked to make that sacrifice. And I have some really bad news. If you are in the second basket here, the one that has just a little fruit in it, and you want to move to that next basket, the one with more fruit, the path that gets you from here to there is a path of sacrifice. There is going to be pruning. Now you probably won’t have to give up everything on the list that I just recited. Most likely the price will be much smaller, but everything that I mentioned and more is at risk. Accepting God’s call to bear fruit is giving God permission to prune away at anything that is taking you in a different direction or is diverting your attention or is sapping your strength or claiming your treasure. And it is the vinedresser, not the vine, who chooses what has to go.
Remember, pruning is not about cutting away something that is bad. It is about sacrificing one good thing to concentrate on another. Pruning hurts precisely because it means letting go of one future to embrace another. There is always the pain of what might have been.
I have been managing people at work for a number of years and because of that I have taken management classes. One of the things that I hate most about managing is doing performance reviews, but they are getting better. When I first started out, we were taught to do reviews like this. We would write a paragraph or two about the things that an employee was doing well. This would show them that we appreciated them and would make them feel more comfortable. After that, we would identify the areas where they were weak and we would spend most of the review developing plans for improvement. Six months later, we would repeat the same process and nine out of ten times, exactly the same things would show up on the “needs improvement” list.
Why did that process work so poorly? People have particular talents and interests and aptitudes. They can learn and improve specific skills, but they will never be different people than who they are. If a person does not have the talents for the job that they are in, it is better for them and for the company to get them into a job that fits their talents.
So what are we taught to do now? We are taught to identify people’s strengthens and work to sharpen those. Make them more productive in the areas that already interest and energize them. At the same time, find approaches and strategies that will help them to be minimally competent in areas where they are weak or find a way to compensate.
What the folks in HR have discovered is the same truth that Jesus was talking about in that garden. Each of us as Christians has innumerable opportunities to be productive. It is fine for us to explore a number of these. It is also sometimes necessary to step up and fill a need that has to be met even if that is outside of our usual role or requires skills that we don’t feel that we have. That sort of “on occasion” thing is good, but there is a danger. Often Christians feel that they can’t say “no”. They volunteer for everything and they end up burned out. Because they are never really prepared and they don’t have the skills, important things are done poorly and the church suffers.
Ideally the situation is different. God has prepared certain tasks for each of us to do. God has given us each the strengths we need to accomplish those tasks. If every one in the congregation were to step forward and say, “I know that God is calling me to this sort of work” we would find that every task was covered and everyone was working in their sweet spot. We would all be pruned, setting aside those areas that divert us, and we would all be bearing fruit.
Bruce Wilkinson talks about the difficulty of differentiating between the pain that comes from disobedience – what he calls discipline – and the pain that comes from pruning. He is the one who has traveled around teaching this, so he should know, but in my experience this issue is not nearly as great as he seems to teach. It is true that there is pain associated with wrongdoing and misbehavior and there is pain associated with sacrifice, but I think that most of the time it is clear.
For example, if you live out your faith and as a consequence there are people at your work who ridicule you and act hatefully, you feel pain. Maybe you wonder if you failed to communicate in a responsible and respectful manner, so maybe this is discipline that should cause you to consider how you express your faith so that others will hear. On the other hand, maybe you have been true to your faith and the consequence has been pain in your relationships. Is it discipline or is it pruning? I can see how that question might arise. It might be hard for an observer to make the distinction, but I think that in your gut you know the answer. If a situation like that comes up, stop, pray, and open yourself to God’s direction.
To me, the bigger problem comes in telling the difference between pruning and a storm in the garden. Sometimes bad things happen in our lives just because they happen. In those situations, God is there with us and God will work together with us to transform even the worst circumstance into an opportunity for doing good. On the other hand, sometimes God does intervene in our lives, closing one door and opening another. In both situations we experience real pain. In both, our lives turn in a new direction. In both, we end up bearing fruit for God. The hard question is “Did God cause that?”, but in the end it makes very little difference. Our response needs to be the same. All things work together for good. All things work to the glory of God.
Bruce Wilkinson uses the story of Joseph to illustrate the impact of pruning. You remember the story. Joseph’s father gives Joseph the lead role in the family and symbolizes that with a special coat. His brothers become jealous and plot to kill him, but sell him into slavery instead. Joseph becomes a slave in the house of a Egyptian noble named Potiphar. Because of Joseph’s hard work and loyal service he becomes the chief of Potiphar’s home. Potiphar’s wife repeatedly attempts to seduce Joseph who always refuses. She becomes angry and falsely accuses him of rape, landing him in jail. Again, Joseph rises in spite of adversity and becomes a leader in the prison. There, he befriends pharaoh’s butler and interprets a dream for him. The butler promises to tell pharaoh about him, but forgets his promise and abandons Joseph. Finally, pharaoh has a dream that he needs to have interpreted. The butler remembers Joseph who is freed from prison, becomes pharaoh’s aide, and eventually becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt. The story comes full circle when Joseph’s family, victims of a famine, come to Egypt for food. Joseph forgives his brothers and saves their lives.
Now Joseph never explicitly decided to give up anything, but he had placed his life in God’s hands. Consider the setbacks that Joseph suffered. Do we see here the hand of God pruning Joseph and preparing him for a major role in salvation history?
There were 4 cycles of pruning. And at each stage he gained new responsibility. He went from menial tasks like watching sheep to managing Potiphar’s affairs, to running a prison, to managing a nation, including responsibility for economic planning and international policy. Each period of trail and sacrifice led to higher levels of responsibility.
God is the prefect vinedresser. God is fully devoted to what is best for the vine. He prunes us at the perfect moment for the perfect length of time. God prunes us in the best way to yield the greatest result. Pruning is inherently painful, but God keeps that pain to a minimum and walks through the experience with us.
Remember those questions that you weren’t asked when you made that profession? I’m asking them now. If we ever want to move from basket two to basket three, from some fruit to more fruit, we have to do a gut check.
Are you ready for a challenge? Are you willing to accept risk? Are you ready for the kind of faith that will reshape your life and give meaning to your existence? Are you ready to make Jesus Lord of your life? If you are ready – if you are brave – if you are prepared to truly trust God to do what is best – then this is the moment of decision.
Now is the time to say “Yes I do accept you as Lord of my life. Take all that I have. Take all that I am. I give myself to your service.”
It is an easy thing to say, but a hard thing to do. Are you ready to take that step?
