Growing Pains

It feels like I have been in a growing stage of my life for the past five years continuously. It seems like God has been holding a magnifying glass to my heart and I am not always so happy with what is revealed.

To be honest, I get tired of it sometimes. I get a petulant desire to have a break and to not be confronted with the matters of my heart that are not so lovely and pleasing to God.

But then I think about the alternative. I imagine what it would be like to stop growing, to become stagnant and stay the same. I think I would get bored within two minutes. 

I vividly remember, when I was growing up, praying to God that one day I would not have a boring life. I seem to have been born with a taste for challenge and adventure. And it seems that God has answered my prayers.

I have three potted plants in my room. I have always loved nature and I love to have some of it inside. One of my plants is particularly fast growing. It has thickened and sprouted so profusely over the past 6 months. I love to look see how luscious it is when I walk into my room. But it wasn’t always like that. 

In order for the plant to grow, I had to prune it a lot. When I first got it, I trimmed it back almost weekly, a little bit here, a little bit there. Sometimes it grew in a direction that I didn’t want it to, so I cut off those leaves and stalks.

One day I was reading from John 15. It talks about God being a gardener and how he cuts off any branches that do not bear fruit. He even prunes the branches that do bear fruit. Either way, the branches get cut. Which would hurt. And would not feel comfortable.

When I look at my own potted plant, I realise that there are two purposes for the pruning. First, I prune the dead sections off my plant to encourage growth. I want my plant to be as full and green as possible. Secondly, I prune my plant, because I want it to look beautiful. 

When I look at John 15 with these things in mind, the idea of being ‘pruned’ is not so terrible. I keep in mind that God wants me to grow, to be vibrant and to be beautiful, inside and out. 

I do not want to be stagnant and ‘fruitless’. I want to have all the nasty ‘dead’ parts of me, my attitudes, actions and thoughts, cut out so that there is room for grace, love and compassion towards the people around me.

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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. John 15:1 - 8