NOT JUST FOR PRUNING SAKE

I have always wondered why some babies make their first appearance on earth with strange haircuts. Some sections are fully cultivated and resplendent, while others are completely bare or designed with sparse vegetation. In most cases, there is usually no clear pattern to the hairstyle. However, after a few years, you’ll struggle to recognize what was once an unattractive ‘real estate’. The transformation starts immediately after the first haircut and continues to be perfected with more haircuts. I can only imagine what those heads would look like if they were allowed to just develop like that.

My childhood days were before the days of electric clippers, when all sorts of contraptions ranging from scissors, manual clippers and blade-and-comb were used to plough the hair. If you didn’t experience these things, you don’t know what you missed.

These haircuts can be likened to the pruning of trees to make them more fruitful and desirable. The hair strands that are removed from the heads by haircuts are not exactly useless or dead strands, but their removal is essential for the required transformation. That’s the same thing with pruning. When you prune, you are not necessarily removing dead branches, but living branches that need to make way for the perfection of the tree. If these trees are not pruned, they will never reach their full potential. If the trees had sensory nervous systems, I guess pruning would be like surgery without anaesthesia…not a very pleasant experience.

There is more to Christianity than going to church and being very active in the church. There is definitely more to our relationship with God than just being good people and living chaste lives. And there is more to our walk with God than being consistent with our daily Bible study and prayers. Whatever level we get to, however deep our relationship with our Heavenly Father gets, there will always be more. We are called to live supernatural lives, doing the very same things that Jesus did while He was on the earth as summarized in Acts 10:38:

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.    Acts 10:38 (NLT)

That ‘more’ does not come with business as usual. It comes with continuous pruning. That’s why Jesus said:

“I am the true Vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that continues to bear fruit, He [repeatedly] prunes, so that it will bear more fruit [even richer and finer fruit].”  John 15:1-2 (AMP)

The branches that need to be pruned are not necessarily bad or offensive things, they include nice things that just need to be dropped if we have to get to the level that God wants us to get to at every point in time. They are mostly things that compete with the sacrifices of time and other resources that should be devoted to God or other forms of personal and spiritual development. If we do not drop these things, we will always be at the milk level and not able to graduate to solid spiritual food and bones, like Paul said to the Corinthians:

“I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready…” 1Corinthians 3:2 (NLT)

The things to be pruned are different for everyone so; there’s no one size that fits all. Part of the work we need to do is to be on that continuous journey of self-examination to know what we need to drop at every point in time. When we discover these things, we then need to take the responsibility for pruning them off and by the way, this pruning is not for pastors or church workers only, it is for every Christian, because…

These signs will accompany those who have BELIEVED: in My name, they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues;  they will pick up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will get well.” Mark 16: 17 – 18 (AMP)

If we are believers then we really do not have any excuse but to keep pruning and flourishing. That’s what we have been called to and it is a lifelong call. We must never become satisfied and complacent. We must keep pushing till the very end

¹² I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into His abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called me to fulfill and wants me to discover. ¹³ I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. ¹⁴ I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus. ¹⁵ So let all who are fully mature have this same passion, and if anyone is not yet gripped by these desires, God will reveal it to them. Philippians 3:12 – 15 (TPT)