2 Cor 6 - do "not receive the grace of God in vain"..."open wide your hearts". The grace of God is an amazing and powerful work that He does to transform us into His image. When we keep our hearts closed, become controlling, are self-focused or follow after any of the other pursuits that steer us away from God then we live in vanity and futility. If we want our faith to count for something, or to feel effective we must be willing to open our hearts to what God has in store for us.
God's blessings in our lives are not always easy to take in, 2 Cor. shows us that Paul had his share of difficulty, but the outcome, even of the difficulties, was beautiful. I liken it to growing actual fruit.
We have a few apple trees in our yard. We are not farmers, but we understand that there are three things that the trees need in order to produce excellent fruit. If any one of the three is missing the fruit will be wormy, stunted, will rot on the tree or be malformed.
First, in the cold of winter or in the deadness of late autumn the branches must be trimmed back to the main large feeding and support branches. Our trees can grow an incredible 6 feet or more in a season. If you don’t trim these branches every year then they in turn create numerous new branches. The tree expends so much energy trying to maintain the growth in branch life, that the fruit becomes stunted. You may have lots of apples but they will be tiny, as little as a quarter the size they should be. Pruning is brutal, it hacks away fresh lively growth, but it focuses the remaining growth so that it will be fruit bearing and so that the fruit grown is accessible to those who will harvest.
The second thing that the trees need in the late winter or very early spring is to be sprayed with a dormant bug spray. This kills the bugs that have wintered over in the tree. They are burrowed in and are not obviously present, but as soon as the flower buds come out these bugs lay eggs in the fruit causing it to rot from the inside out. Preventative spraying stops infestation at the heart level.
The final task which must be done is to thin the fruit when it develops. In the 5th or 6th week of growth the fruit clusters will have done some self-thinning so that the weakest of the fruit naturally falls off. We have found that if there are more than 2 apples in a cluster then the fruit develops rot spots where it leans against other fruit. It also lacks sufficient nutrition and will become small or stunted. Going through the tree and removing the excess fruit ultimately gives the kind of excellent crop of fruit that we want. If we are greedy and keep all of the new fruit we will have a tree with rotting mis-formed fruit.
Over taxing a fruit tree, asking it to do more than it ought to will inevitably cause problems.
We are no different. Pruning must happen during the unfruitful or resting periods in our lives. Tackling hidden, under the surface problems must be pursued so that real vigorous healthy growth can occur. Discerning where there is too much of an unhealthy demand on the physical, emotional or spirituals resources we have must be done so that we live in balance.
God's blessings in our lives are not always easy to take in, 2 Cor. shows us that Paul had his share of difficulty, but the outcome, even of the difficulties, was beautiful. I liken it to growing actual fruit.
We have a few apple trees in our yard. We are not farmers, but we understand that there are three things that the trees need in order to produce excellent fruit. If any one of the three is missing the fruit will be wormy, stunted, will rot on the tree or be malformed.
First, in the cold of winter or in the deadness of late autumn the branches must be trimmed back to the main large feeding and support branches. Our trees can grow an incredible 6 feet or more in a season. If you don’t trim these branches every year then they in turn create numerous new branches. The tree expends so much energy trying to maintain the growth in branch life, that the fruit becomes stunted. You may have lots of apples but they will be tiny, as little as a quarter the size they should be. Pruning is brutal, it hacks away fresh lively growth, but it focuses the remaining growth so that it will be fruit bearing and so that the fruit grown is accessible to those who will harvest.
The second thing that the trees need in the late winter or very early spring is to be sprayed with a dormant bug spray. This kills the bugs that have wintered over in the tree. They are burrowed in and are not obviously present, but as soon as the flower buds come out these bugs lay eggs in the fruit causing it to rot from the inside out. Preventative spraying stops infestation at the heart level.
The final task which must be done is to thin the fruit when it develops. In the 5th or 6th week of growth the fruit clusters will have done some self-thinning so that the weakest of the fruit naturally falls off. We have found that if there are more than 2 apples in a cluster then the fruit develops rot spots where it leans against other fruit. It also lacks sufficient nutrition and will become small or stunted. Going through the tree and removing the excess fruit ultimately gives the kind of excellent crop of fruit that we want. If we are greedy and keep all of the new fruit we will have a tree with rotting mis-formed fruit.
Over taxing a fruit tree, asking it to do more than it ought to will inevitably cause problems.
We are no different. Pruning must happen during the unfruitful or resting periods in our lives. Tackling hidden, under the surface problems must be pursued so that real vigorous healthy growth can occur. Discerning where there is too much of an unhealthy demand on the physical, emotional or spirituals resources we have must be done so that we live in balance.
It sounds so simple, yet it takes some real energy and determination to go prune a tree with snow on the ground, to spray it when there is no sign of either growth or problem or to be brutal enough to thin the exuberant growth so that it is focused and fed well. By pursuing these acts of diligence, by opening our lives to God’s pruning and cleaning up we will live lives of fruitfulness, instead of living in vanity and futility. Finally always remember a tree only succumbs to pruning, the master pruner is the one who actually does the work. He is gracious but thorough. Let His grace be sufficient even in the prunin season.
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