"every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes"

I am stuck in John 15.  I feel like I can't move on from this chapter without letting it marinate within me.  It is so very rich.  So much truth, so much revelation about the relationship between God and us.

but as I was reading this same chapter this morning and then again this evening, both times I had to stop at this one part and just let it sink in and understand it as a reality ... "every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes"(verse 2)
 ... now hold up.  It seems to me that if it's bearing bruit, it's doing it's job right?  then why on earth prune it?
but the second part of the verse... "that it may bear more fruit".

the Lord has been showing me recently that He is always longing for more of us.  He is gracious and loving and only shows us as much of ourselves as we can handle in order to change us... but little by little as time moves on he shines more and more light into our lives.... he gives us challenges, sometimes things we don't make complete sense of ... but afterwards we realize we are closer to than ever... and we are doing things that we never would have done before.  how precious is our Lord.

we long to be useful to God ... but this can only happen if we realize how useless we actually are... in this chapter it says "apart from me you can do nothing" (verse 5).
Abiding in Him means never being apart from Him, it is about allowing Him to prune us as He deems necessary, it means trusting Him as our source of life, our source of being.

pruning.....
   .... it's so strange if you think about it.  But it is such a picture of the Lord's work in our lives.  When a tree is pruned, it seems that something, even good, is cut off, but it the end we find something far better.
It is the same in our lives, sometimes the Lord removes even what is good, that we might know that which is better... and that indeed, is our Lord Jesus Christ.
He longs for us to know His closeness and His love, He longs for us to know Himself, His heart and His intentions.  He knows that this way is so far better than any other way, that he will cut off even what may be good in our lives, to achieve this.

...and we so "oh Lord, how could you take this away from me?!"
                       ...and yet how could He not??  He loves us to much! It is His love and mercy that leads Him to take away things in our lives and place us within challenges that seem so difficult, because He knows that through these things we will gain something far better.  We will gain Christ.

Praise the Lord He is all we could ever want and need... He is our full sufficiency, our Help, our Joy, our Eternal Hope.

"These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" - John 15:11

Do not be discouraged by the many struggles that we face... but know in every one of them, is an opportunity for redemption and a way to draw nearer to our Lord.

Praise His glorious Name. : )

to be uncertain ... is to know our Lord.

it seems like everyone i know is in some position of uncertainty right now, especially among my Christian friends.   It's like there is something testing our ability to let this world go.  We so love our control and our idea of what our lives should look like and yet at the same time we often don't even really know what we want.  We live in this act of juggling our fears, desires, lusts, ambitions, etc.
...and yet deep within us there is a longing to be close to the Lord.
Yet we don't know how to balance that with the rest of our life.
And so we try our best to try to figure out what we want verses what God wants and we play this game of give and take.
And i've done this for so long.  And I keep doing it... thinking out of the best intentions... that I know what i'm doing and I know what's right.
 But reality speaks otherwise, and God shines light like i've never seen before into the depths of my heart, and shows me the cold, ugly, truth.  I am a sinner.  There is not one ounce of good in my intentions.  They are all out of selfish ambition and pride.

...But thank the Lord ... He is a great Savior.  and not only that ... but He is our all in all.  He has given us His very life, that we can lay down our sinful nature at the foot of the cross.
.... and by taking up our cross and following Him, we learn to walk in His life.  A mystery, that I have only begun to understand as I take baby steps behind Him.

taking up our cross = learning how to live in Christ. hmm...

oh how we wish there was another way....         ....but even our Lord Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane, though his human nature wanted otherwise, He said "Not my will but Thine be done".
... and though in his flesh at that moment it did not seem to be a glorious thing, He knew by the grace of God that that is exactly what it would be.... and He knew that He wanted to be with us.  So he walked the road of Calvary, that we might know and live out His glorious Life and be one with Him.  How precious.

Now, right now... it hurts to deny ourselves... heck, I cry out to God in agony sometimes just wishing He would relieve me of some of the struggles of the world.  And His response.... "I love you , child" ... oh that we would know the heart of the Father.
May we learn to praise Him when things don't go our way.  May we learn to lift our voice and sing hallelujah ... because if nothing else, He saved us ... and in this struggle ... He is drawing us to His side.

Our Lord is beautiful, may we learn to surrender, and trust that He knows what He's doing ... even when what we're facing is ugly.  His vision sees far more than ours.

Lord, help us to praise you.

"You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water." - Psalm 63:1