Do You Need Pruned?
“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” (John 15:2 NKJV).
Three times in the last month the verb prune, in one conjugation or another, has popped out at me. The first time was during a conversation with my book discussion group, at which time I stated pruning is always painful.
The second time came through my daily devotional.
Seeing it a second time so soon after the first caused me to dig deeper into the word.
What Pruning First Meant to Me
I grew up with the King James Bible, and my understanding of John 15:2 always carried pain with it. “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15:2 KJV).
What in that verse doesn’t sound painful? Number 1, “taketh away” said to me that if I didn’t bear fruit, I’d lose my salvation. I’d be cut off, taken away, and cast into the pile to be burned. It didn’t help that I didn’t know what “fruit” I was expected to bear.
“Purgeth,” again, painful, like cutting off an arm or a leg. That meant something the “vinedresser” didn’t like about me, so he took it away, whether it was important to me or not.
This interpretation of the verse was colored by my childhood experience of rejection and believing there was something wrong with me that had to be “fixed.”
Consequently, I avoided the verse rather than studying it to rightly understand it.
What I Discovered
In my recent examination of the word, I discovered pruning is a process of removing that which hinders healthy growth. An aha moment. I don’t want things in my life that hinder my growth as a child of God, as a better human being.
When my pastor preached on John 15:1–15 last week, I hear pruning for the third time. I was able to hear and embrace the message because I better understood what pruning was. Gotta give him credit, he explained it similarly: removing something destructive in our lives that hinders our growth.
I don’t want destructive things in my life, do you? Is their removal painful? Maybe sometimes, but because I see them as harmful to me, I gladly want to give them up. That lessens any pain that might come with it, e.g. withdrawal from an addiction.
Jesus explained kingdom principles in terms the Israelites could relate to. Growing fruit was one of them. Pruning is all about helping a plant produce better fruit by cutting away parts that are destructive toward fruit bearing such as the sucker on a tomato plant (pictured above).
I grow tomatoes in a pot on my front patio every summer, and I remove suckers when I see them (I am not diligent about it). The Gardening Cook explains that in removing suckers “you’ll end up with larger tomatoes. If you leave them to grow, you’ll get a large crop of smaller tomatoes.” (Thank you, Cook! Now I know why my tomatoes aren’t as big as they should be.)
But this summer has been a tough one on my patio veggies—grueling heat where you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. I’ve had bottom rot, leaves yellowing and dropping off, and the veggies haven’t grow as large as they should. With a little Google research, I learned a plant works to fix those issues, thus robbing the healthier parts of the plant from what it needs. The remedy? Prune!
In our society, an analogy easier to understand would be purging a virus from our computer. Or removing sugar from our diet to maintain a healthy weight and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Conclusion
In the end, pruning is for our better health and better fruit bearing. Many might see pruning as punishment (my first impression), but God is in the business of making us healthy, not punishing us.
Ask God to show you if there are things in your life that need pruned. Then ask Him to provide the strength you might need to give them up.