In Need of a Good Pruning

Conviction. It is a tough thing that we all must deal with when we are truly trying to live a life that is pleasing to the LORD. Sometimes it comes all at one time, sometimes it comes gradually; but all the time it is no more than we can handle. I suppose since we are somewhat of a community I can share that I have been convicted of many things as of late. It seems that the spiritual season I am in lately calls for a much needed pruning. I have to tell you all that it has literally taken me months to write this. After you read this post you might be thinking, “Cassie, this is nothing special…why in the world did it take you so long to type and post it.” Well, here is the answer, God would not let me post anything else but this blog. I could not think, I could not type, I could not write about anything but the season of life in which I am living. So just know that I did not want to post this entry, I had to! I did not want to make my struggles vulnerable to people. I wanted to keep what I was feeling to myself until one day at school when I was talking to my kids about our responsibility to the Christian community and I realized that it is only by our willingness to share that we are able to trust one another. So here we go…

                When I was a kid at camp we always used to sing “The Peach of the Savior”. One line in that song never really made sense to me until I learned about grape vines and apple trees. The line goes… “He prunes back the branches when the branches get to high. He bears fruit in season and his love will never die…” If you know anything about gardening then this line makes perfect sense but to a person who cannot keep a pansy alive the idea of cutting a plant in order to make it bear fruit is completely illogical. I assumed that you had to let the good things flourish in order for them to produce the kind of fruit you wanted, you just needed to get rid of the weeds ( I know at least that much from growing up on a farm). This past spring I learned an important lesson from the apple trees in my parents’ backyard.

                The trees had seriously overgrown and instead of producing large delicious apples within arm’s reach they were producing small sour apples at the very tip-top of the tree which was well over 12 feet tall. One day my dad said that it was long past time to prune the trees so it was my job to do the research to find out what needed to be done in order to help the trees produce good fruit. When I researched I found some interesting information. First, you cannot just prune a tree whenever you want you have to do it in the appropriate season. Second, you must remove all troublesome branches even branches that look healthy. This has to be done so that the shape of the tree can be maintained and so that the really crucial fruit baring branches can get all the sunlight they need. By the end of the day our apple trees looked almost like stumps. When my mom came home she was convinced that we had destroyed the trees. It will take the trees a few seasons and some more good pruning to finally produce fruit but the initial pruning after years of overgrowth was the first step to having delicious fruit.

                What does all this pruning business this have to do with you or with me? Well I will not go into the details but God has been pointing out some areas in my life that need to be pruned. And the first stage is conviction. Whether it be in Bible study or through a lesson I am doing with my kids there have been convicting reminders of the trouble areas in my spiritual walk. Thankfully God is not a malicious gardener. He is kind and loving while being firm. He prunes for our own good and in the perfect season. The second stage is our responsibility on how to react to the conviction placed on our hearts by the Master Gardener. Will we allow him to prune back the branches when the branches get too high? For me, there have been several things that I was holding onto that I simply would not let God prune in me and they were causing problems in my spiritual life; anything from gossip to laziness I would make excuses for the lack of discipline in my life . In many areas I was growing but through these negative attitudes I was producing sour fruit.  It is my desire to produce good fruit and yet so often I allow the bad branches to grown and take over. I am no where near perfect, but Christ has not called me to be perfect. He has called me to be mailable and seek to honor him with my life. It is in times like this that I know my Savior truly loves me, “He chastens those he loves”.  

     As I jump into a new semester at school I am going in with a new attitude and a new perspective on the people and the situations that God has placed in my path. I am excited to see what God has in store for all of us at Riverside this semester. We are praying fervently for the students and each of their personal relationships’ with Jesus Christ. Continue praying that our impact on the community would be influential for the Kingdom and that the lives of our students would being to transfer out to others the love that is being poured into them.