[click to read part one]
Sometimes I just have to shake my head in life and think "only you God, only you." Truly. God has a way of doing things that I am either puzzled at, amazed with, shiver because of, or just have a dropped jaw in the end. God is God. And He sure is a God of great humor.
After a semester of being at school and watching podcasts of my home church, I could not wait until today to finally get to go to my own church. It's been a while. With no alarm clock and my phone charging downstairs, I just prayed to wake up on time. (Some people need alarm clocks all the time, as for me sometimes I just use God to wake me up. He's pretty good at it.) Just in the nick of time I woke up, had 15 minutes to get ready, hopped in my car, and just smiled because I made it just in time for church. I knew that God had something for me today.
So I sit down in church after we finished worship, I opened up the little pamphlet they hand out before the service, and just shook my head and laughed. Literally; I laughed.
The pamphlet read:
"Jesus is the Vine" John 15:1-11
"REALLY God? You've only pounded this into my head this past YEAR." It was a pretty daing monstrous coincidence if you want to call it that. I just know it was very intentional on God's part, no coincidence in my mind. Also perhaps no coincidence that I just posted a blog on this the other day.
At the end of the sermon, my pastor gave a little run-down on the word abide. I could not stop thinking about how crazy it was that the ONE word that was laid on my heart for over the past year, was being preached on. No other word would have had the same effect as this one. It was crazy. It was like God was stringing together everything that had gone on in the past year of my life and connected it all back to Him in the most beautiful way.
Honestly though, one part of the sermon gripped me and convicted me more then anything else... but yet gave me so much unfathomable peace, beyond what I could even say on a blog post. It was the part when my pastor talked about the ways in which God helps us to produce fruit in our lives. The first way was to remove unfruitful branches, and the second part was to prune so that we bear more fruit. The second part boggled my mind.
God knows our imperfections, yet he promises to complete us. He promises to take the parts of our lives and our walks with Him that are not bearing fruit and to change them so that they do. Through it all I think that God wants us to maintain an attitude of "CONSIDER IT ALL PURE JOY" because the pain of pruning could be immense. But to look past the pain and to be able to see the fruit that will come out of it, that is what will get us through it. Focusing on the pain does not allow us to see how God is going to use it for His glory. Focusing on the pain makes your hurt or your trials unbearable... focusing on producing fruit makes your pain worth it.
The most clarifying things that my pastor said was that once God has you, He has you. The Father always knows what He's doing. All we have to do is to trust in that. All that abiding means is to surrender, to make our home within God, to wake up every morning and know that we can do nothing apart from God. To abide is to give up our own life, to cease doing 'our own thing' and to stop living for ourselves.
To say that this year has been easy would be the biggest far off lie that has ever been told. This year has stretched me and broke me down in ways that I would have never fathomed twelve months ago. Heartache covers more then just a boy hurting my heart, it covers more hurts then I could count on my fingers, hurts of all kinds. Trials and droughts that I never saw coming indeed did stretch my faith and my trust in God. But the central theme of it all is that throughout everything, I learned what abiding looks like and feels like. Sometimes it is full of peace and clarity, at other times clarity is lacking as God prunes you when sometimes you have trouble seeing why that area needs pruning to begin with. God's knowledge always trumps our own though.
Abiding doesn't feel easy and it doesn't lack pain, it just has a bigger picture in mind the whole way through. The bigger picture is God's plan, the one we always get trapped inside is our own.
"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 bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit"
John 15:1-2
