With Abiding Comes Pruning

What comes to your mind when you think about the Lord's pruning? Pain? Anguish? Suffering? All of those things may be true. But what happens if we take a moment and start to adjust our minds and hearts and consider the One who is doing the pruning. The One whom the Scriptures call Love, Faithful, True, Just, Righteous, Kind, Slow to Anger, Gracious, Compassionate and so many other attributes. 

In today's episode I talk about pruning seasons. Because let's face it: Pruning is difficult. But when we see that the loving hand of the Father prunes us so that we can know Him more deeply...so that we can be conformed to the image of Jesus and be confidently led by the Holy Spirit in this walk of discipleship? Friends, there is joy unspeakable and fully of glory that waits for us. 

We don't deny the agony. The pain. The grief. We lament. We cry out. We wrestle. But we don't live there. We can have joy in the Lord's pruning process. We can trust His loving hand to cut, even when it's deep and He seems to take something good. He wants to see us grow and thrive in Him. To see His joy within us and our joy be made full. 

Scriptures Referenced:

• Psalm 111
• John 15:1-2
• Galatians 5:22-24
• Psalm 139:23-24
• Luke 9:23-24
• 1 Thessalonians 5:14-24

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:04

Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of Honey from the Rock. I am so glad you're here. And I am also very excited about today's episode. I yeah, I probably say that every week, but it's true. I am not lying to you. I come to this microphone and sit down with my computer, and the Lord is just, He is so kind and He is so gracious. And in a season like I've shared with you all that has been so difficult and so heartbreaking, I just feel the Lord's kindness and mercy towards me as I go to prepare episodes for this podcast, that in the midst of everything that has carried so much weight and heaviness and grief, He has given me a sense of anticipation about this podcast. And I could not be more grateful for this avenue to talk about the Lord's word because I know that there have been people who have listened to it and you've messaged me and you've been so kind in sharing how the Lord's encouraged you through this. But also I want you to know, like sitting down and doing this and sharing the good, the bad, the ugly parts of my story and the things that Jesus has had to deal with me, um, what he's had to prune from me, which is what I'll be talking about today, what he has comforted me in, what he's walked me through. Like it had the Lord has just reminded me so much that his steadfast love does endure forever, and that he desires good things for me, and that he wants me to know him deeper, he wants me to trust him more fully, he desires my full surrender and and my humility before him. And I have not uh figured out how to do those things consistently all the time. Uh, nope. I would be lying if I said that I had. And yet I look back at doing this podcast for six and a half months, and I can just see the faithfulness of the Lord. The act of remembering, like I talked about a few weeks ago, and sitting down every week and sharing what the Lord is doing or sharing what he's walked me through has just been incredible. And so I pray today really encourages you in whatever the Lord is doing in your life. And today I'm gonna talk about pruning. And like I said, I mean, it probably sounds super bizarre and weird to be like, I'm so excited to talk about pruning, but I actually am because it's an area where I think a lot of Christians tend to struggle. I mean, yes, having things cut away or the Lord saying, This is something in your life that I need to remove, that is not fun. And it can be painful. But I also really think that the Lord wants us to understand that his pruning actually comes from his love. And it comes from a place of wanting to see us grow in sanctification, to grow into that maturity that I was talking about last week, to grow in the revelation of Jesus Christ as Peter and Paul both pray for in the New Testament. And so, as we talk about pruning, I would encourage you to take stock of your life. Where are there areas that Jesus is pruning and how can you give him thanks for it? How can you thank him for what he's cutting away? And also, are there areas where you know the Lord is requiring you to prune something, to let something go to his pruning hand? And you haven't quite done that yet. I want to encourage you as we talk through these things today to really see the goodness of the Lord in his pruning hand, and that if he is calling you or he is calling me to let go of something and to surrender something to his to his pruning knife, that what he is working in us is far better and more beautiful than what we're holding on to. And so to kind of set the scene, set the scene like I'm in a play, to set up the episode, I guess, whatever. Um, I actually want to read out of Psalm 111 because I was reading the psalm yesterday, and it again, all of those things that I was just talking about, like the