being pruned?

a man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. so he said to the man who took care of the vineyard,"for 3 years not i've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. cut it down! why should it use up the soil?"

"'sir', the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and i'll dig around it and fertilize it. if it bears fruit next year, fine! if not, then cut it down.'" (luke 13:6-9)


"this is often what we do when we examine our own failures, our "fruitlessness" in light of reality. we look at ourselves (the tree), and we expect to be able to keep our marriges together, to raise perfect children, to make loyal friends, and to perform our work without error (the fruit). when we fail and then become depressed, fearful, or anxious (bad fruit), we cut ourselves down by saying "i should be able to do that." "i shouldn't get so angry." "i should be able to get closer to people." "i should be able to accomplish more." "i should be able to be like so and so." at this point, we are like a house divided against itself. like the tree owner, we want growth, but we judge ourselves quickly and harshly without taking the time to figure out the problem. we operate with truth and no grace...

"sometimes we operate with grace and no truth. we say things like "it doesn't matter." "that's really the best i could do." "i can't help it that he reacted that way." "i couldn't help myself." dead wood (fruitlessness) takes up space in our lives (our vineyard). either we allow our inability to relate to others or to control our anger or to discipline our children to go on as it has been, continually rotting our lives and robbing us of hte delicious fruit God has in store for us, or we deny that we have a problem, with even more disastrous results...

"to some degree, we all do both: sometimes we yell "cut it down," and at other times we ignore it. but one thing is for sure: when we either ignore our failure to bear fruit in the image of God, or we judge its absence with an angry "cut it down," we end up either in grace or truth, and we do not grow." (excerpt from changes that heal, by dr. henry cloud)
whew. i read that this morning after being touched by john 15:1-5, where God tells me that if he hasn't "taken me away" as a branch of his son, then he's just busy pruning me so that i bear MORE fruit. i am reading up on this because i feel very sore from God's "pruning" lately. i'm not having fun with it!

but this morning God broke through my psalm 13 cries: "how long o lord? will you forget me forever?". he told me "i'm just busy pruning you. have grace. have truth. and have patience. i'll be done in time.

i hope this touches some of you as much as it has touched me!