I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t mind pain, but I hate it. I even have quite a few stories of me passing out from just seeing other people trapped in pain. One of them ends with me waking up face down on the Joplin Movie Theater bathroom floor – gross, I KNOW!
So much of my life, I’ve operated on the thought that if I love God and keep His commands, I will avoid hardship or pain. If I do what is right, make wise decisions and stay connected to God, things will go well for me. Yet, that is not what is promised when it comes to life with God.
If we are to be like Christ – to follow Him, to learn from Him – we shouldn’t be surprised when things go poorly for us as they did for Him. Jesus even says in multiple gospel accounts: “Take up your cross and follow me.” We follow a crucified Savior, the same Savior who says in John 15:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
But suffering at the hands of others or because of the brokenness of the world feels different than the reality of God Himself taking up pruning shears and making sharp cuts in our lives. Even more – God going to work pruning us while we are connected, while we are following, while we are listening and trusting Him to be our source.
My justifying/entitled/legalistic flesh has often fought back against God’s pruning with, “But I’m bearing fruit! But I have served you! But I have done what you asked, or refused what you said to avoid!” Yet it is in pruning that we see God’s grace in never giving up on us. For if we give Him access to our hearts, He will not stand by and watch while we pursue things that will only bring death and destruction. Even if they are good things that we are trying to make our source of life.
C.S. Lewis depicts this far more beautifully than I ever could:
We are, not metaphorically, but in very truth, a divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character…. Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life— the work which he loves, …he will take endless trouble– and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were alive. One can imagine [a living] picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the 10th time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God has designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love, but for less.
– C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
In love, God prunes.
And in response, I’ve found Him calling me not to “abide better,” or to grit my teeth through the pruning, but, as we see later in John 15, to ask.
To ask Him for the strength to endure, to rest, to obey. To ask Him for joy and for justice. To ask Him for what my heart longs for. Because it can only come from Him anyway – apart from Him we can do nothing (v. 5).
And in asking – the simple act of placing ourselves in His presence to talk with Him, to open our hearts to Him – we find ourselves drinking in the fullness of life from the Vine.
Contact KaLisa