Lord's goodness and his pruning hand, came actually out of reading Psalm 111. And I would encourage you to go and read the whole psalm. It's amazing, but these are just a few selected verses out of it, and I pray that they would serve as the foundation as we dig into John 15 and what it means in abiding to be pruned by the Lord. So, Psalm 111 says, Great are the works of the Lord, they are studied by all who delight in them. Splendid and majestic is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. He has made his wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, the works of his hands are truth and justice. All his precepts are sure, they are upheld forever and ever. They are performed in truth and uprightness. He has sent redemption to his people, he has ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. I just love it. I love the Lord's encouragement in here. The foundation, the works of his hands are truth and justice. He operates, I mean, he is truth, he is justice, he is uprightness, and yet he is also uh gracious and compassionate. These two things are not, all of these things are not um fighting against one another. They they are the picture of who the Lord is. And so as we talk about pruning, and we talk about the Lord cutting things away that we can bear fruit, I want us to keep this this psalm in our mind that the Lord's pruning hand towards us, his works towards us, they are done in truth, they are done in his justice, yes, they are done in uprightness, but the foundation of them is his graciousness and his compassion. And so, John 15, one through two, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. I I love these verses. Um, I I just I find it so incredible that the night before Jesus is being crucified, he's about to go to his execution. He is about to wrestle with the Lord's will and Gethsemane. He is about to sweat great, great drops of blood out of his forehead in overcoming his human will and surrendering and submitting it to the Father's, the Father's will, which is the laying down of his life, the crucifixion of his flesh, the forsaking of the Father, that people might have the opportunity to come to, to come to the Lord and be redeemed. And in the midst of all of this, I mean, Jesus tells us in John 13 that his soul is heavy, he is in distress, and yet he sits down and he pours once again into his disciples such incredible truth and and and just just revelation of his heart, of the father's heart, of what he desires to give us, of who he desires to give us, because he says that he wants to send his Holy Spirit to us. Um and just thinking through John 14, 15, 16, and what Jesus shares with us, what he tells us, the warnings that are mixed in, the um the just the the gracious revelation of of who he is. It it blows my mind. And then obviously John 17, his high priestly prayer. I just I just the context of these things that Jesus says is amazing. And so, you know, Jesus says, I am the true vine, I am the true vine. And he says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. I'm not gonna dig into that today, maybe another day. There are a lot of opinions about what that means, what takes away in the Greek means and um the tense of it and the context and all of that. But today I want to focus on pruning. So Jesus says, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit, right? So the father prunes us. And so uh, so the word bear um means to bring forth, right? To produce. But again, my topical lexicon peeps loved it, uh love them. And they said fruitfulness is both commanded and empowered by Jesus. So again, Jesus is not commanding us to do or to submit to anything that he hasn't already done or submitted to in the Father. And if he's commanding us to bear fruit, it is because he is the first fruits of the Father, right? Scripture talks about that. And and so the bearing fruit in Jesus is something that we should celebrate and rejoice in. The Lord wants us to bear his fruit, and we can definitely take that to Galatians 5, uh, 22 through 24. You know, the fruit of the spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Against these things, there is no law. There is no law. This is the fruit the Lord wants us, wants us to bear, but also his um, his humility, his sacrifice, uh, the surrender of our lives consistently to the Lord. This is also fruit that he wants us to bring forth and he wants us to produce. So let's dig into this word prunes because it's there's a lot. There is a lot. So um the word prunes, I looked at a couple of different places to kind of get a better and fuller picture of what pruning actually means. So Helps Word Studies says pruning means to make clean by purging, by removing undesirable elements, eliminating what is fruitless by purging and making unmixed. And I thought that was really good because, you know, in our own nature, in our sin, we are mixed with with our flesh, the world, and the devil. There's lots in us that's mixed and pulled in 17 different directions and stuff that we get into, sins that we commit, dispositions that we love, and and we are