Sometimes it takes me a while to process things. Our Monday night bible study was one of those nights where the Lord showed up in the quietest of ways. With that being said, I continued processing what was shared into the next day asking Him to show me more and the Lord being who He is…showed that which you just never see coming. Ouch.
Deuteronomy 28 talks to us about blessings and cursings based on obedience and disobedience to the Lord for our lives. It tells us how God gives us the pros and cons as it were, of both. Obedience obviously reaps good things and disobedience not so good things. You get the point.
That led me to a verse one of the girls shared in John 15:4 “Abide (live) in Me and I in you.” In this particular verse I thought of the blessing and cursing. And about obeying Christ Jesus and the fruit which grows or doesn’t grow in those choices that we make. In fact it led me to read John 15:2 “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit”. The Lord (what I like to call) is “holy highlighting” this verse for me but also a particular word in this verse. Prunes.
Pruning is getting rid of that which is bad so good can grow. In this though, the Lord was telling me that He is pruning my, our, hearts. We have ‘bad’ in our hearts i.e. thoughts, attitudes, even the words we speak begin in our hearts (Luke 6:45). God wants to ‘cut’ that away so good can grow. Yet only good can grow because we abide IN Christ. Because we obey Him. And the good is the blessing part of this. Pruning starts and finishes with obedience.
Many times we have prayed from Psalm 19:4 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O’ Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” but sometimes we are not fully aware or we just easily forget of how closely our heart is looked at by God. It’s the heart he judges of us. It always starts and finishes in our hearts as far as the Lord is concerned and Jesus truly is our perfect example. So it makes sense that it’s our hearts He is pruning.
I read this statement from my friend Julia and it struck me at again how important the direction we have our hearts go in to be pruned which ultimately leads to a blessing or not. “Living life with a negative attitude takes away from the things you should appreciate and are blessed with....you lose time that could be directed on the blessings in front of you.”
King Jesus, with a dose of humility and a big pinch of obedience, Your pruning is welcome and our hearts receive the greatest blessing of all...to know You more.
No comments:
Post a Comment