In all honesty and truth, I have more thoughts running through my mind and I have two blogs I have been working on since JANUARY! I guess it has not been the appropriate timing to finish and publish them.What a season in life this has been....and something that keeps coming up in my mind is "pruning." I was running the other day and I saw someone in their yard pruning back their bushes. A few weeks ago, my neighborhood pruned all of our shrubs and bushes. Pruning...we prune in order for the plant to grow back fuller and healthier. As I think about my life, how many times the Lord has needed to prune areas so that I can grow back fuller and healthier spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally. How many times have I been put to the sheers because there were areas the Lord needed to cut off from my life? How many times have I tried to resist pruning and tried to hold on or re-attach those things back to my life? Only to find the self grafted area becoming an irritation or a stumbling block. How many time have I closed an eye and made excuses for things I have done, things people have done, people in my life, things in my life, instead of realizing the Lord was trying to "cut them off" in order for me to have full and abundant life in Him? Pruning, it is not easy; it does not feel good. It is not a massage on the shoulders, a pat on the back, or a walk in the park. The Lord refines us through fire, He molds us and shapes us, it burns, it hurts, but what we sometimes forget to realize is the Lord is also the Great Master Gardner, The Vine, and we are the bushes, the shrubs, the branches. His command is for us to remain IN HIM and He will remain in us, apart from Him we are and we can do NOTHING. But there are times where He comes in as the Master Gardner desiring to turn us into His prize winning flower and we have to be cut and pruned and sheered. There are things in our lives we have allowed in that He wants out, and "clip" He cuts it off; there are people in our lives we have allowed in that He wants the relationships changed and "clip" He cuts it off; there are places in our lives He no longer wants us to be and "clip" He cuts it off; there are jobs and careers He is no longer calling us to and "clip" He cuts if off. But what happens is that we blind our eyes to the truth and only see what we want to see, we hold on tight with white knuckled hands to possessions He is wanting us to release, we try to re-attach and graft back into our lives the things He has in love showed us need to be removed and we resist. Or we know deep down in He is calling us elsewhere and we are scared, we are unsure. How many missionaries and preachers resisted their calling only to have the Lord make their spirit so uneasy that there was no way around what they were called to do in life? How many times have we held on to our money our possessions our earthly and worldly desires only to have a yearning in our hearts for something more? How many times have we placed people around us and have developed relationships that were not what the Lord was desiring but we went ahead out of "ministry" or out of pure desire for relationships only to look back and see what we became or what the Lord was really desiring? How many times have we made our career our idol and have forgotten the Lord is our assurance not our career? Or have we given so much of ourselves to our work that when we are with the Lord we have nothing left to give? Pruning...in each season of our lives the Lord is working to prune us, to grow us, to make us healthier, to make us more like Him, the Lily of the Valley, He is the one Who can make us into the prized flower. What needs pruning in our lives today? We need to take time daily to see what areas the Lord is wanting and desiring to "cut off" from our lives and not worry if it is a move that is going to make us happy or sad, those are purely emotions that are fleeting, but realize is for His glory and for a greater Joy which can not be taken from us.
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