we're mixed, we're mixed up in this world that we live in without Jesus. And yet when he when we come to him, when we surrender our life to him and and we seek him with our whole heart and we find him, and we're digging into the word and and he is making himself known to us. Like Jesus is making himself so real to us that he is putting to death our old nature, that his his nature, his heart, his mind would resurrect in us, that we would be perfect as he is perfect. Now, are we going to be perfect this side of the grave? Absolutely not. This is a progressive sanctification. We are walking this thing until the Lord calls us home. But it is progressive sanctification, it's a growth in sanctification, it's it's a an endurance in maturity, it's a a surrender to the Lord in his goodness and in his kindness of cutting things away that are harmful to us, convicting us of sin that sits between him and us, um, teaching us to forgive and and to move forward when someone hurts us. All of these things, um, and there's there's so much more. But the Lord is unmixing us from the world, the flesh and the devil, and he wants us to be one, to be one with him. And we have to die to ourselves for that to happen. We have to die to the sinful nature, and we have to submit ourselves to the Lord's pruning hand. So Thayer's says that to prune means to cleanse properly from filth and impurity, as with trees and vines. And then I read the topical lexicon, and it just had so many good things to say. Again, I just appreciate whoever wrote this lexicon because it gives such great depth into what some of these Greek words mean and just helps us to get a little bit more understanding culturally, um, in the Greek language, um, examples throughout scripture of just of what we're really reading. And I love it. So the topical lexicon says in first century Judea, uh, vineyard management demanded yearly pruning. Vine dressers removed dead or fruitless canes before the sap began to flow, then trimmed fruitful shoots to channel nourishment into developing clusters. Mishandling the knife meant a stunted crop. Skillful pruning yielded a vintage of remarkable sweetness. Can we just stop there for a second? Mishandling the knife meant a stunted crop. Skillful pruning yielded a vintage of remarkable sweetness. Friends, I just want to tell you and I want to remind myself, and I want to remind you, Jesus never mishandles the knife in our pruning. Ever. The Father is a skillful pruner, and he wants to yield in us a vintage of remarkable sweetness in union with him, sweetness in knowing him, sweetness in union with our brothers and sisters, in the love that Jesus wants to wants us to be known by. This is the only time this word is used in the New Testament in this way. And again, I love the lexicon, it draws our attention to this point. These words were spoken on the eve of the crucifixion. And Jesus identifies himself as the vine, his disciple as the branches, and the the father as the vine dresser. The singular appearance of the verb underscores its deliberate placement. Pruning is not incidental but integral to the life of every fruitful disciple. Expectation. We should expect and anticipate seasons of divine trimming, losses, convictions, redirections that strip away hindrances to growth. This Greek word, which is strong's number 2508, portrays the Father's precise, benevolent action that frees believers from impediments and channels life into true spiritual productivity. The Lone Johanny usage, framed by vineyard imagery, familiar to ancient hearers, supplies the church with a rich model for understanding divine discipline, personal sanctification, and enduring fruitfulness. I just, I had, I love, I love the pictures that they give us there so much. And I just keep going back to mishandling the knife means a stunted crop, skillful pruning yields a vintage of remarkable sweetness. The Lord is precise in his pruning of us. And just, you know, chopping. Sometimes I think it maybe feels like that to us. But again, I would challenge us if we're feeling like that, then what are things that we're holding on to that the Lord desires to prune? What are we holding on to that he wants to cut away? Because in this pruning process, you know, if we're walking with the Lord and we want to know him, because he loves us, he is going to cut away things that hinder our knowing him. He doesn't want anything between us. He wants things clear and beautiful between us. He wants to cultivate trust in us. So if he's coming in with his pruning knife and he's cutting something away that we hold dear and that we want to cling to, we need to in turn trust that if he is cutting this away, there is a good reason for it. And sometimes he will reveal that. And sometimes he just asks us to trust him and to submit to what he's doing and and and to joyfully release it. And I know sometimes in the midst of pruning, joy is the furthest thought from our minds, right? Like I cannot joyfully let this go because it's painful. But again, let's go back to Psalm 111. