When God prunes he removes the dead. He removes what is not producing fruit. God prunes us back so that we can grow (John 15) and produce even more fruit. It may hurt when it's coming out, but he's actually taking out what has been killing us. Then he heals us with his mercy and anointing and allows fruit to grow from these former patches of death. We feel the pain because it is a wound of the flesh and it hurts when God removes it. But, the more we allow him to remove, the more like him we become and the more we can effectively love and positively affect the people around us. When we abide in the Light the dark areas of our lives will be exposed. I think I read on a water bottle one time that it had been "exposed under bright light to maintain its integrity." The same is true for us. When we are exposed, the Lord can change us and build our character. He removes the darkness and replaces it with light.
This removing of darkness, of death, is not something that we can do on our own. It only comes through surrender to the Lord.
“It is not virtue that can save the world or anyone in it, but love. And love is not at our command. We cannot generate it from within ourselves” (Temple 251). When God removes this death from us, he fills that void with life. And when we remain attached to the Vine, his life-giving blood [love] can flow through us. The word love, or agapao is used several times in John 15. This word is used in relation to being pleased with a person or thing. It does not denote the secret and eternal love of the Father for the Son, but that love which, exposed in the life and work and death of the son, is directed towards men, and is laid as it were us (Hoskyns). Agape is the love between God and man. It is the way that God loves man through us.
“When we feel the life of Christ ebbing from our soul, when we see our leaf fading, when we feel sapless, heartless for Christian duty, reluctant to work for others, to take anything to do with the relief of miser and the repression of vice, there is a remedy for this state, and it is to renew our fellowship with Christ—to allow the mind once again to conceive clearly the worthiness of His aims, to yield the heart once again to the vitalizing influence of His love, to turn from the vanities and futilities with which men strive to make life seem important to the reality and substantial worth of life in Christ" (Dods).
Killing our flesh brings forth more life and more fruit and it bring more souls into the Kingdom through the perfecting love of our Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment