Growth and Training

Brad Snider

When I was growing up, my family lived in a house that had both a front yard and a back yard. As my sister and I grew up, taking care of the yards became a full family effort. I would mow the lawns during summer, my dad would prune the trees and bushes in the spring, my sister looked after the vegetable garden in the back, and my mom planted and cared for the seasonal flower beds. Through our team effort, we kept our home looking good! Sometimes, people would walk by on the street and comment about how beautiful the yard was and would ask my mom what she did to make it so beautiful. I’m not exactly sure how my mom responded to those comments, but I guarantee you there were a few things she never said. “Oh thanks, we just let everything grow wild and this is what it ended up looking like!” probably never came out of her mouth.

I know this because it took many hours of work to make the yard look like that. The grass, the trees, and the gardens looked the way it did not because it was left on its own to grow as it wished; it looked beautiful because as it was growing it was being pruned, trimmed, planted, fed, watered, and weeded. It was being trained to look that way.

A little while ago I was reading Jesus’ words in the beginning of John 15, and I thought about the work we used to do in our yard. In John 15:1-8, Jesus is giving the illustration of a vine. In His illustration, he describes Himself as the vine, His disciples as the branches, and God as the One who takes care of the vine. Jesus states some incredible principles with this illustration. He states that as branches, His disciples can do nothing apart from Him supplying them the means to do so, that He is the origin of their life and growth, and that God gives special support and attention to the branches that are struggling. But there were two other statements that stood out to me as I read the passage. At the end of verse 2 Jesus says: “...every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” And then verse 8 says: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.”

Often as Christians, we rate the value of a particular time or experience by how much we have grown from it. We may say things like: “Last year was difficult for me, but I really grew during that time.” While this may be true and very valuable to us, what Jesus is teaching in this passage is that in God’s view growth, if left alone, is useless and at times even destructive. God’s presence and activity in our lives is not revealed through how much we may grow during a particular time, but in how that growth is trained and disciplined by God Himself. The writer of Hebrews (12:7-8) expresses this thought when he says: “It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline…then you are illegitimate children, and not sons.” What God is expecting in our lives is the fruit that comes from His process of enabling us to live and grow, and then training that growth towards His ultimate purpose for His Church, which is His glory. Growth by itself is not good enough.

When we think of God “pruning” us, often we think of the sin in our lives that needs to be removed. While this is true, I thought back again to my dad trimming the trees in the yard. He didn’t simply walk around looking for all the damaged, dead or sick branches on the trees. When he worked, he removed all the branches that had no place in his ultimate plan for the tree, even if they were healthy and strong. This is because the process of pruning is not about removing what is unhealthy, but rather it is about removing any part that has no place in the final design. And it happens over time: year by year, season by season.

This principle is true in our lives as well. It may be that God has removed something in your life where you are left saying to God “why would you do that? What was wrong with that?” That has happened to me, and it can be very confusing. But God sees much more than the branch that has just been removed. At that moment, He sees everything that will grow up into its place, the larger supply of fruit that will be the result of His activity in your life, and how He is going to look very good as a result. I happen to think He gets excited about that. Will you let Him have your growth to do with as He pleases? Will you trust His creative hand? Will you in faith share His excitement about His work in your life? That faith is woven into His design for you, and I happen to think He gets excited about that too.