Tag: spiritual

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Setting Sails and Pruning Rosebushes: Allowing The Process So You can Grow

“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.” John 15:1-2 NIV

I am truly having a case of déjà vu today!!!! I either dreamed I wrote this devotion because I searched through all the ones on my blog and I cannot find them!! (UPDATE: success! I found the original devotion I wrote on this topic…you can see it here:https://lifeinspiredbygod.com/2010/11/13/daily-devotion-161/ and see this one too: https://lifeinspiredbygod.com/2009/12/22/daily-devotion-107/) Anyway…I wish I could shout to you how much this scripture means to me. Look at the screenshot below from my vision board:

In the bottom left there is a picture of pruning shears. God gave me revelation on some of the things I want–true companionship with my future husband and doing everything He put me here to do while I’m on Earth–and it was this very picture that spoke to me the most. I had to be pruned–pruned of negative attitudes, old habits and bad behaviors, fear, doubt, worry–everything that sought to keep me from God’s blessings. I thought about this yesterday as I talked with one of my friends about how my recent loss of friends (rather, God’s pruning me of them as I realized, His removing them from my life) had made me feel. I honestly know this was God’s will, because one of the persons was genuinely not happy about what God had chosen to do in my life, and the other…well I don’t know about him lol.

Pruning as Jesus relays above, prepares you for more growth. Dang, it just hit me. PRUNING prepares you for more growth. It is a part of the process, you cannot truly grow unless you have been thoroughly pruned. I remember being outside with my daddy growing up, and he was pulling the old rose blossoms off the vine. It was then that he said you have to pull off the dead blooms so more can grow (Thanks Daddy!!). I never fully understood that concept until now…things that had once blossomed in your life and have since died, it has shed its leaves and dried up–it cannot grow anymore! It can no longer be that beautiful rose you once saw. It now barely, if at all, resembles the beautiful blossom it once was. Life has been sucked out of it, and if it is not removed or doesn’t fall off, it can leach the lifeblood from the remaining vine and nearby buds.

It dawned on me yesterday and it was confirmed today in talking to one of my friends (thanks Shawnda): sometimes we have to stop clinching these things and people so tightly–especially in the process of being prepared because God has to work on us now. How can you experience that increase or receive those blessings if you will not allow God to take away the thorns–those things about you that make you less than appealing to others at times? Ladies, would you rather have a thorny bouquet with some dead buds or a dozen (or more) long-stemmed roses? And fellas, be forewarned lol thorny roses are not necessarily the best gift, so don’t go picking roses off someone’s bush! (just kidding, but really don’t do that) They both smell great, but to enjoy the latter you must accept the pain that comes with it because it is a part of the nature of that flower. (Yeah that one was for me lol) HOW can you honestly expect to be able to sail to the next destination with the anchor still stuck in the bed of the harbor? You have to allow that pruning process–but take it from me, do it with open hands because it sure does hurt to be pruned and have things snatched out of your grasp! You are in a season where you are being prepared and to prepare for that next harvest, the weeds, brambles, sticks, stones, and parasites must be eradicated! Ask yourself, who IS sucking the life out of you???

Until next time: allow the process and think how much better you will look after it is over!

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 15:7-8 NIV

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Believing at the Point of Despair

In the crowd was a woman who had been suffering from chronic bleeding for twelve years. Although she had been under the care of many doctors and had spent all her money, she had not been helped at all. Actually, she had become worse. Mark 5:25-26 GWT

This topic plagued my heart for the last few days. How can you expect someone to believe in God when everything they have believed Him for has failed to manifest? How can you expect someone to believe in your testimony when nothing they have prayed for seems to happen, and everything they have prayed against has come to pass? How can you convince them when instead of things getting better, it has gotten worse? It would be pointless to say to them, ‘just have faith’ or ‘God’s going to work it out.’ I know, because I have both been that person that those words were said to and I have been the person to say it. It would even be worse to say that, maybe you are outside of God’s will for your life to this person, who is already on the brink of or in a state of depression.

The message I heard that mentioned this scenario referenced Elisha’s encounter with the widow whose sons were about to be sold into slavery to pay the debt left behind by her husband, one of the men in Elisha’s company. Think about it: your husband/wife dies, leaves behind considerable debt, enough that the creditors want to sell your children into slavery to pay it back. You just lost your spouse, and now they want to take everything from you. How do you tell someone like that to believe that God will provide?

The scriptures above are about the woman with the issue of blood; she had done everything she could to be healed. She spent all her money and no one could help her. Then to add misery to her strife, her condition had grown worse. How do you tell her…to believe????

This was very difficult for me to conceptualize, and at the end, I realized in my own situation and in that of a little sister of mine, I had to relinquish her and my own problems to God. I realized that in my situation and in the situation of the woman with the issue of blood, we both kept taking the problem back away from God, trying to fix it in our own power. Whereas, unlike us, the widow went straight to God’s representative (since in that time the priests and prophets were God’s representatives and intermediaries on Earth). You have to turn it and them over to God.

You cannot think that your unguided intervention will prompt a doubt-filled person to believe and have faith to reach the point of things changing in their favor. Honestly speaking, you would have to be delusional to think that your actions alone are sufficient enough; without God’s hand on the situation, you will simply fall into the same cycle, and digging yourself or pushing them deeper into depression. You see, we are not as in control as we would like to think. In those times of despair, complete surrender is the only thing that will work.

It hurt me to have to tell my little sister that she was selfish and that sometimes life was difficult enough to push us into disbelief, but that in those times, we could have the greatest growth if we simply trusted in God–and that as long as she continued to doubt and say things contrary to what I believed, I could not entertain her. It broke my heart because I love her as if she was my natural-born sister. But, I realized I was doing that thing I do, trying to rescue people again–my motto should be ‘No Souls Left Behind, lol.’ I had to realize that it was God’s job to intervene and I could no longer try to take His place in her life or force her to believe Him for that matter. I especially could no longer hear the complaints that cast down her faith when I know personally what God has done in my own life.

When I got to this point in my walk that I was so unsure of what would happen that it seemed easy to ‘curse God and die’–like Job’s wife told him to do–I could only muster the strength to cry out louder to God. I realized that life was pointless to live without faith and I could not ignore God’s past works in my life. The beauty of this is that in both scriptural references–the woman with the issue of blood and the widow–at their points of absolute despair they turned to God. And it was God–not man–that changed their situations and ushered them into their breakthrough.

So basically there is not a solution out that eludes that total surrender on either party’s part. If you are a Miss-Fix-It like I used to be, you have to surrender those people to God, and believe and pray on their behalf, even if they say they will not. If you are in a place where it seems as if God is not there, I think you know now that it is time to reach for the hem of His garment like the woman with the issue of blood, and allow God to pour out His continually flowing oil like with the widow to anoint you and your situation. Trust God and realize there is no other way to move to the other side of ‘through.’

When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:27-34 NIV