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, he works in truth and in justice, he works in truth and up and uprightness. Holy is his name. Great are the works of the Lord. They bring delight. Um they are studied by all who delight in them. Splendid and majestic is his work. Again, if we can think about not just blessings in our life that the Lord has poured out on us in this way, but to see his pruning in this way, to see when he comes into our life and he says, Hey, this thing that you've been doing, this disposition that you have, um, this secret sin that you've been holding on to, it's time. We need to cut it away. No more. And and and to instead of complaining about how hard it is, actually see the goodness of the Lord to us, that he cares enough about us and he loves us enough and he has died for us to be to be free from these things. You know, even if they're good things, even if they are good things, if the Lord is saying, you need to surrender that good thing to me and let me cut it away and trust that in my pruning, what I intend to bring forth into your life is is more than this thing that you are holding on to, that we should, we should joyfully surrender it. Again, friends, I go back to, I go back to remembering the Lord's faithfulness. He has shown us again and again and again the depth of his character, his steadfast love, his endurance, his patience, his trustworthiness. And I'm not saying that this means that we don't wrestle. I'm not saying that this means that we get into a stupid, like Pollyanna. Oh, everything's just fine, and I'm just so joyful that the Lord is taking all of these things from me. I'm not saying that at all. But a place where the Lord is really challenging me right now in my own pruning and in his work and rearranging things in my life is is to stop looking at everything as being so difficult. And instead lean into and press into the Lord in trust and in hope to say, you know what, Lord, I don't understand. I don't understand your will and some of these things. A lot of these things are really hard and they've broken my heart and they've shattered my life. And yet, I can trust you. I know I can trust you. You've brought me out of Egypt, you've brought me through the wilderness, you've brought me through multiple surgeries, you've brought me through. Through multiple issues with my reproductive system or weak ankles that just like to snap in half at the same time. You've brought me through losing my sisters and my dad. You've brought me through so much. I can trust you again. And Lord, I'm I'm I'm gonna stop looking and stop dwelling in how hard things are. I can acknowledge it, Lord, and I can be honest before you. I can lament and I can grieve. But there comes a time when, Lord, I know I need to stand up and I say, yes, Lord, these things were difficult. And yet look at what you've brought as fruit in my life. I know you more. I know your love and care more deeply. I know your graciousness and your compassion more deeply. I'm gaining a deeper holy spiritual understanding of your holiness and why you hate sin and why sin has to be eradicated in my life. I'm coming to that a deeper understanding, Lord Jesus, that even good things in my life that you have created and maybe that you've even given me can become idols. And that in your gracious will, sometimes those things have to be cut away. And I know sometimes in the pruning, it just feels like, what more could you ask from me, Lord? What more? You know, I mean, the Psalms are full of how long, oh Lord, am I gonna live here? How long, oh Lord, is this gonna be difficult? And we can absolutely ask him that and we can absolutely wrestle with him in that. But friends, I want to encourage you, don't dwell there. Don't constantly dwell there. At some point, acknowledging the hard and acknowledging the difficulty and the pain of the cutting away have to be have to be set aside because the Lord is not capricious, he's not pruning us because He's He's wanting to do us so much great harm and and just, you know, he's a harsh taskmaster. No, if we're in Him, if we are part of the true vine, then that means cutting away things that hinder our growth. Even sometimes branches that look good, branches that look like they might bear some fruit, they get cut away so that a more fruitful branch can come forth and bear more fruit. And I just idol Jesus kills idols and he prunes us. And again, I just go back to I mean Tim Keller, and I think I've shared this quote before, but he talks about how, you know, we look at idols and we tend to think they are all the things of the world, the flesh and the devil, you know, sex, money, drugs, alcohol, addictions, uh, pornography, all of those things, those are terrible idols, greed, slander, envy, um, witchcraft, all of that. Those are terrible. Those are idols, awful. And that's all true. And yet, family can become an idol, marriage can become an idol, singleness can become an idol. Uh, the good things of the Lord can also become idols in our life. Abraham is the prime example in the Old Testament. You know, he loved Isaac. Isaac is the promised son. And yet