Nitty-Gritty

There’s a visual analogy used by life coaches or motivational speakers to help people better understand how to keep their priorities in check. The speaker will have a big, empty glass jar representing someone’s life. Into the jar go a couple large rocks, representing the top priorities in a person’s life such as family, spouse, or faith. Then to make room for the next priorities such as exercise or reading smaller stones are used. Eventually even smaller pebbles and sand are used to fill up the jar. The point: our lives are a certain size and can only fit a certain number of priorities at any given time. Too much sand? Well, then one can’t fit the bigger priorities (rocks) into his or her life. Conclusion: choose your priorities wisely.

While praying earlier this week God reminded me of this analogy, but I knew He was bringing this to mind not because I have an issue with my priorities, but more as a representation of something else. Instead of rocks, stones, pebbles and sand, God wanted me to focus on my sin, rebellion, Lordship and pruning in my life. Sin is like the rocks. Big. Easy to recognize. And luckily, easy to remove. I mean, who wants to hold onto something they know is bad!?! Next is rebellion. Like the stones, rebellion is pretty easy to notice and somewhat easy to get rid of. But it was the sand God really wanted me to focus on. When we get down to that small, nitty-gritty level God is dealing with the areas in which He wants to prune. Just like the sand, those areas of my life at least are countless. There are so many parts of my character, my thought patterns, my attitude that God wants to prune. And like the sand those areas are more difficult to identify and harder to remove. Conclusion: pruning sucks.

I was reading a sermon from a church in Michigan and Rev. Adrian Eising put it this way, “Usually pruning is painful. We must bear in mind, though, that even if it’s painful, it’s worth it. Too many Christians are more eager for an easy life than for fruit. They would rather not be pruned. If they only produce a few spindly fruit, “Well, hey, that’s life. As long as I get to heaven, I’m fine.” That’s too bad. They are missing out on real joy.”

I much prefer the word perfecting to pruning. It sounds a little less painful I suppose, but ultimately that is what God is doing – He is perfecting me (us) for His purposes and glory. God takes those parts of my life that aren’t of Him and quickly gets rid of the sin, rebellion, or whatever. But when it comes to the parts of me that are almost at the mark He keeps working to get them even better. Conclusion: pruning is necessary even if it sucks.

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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 15:2 (NIV)