God: The Gardener - New Year Ahead

Today at work while waiting in a truck for one of my co-workers I was looking at a bunch of trees that had been pruned by some of the people I work with at the warehouse. Then it came from out of nowhere (as God often speaks to me - but rarely do I listen so intently) the verse in John where it talks about God being the gardener of all of his vineyard (paraphrasing here). It seemed in just a split second I was given a sermon on that verse. Many people love to garden and do things in their yards to make it look just right and to have the fruits and veggies of their labour be the best that they can be. They water, weed, prune, etc... whatever else garden people do. You can tell I am not a gardener. It is not my forte, but that is....okay digressing again. While the gardener tries to do all he can to get his garden in tip top shape, God does the same with us. In the verse (John 15:1-5) God is the gardener and we are the tree. Picture yourself as a tree.... a human tree with many many branches....on each of these branches are characteristics of who we are and what we do ... not only the really good stuff we do and are, but also the really bad and terrible stuff inside of us ... some of the really bad things are represented by those branches that are withering and dying. The really beautiful branches full of leaves and fruit are the ones that showcase our love, our obedience,
and all of the things that we do to the glory of God. The dead branches that our dragging us down are made known to us by the Holy Spirit. He reveals to us the things that we do that are keeping these beautiful branches from growing even more, and from more sprouts and offshoots of the good things that we already showcase to also become branches and then later become fruit, which is what God is looking for.
Many of us know some of the things that we do that are referred to here as the dead wood, but it is not until the Spirit reveals to us that we need to decide to let Him prune these branches off. He is not going to cut them off without our first asking Him to cut them off and help us so that they do not grow again. The longer we wait to acknowledge our need to cut off these areas in our life that need attention, the longer we will be dragging around dead wood, day after day. Better to be pruned often then eventually cut off at the root.

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to let God get the pruning shears and cut off some of the dead wood hanging off me. Stay tuned for an update in 365 days.