The Master Gardner

I wrote this for Stephan when he was in Rehab- Gosh, this was years ago. I just smiled as I wrote "years ago.." Stephan has been really doing some soul searching lately and I've never been so proud of him. All he does is talk about watching God work in his life. Just a month ago- He was scared to give God complete control it seemed. Stephan told me last week that he may start singing in church.... This Sunday, to my delight, I glanced over- and I'm trying to hold back tears just now, but my son was singing. --------------HE WAS SINGING Y'ALL! I think back to earlier days and never knew that days like these would ever come. I am in awe of God's amazing power and ways that He has answered prayer. You are an amazing God...

So, as I was looking through some old files on my computer, I came across this (below.) I printed it out for him to read back then, but I wonder if he remembers it? It seems very fitting to give it to him again as he is actually putting these things into practice today. He's asking God for wisdom... he told me that too. I hope this will be encouraging to him today:

The Master Gardner

Have you ever seen a tree that has sucker branches growing from it? A sucker is a branch that is unwanted and unproductive. It usually is a new growth that breaks through the soil from the root, or it can be a spindly branch growing near the ground. These small offshoots should be removed as soon as they are noticed! Suckers weaken the main growth of a tree and rob the tree of much needed nutrients it needs to grow and bear good fruit!

The term, sucker branch itself just sounds bad, doesn’t it? If we turn our focus away from trees and look at sucker branches in a spiritual sense, such as in the lives of believers; sucker branches can come in many forms. Pretending we are the tree, anything in our lives that inhibit us from growing in Christ is a sucker branch! It could be a habit, a strong hold, friends, music, negative thinking… etc. Sucker branches come in many, many forms.

How I pray that you and I can remain strong. Trees that do not let the “suckers” of this world try to inhabit the soil around us, so that we can live the fruitful life we were meant to live. I pray we can become trees that bear much fruit.

God has a plan for every person on this planet and it’s our job to figure out what that plan is. However, since we do not live in a perfect world and live in a sin filled world, we need to learn to identify the “sucker branches” in our lives! We don’t want to be robbed of the spiritual nutrients that we need to grow spiritually as we try to follow God’s leading in discovering exactly what His plans are for us! For goodness sake, we do not want to rot from the inside out, fall over on our side lifeless and become a slimy, new, moss covered home for squirrels do we?

Pruning - To remove (anything considered superfluous or undesirable). Remove dead, and diseased branches to help prevent insect & decay organisms from entering the tree.

Pruning is necessary in the lives of trees… and in the lives of believers! If you don’t remove dead and diseased sucker branches from a tree it will not grow as it should. It will likely die and never produce the fruit that it was intended to produce! Pruning does not hurt a tree, nor is it painful. This process actually strengthens the tree and allows it to grow taller, bigger and stronger and produce much more succulent fruit! However, in the life of the believer- the pruning process can be very painful or impossible! Sometimes it’s difficult to cut the “sucker branches” loose from our lives, but if they are not cut off they will... either stunt our spiritual growth, enable us to never grow spiritually or cause us to perish spiritually! Pruning, even though painful, strengthens us and allows us to grow stronger, wiser and have more wisdom in God!  

As the tree is being pruned and as it’s growing strong and healthy, there are still storms and strong winds the tree has to endure… Trials and testing’s that we go through in life can seem like these same storms… 1 Peter tells us that even though we will endure testing for a little while, the victory in the end will prove our faith genuine and prove it to be far more precious than mere gold (1 Peter 1:6-8).

As we allow God to prune our lives, getting rid of all the “sucker branches” that want to weaken us and rob us of good spiritual nutrition, we need to remind ourselves that God is the Master Gardner- the one with the pruning shears. He will only prune what we allow Him to prune… If we trust Him with our lives and our growth, we have to allow Him to have complete control of our whole lives, not just part of it. If a tree is not completely pruned- it will still become weakened and not grow into its fullness.

Having faith is trusting The Gardner (God) with the shears… and allowing Him complete control of our pruning process, even in the storms. He never tells us in His Word that we won’t go through storms, but He does tell us that He will be right there with us when we do…

Let’s identify today how we feel we need to be pruned. What do we need to give God complete control of? Also, we need to identify “sucker branches” in our lives. Anything and anyone that could possibly inhibit us from growing in Christ. Let’s meditate on being a strong, healthy Christian…allowing God to prune, restore and rebuild our lives…as only He can. 

 

Love,

Mom