Читать книгу Going with the Flow - Linda Estes - Страница 6

3…Pruning for Our Good

Good morning! I love feeling fall in the air. I’m able to be outside more to enjoy God’s beauty. Just a couple of weeks before Alan died, he planted two rose bushes in front of our house. He said I deserved roses every day and so this was his way of giving them to me. He was sweet that way. I’ve pruned the rose bushes several times to help them grow stronger.

As I was pruning them yesterday, I was reminded about how God does the same thing with us. John 15:2 tells us why God prunes us. “Every branch [aka … Believers] in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit.” I prune my rose bushes by removing dead branches and trimming back the good branches to allow them to grow more blooms. God prunes us so that we too would bear more fruit. If you’re not producing fruit, He doesn’t cut you back, which is pruning, — He cuts you off. Ouch! Sometimes seasons of being pruned are not comfortable because God gets rid of whatever is keeping us from producing more fruit. That might mean He will ask us to give up some things or even relationships. God wants us to be everything He designed us to be so He will get rid of anything in the way of that ultimate goal. Our God is The Master Gardener. He knows how much to prune and the best time in our lives to do the pruning to achieve His desired results of producing fruit that makes Him happy, which in turn should make us happy. So when we find ourselves being pruned, don’t fight it. God is taking what is good and making it better!