the Lord tests Abraham and says, Load him up, get the sticks, take him up the mountain. You need to sacrifice your son. And yes, it is clearly the picture of what the Father would ultimately do for us in Jesus, but Abraham didn't know that. He he desired to be obedient to the Lord and he desired to love the Lord. And the scripture doesn't give us a picture, but I am sure that man wrestled with what the Lord asked of him. How could he not? And yet the writer of Hebrews tells us that he was willing, he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. Why? Because he believed the Lord could raise him. I love that. I just I love that. And that's what I'm saying. There is the wrestle, and there's the acknowledgement of the difficulty and the hardness of the things that we go through. But friends, Abraham didn't live in that. He knew he had seen the Lord's power. He had seen the Lord move in his life. And he believed that if the Lord was going to call him to sacrifice his son, that the Lord was going to resurrect him because Isaac was the child of promise. I do not know what you are facing in life, my friends. I do not what I do not know what the Lord is calling you to let go of. But I encourage you, I I love this. There's a quote um by John Piper that I that I really, really love. Um, and he says, occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses, feel the pain, then wash your face, trust God, and embrace the life that He's given you. I I love that quote so much because there's there's space for all of it. Grieve the life that you thought you would have, that you hoped you would have, things that you thought the Lord was going to give you that He that He hasn't and has chosen not to at this point in your life, for whatever His reasons are. And I won't pretend to understand those or have or have secret knowledge about this is why the Lord's doing it. I don't know. I don't know why the Lord chooses to withhold and why he chooses to give. But I know, like Job, we can say in in honesty, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. We are free to grieve, and we must grieve and and and and feel the pain of the loss. But then there comes a point as as David did after after the child that he conceived with Bathsheba passed away after the Lord took him. He stood up, he washed his face, and he sat down and ate. He surrendered to the Lord's will. And we know it was painful. He fasted in satcloth and ashes for seven days, asking the Lord to spare the life of his son, that his that his his child would not endure the consequence of David and Bathsheba's sin. But once the Lord has spoken, David stood up and he surrendered to the Lord. Friends, I am telling you, that doesn't take supernatural, quote unquote, biblical hero character kind of strength. David, Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Mary, Joseph, um, Salome, all of them, Salome being John and uh James's mother, um, all of them were ordinary men and women, just like us. Jesus desires to work the same things in us that he worked through and in the people that we read about in his word. They are there for our edification. Sometimes they are there for our warning. But friends, what Jesus did with those people isn't quote unquote special. And things that we can't live up to because those are Bible, those are Bible heroes. No. The things, these are the things that the Lord desires to work in our life. And that's that is the that is the blessing of the Christian walk. Yes, we have to decrease. Yes, yes, we have to let go of things. Yes, the Lord cuts things away, but Jesus increases. We know him more deeply, we get deeper revelation of his love for us. He shows us in more and more and more ways that we can trust him. And what's amazing is in light of the cross, in light of what Jesus sacrifice, like he doesn't even have to do it. And yet he cannot deny himself. He is faithful when we are faithless. The Lord is steadfast, he is gracious, he is merciful, he is abounding, abounding in loving kindness, and that is what motivates him. God is love, and his love motivated him to the cross and motivates our sanctification. His pruning is motivated by his love, and it is motivated by his holiness. He wants to see us grow in wisdom, in understanding. He wants to see us grow in love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and self-control. He wants us to thrive in him. And we cannot thrive if we hold on too tightly to things the Lord desires to cut away. And sometimes they are, they are hard things. You know, when the Lord requires us to forgive when we've been sinned against, to love our enemies, when the Lord requires us to surrender our time and our resources and our money, or when we're walking in areas in our calling where we feel timid and fearful, or even when we're walking in areas of our calling where we feel boastful and self-reliant, all areas the Lord wants to prove, uh, prune in us. When we have to go and seek forgiveness and ask for forgiveness because we've hurt, we've hurt someone, because we've wronged someone. That's an area of pruning. Things