Changed Lives = Church Growth, Pt.4
ByPruning happens before Growth. Jesus does His best growing just after pruning. Pruning is the process by which the Gardener has to remove, cut off, or break off pieces of a plant/tree that are dying or chocking out the rest of the healthy plant. Pruning is painful, pruning often feels like you are moving backwards, but in reality pruning is moving forward because pruning is about health.
And as Rick Warren says, “HEALTHY CHURCHES GROW.” Pruning happens in every believer’s life as a part of our spiritual growth; God disciplines and corrects His children because He loves them. God removes the dead stuff in order to set us up for greater health& growth!
God also does this in His churches. God removes spiritually dead people (vision vandals), dead programs (the activities you have to artificially manufacture energy just to do), and dead thought processes (not believing in a God who does the impossible when we do the possible) in order for a church to become healthy and grow!
Steve,
Love the analogy!!!! God the Great Gardner!!!! Wow. No wonder I love being in my garden. God does too!
Allow me to indulge for a few moments with what is on my heart.
Pruning….. A new Gardner is too afraid to prune, The mere thought of it is horrifying! They are so enthralled with the “size” of the plant and the time put in to make it grow that they will overlook the overall health of the plant. They will deny the fact that it is even unhealthy. They will simply ignore the desperate need of pruning. The new Gardner will be willing to “put up and ignore” the dead, overgrown, weak parts of the plant in an attempt to preserve the “size”.
However, overtime the Gardner grows and learns the only way to grow a healthy garden is too do much “pruning and weeding”. They no longer fear the process but come to see it as a necessary act of growing a healthy garden. Over time they come to respect and perfect the art of pruning! They no longer have the fear or ignorance to what pruning “will do” to a plant. The Gardner learns that you must also have a healthy respect for the “pruning shears”. They know that they are a tool to accomplish the goal. Too much pruning and you kill the plant, not enough and the plant becomes weaker, or directs it energy to all the wrong places and as a result the entire plant suffers.
There is another term that we use in gardening, “dead heading”. It is when a Gardner goes around and picks off only the “dead” flower heads. This process will force new, vibrant, healthy flowers to grow!
God the Gardener! I just love this analogy! We didn’t even touch on the subject of WEEDS! but, maybe another day for this.
Just had to share this with you. You really touched on something when you mentioned the term “pruning”! Thank you son for always putting God’s word and character into a medium that is so relevant and touchable.
I pray that God will continue to bless you and your family.
Love You,
Mom xoxxoxox
Thanks for some insight into gardening to expand the metaphor, Mel! Those bits of info are helpful!