in our life, dispositions that we love to coddle in ourselves, or I think we have a right to feel a certain way. When the Lord says, Let me prune that and let me show you a better way. But here's again, here's what's so amazing, my friends, is that the Lord cuts away, but he is also pouring in. The pruning is part of the cultivation, it's part of bringing forth more fruit. And like I said earlier, we grow in revelation and in knowing him. He increases and we decrease. We bear his fruit and we glorify the Father as we bear fruit. And I want to say something because I sometimes we start to talk about fruit and abundance and all these things in the church, and we connect it with numbers. We connect it with it looking like a huge platform or um a following or um accolades at work or whatever. But I I want to encourage you because abundant fruit that the Lord desires to produce is not a competition, right? When Jesus gives us the parable of the sower in Mark 4, he tells us that the fruit that that that is yielded on the good soil, when the seed falls on the good soil, some 100, some 60, some 30. We are not all called to bear the same amount of fruit, but we are all called to bear good fruit that abides in the Lord. We are responsible to cultivate and to walk with Jesus in the calling that He's given us, not anybody else's. Somebody may bear, you know, a ton of fruit over there. Somebody may bear a little bit less over here, and you may be sitting here thinking, like, well, it's so small. And I and I confess this is an area where I have wrestled absolutely, you know, comparing myself to all sorts of stuff. But who cares? If the Lord's appointed me to bear a smaller amount of fruit than my brothers and sisters, who cares? It's the Lord that's bringing forth the fruit, right? It's the Lord that's cultivating, he knows what he's appointed me to in his kingdom. We are not all called to the same things in the body, but we are all called to the same responsibility to the Lord. And that is in faithfully walking out what he has called us to do. So, friends, I want to encourage, I want to free, like ask the Lord, seek him. May we all be freed from that stinking, gross tendency to compare ourselves and what the Lord is doing in someone else's life, and then looking at our life and feeling like we're lacking or accusing the Lord of making our lives lacking. And I also want to encourage you, you may feel like you're producing like the Lord's doing stuff in your life, but it's small, it's meager. Do you know that there is probably somebody else in your life looking at what the Lord has done in your life and is in awe of it, is is just so blown away by the fruit of Jesus in your life. I want to encourage you with that, friends. You just never know. You never, you never know what the Lord is doing. And so as I finish up here, I just want to encourage you. You know, the Lord, He prunes, but He pours in. He gives more grace. We we get His joy in us, and our joy is made full. We abide in His love when we surrender to Him and we do His commandments. And what is the disposition that the Lord looks for us in this pruning? Submissive trust. I once heard Jackie Hill Perry say, praying Psalm 139, um, the end of Psalm 139, search me, God, and know my heart, put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts and see if any, if there is any harmful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting is a terrifying prayer to pray. Because it means the Lord's gonna search. You ask the Lord to search you, guess what? He's actually gonna do it. And yet it's a beautiful and powerful prayer to pray. So submissive, submissive trust, humble surrender. You know, the Lord told us if we were gonna come after him, we would have to deny ourselves and take up the cross that he appoints to us and follow him and not try to save our lives, but lose them to him. We can trust him with our lives. We can lose our lives to Jesus and trust him in that process. And and finally, I really want to encourage you, give thanks to the Lord for what he is doing. And I want to read this to you, and I'll end here. And this is from 1 Thessalonians 5. But listen to what Paul encourages us with here. And again, take it in the context of the pruning. Yes, the Lord may be requiring you to give things up and he's cutting things away, but he is also pouring himself into you. He wants you to know him more deeply, and he wants to reveal himself to you more deeply. So think about this. First Thessalonians 5, 14 through 24. We urge you, brothers and sisters, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays one another with evil for evil, but always seek what is good for one another and for all people. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing in everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit, do not utterly reject prophecies, but examine everything. Hold firmly to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your body, soul, and spirit be kept complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who calls you, and he also will do it. Amen.