The Pruning of the Lord

If it isn’t producing Life it needs to be pruned, and pruning hurts! God prunes us as we incline our hearts toward Him, but HOW does He prune us?

Hebrews 4:12  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

        God is the great Vinedresser and His Word is used to help prune us and shape us into His image.

His Word is sharp, cutting clean and deep when we incline our heart to it. It is a discerner of our thoughts and intentions, separating light from darkness, exposing things in us that need change. The Word challenges what we think and believe as it exposes us to God’s will for our lives.

The carnal man’s response is to run from the Vine Dresser and try to heal himself from the cutting…. Because pruning hurts! The New Man’s response is to run to the Father and hide under His wings. We can’t consummate our marriage to Christ while our “old man” is still alive.

 In Exodus 33:20 God said to Moses, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.”

        Our carnal, fallen nature (“old man”) cannot look into the face of God and live.

          Spending time with our Father and His Word is our Old Man’s face to face encounter with Him. It is the surest way for dead things to get pruned out of our life. 

          If we are constantly in His Word and don’t practice intimacy, we will try to DO the Word in our own strength instead of becoming the Word by His grace.

           Embracing intimacy will always lead to a healthy dose of the Word, and develop a Father consciousness. The more we see Him as a Father, the more we see ourselves as sons. When we have intimacy, coupled with the Word, our perspective changes about everything and everyone, including ourselves. Our identity is formed in intimacy. Without intimacy we will never bear the fruit of who He is.

          Our perspective of the Word will change as we pursue intimacy with God. We will find ourselves “reading” the Word less but digesting it more. The Word will become so alive it will be as if one phrase is speaking volumes and we will naturally, purposely slow down to thoroughly digest it, letting it cut us deep and clean, knowing that His embrace causes it to be less painful. The cutting is for our good, the pruning is needed for growth and health.

          Long-term exposure to only the Word without an intimate relationship will produce self-consciousness and self-righteousness. Exposure to only the Word cuts us and cuts us and cuts us, with no relief in sight. The cutting exposes darkness, weakness, and sin. Intimacy is one way God becomes strong in our weakness.

           Cutting off those things in our life that aren’t producing good fruit is HIS responsibility in this relationship, not ours. He is the Vinedresser, we are the vine. Vines NEVER prune themselves. He is the great potter and we are the clay. Clay NEVER shaped itself into anything, but that is exactly what we will gravitate to if we have only God’s Word in our life with little or no intimacy.

           Knowledge of the Father without intimacy will puff us up and make us think we know what to do and try to please Him with our own human efforts to “do better.” Without intimacy we become legalistic, frustrated, and sin conscious.

Sin consciousness is the fruit of being exposed to the Word of God and not pursuing intimacy with God. Sin consciousness is easy to identify. If we are constantly seeing sin in others and judging them, thinking about what they need to change, what they should do, and how they should behave, this indicates knowledge of God’s Word but ignorance of who we are. We must not try to do what we learn without learning who He is. Our identity is formed in intimacy. Without intimacy we will gravitate toward Old Testament law and never fully understand or embrace New Testament grace.

We are in the last days and we we all need to aspire to become everything Jesus paid for. We must embrace the pruning and the correction of the Lord in this season.

Thank you for visiting truthpressure.com. I hope this has been a blessing to you.

JC

What you may not know about God’s Mercy

          While watching a discussion on social media with A troubled young woman reaching out for help, she asked this question.  

“If God is so good, why did he kill all those people in the flood and send them to hell?”

          That is a legitimate question… If they are in fact, in hell. But they are not. They are in Heaven with the Master!       

Romans 5:13  

for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 

Romans 4:15

For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

          Sin is not counted where there is no law because without the law there can be no transgression. God did not destroy these people out of anger, He did it because of His great Love and mercy!

          They were already completely devoid of spiritual life and since there was no law to show them their condition and point to their need for God, they would have only gotten worse and reproduced more people with the same horrible condition. In God’s great wisdom and mercy, He pushed the reset button and destroyed them all except those on the Ark.

          So, where are they now? Still in hell? Heaven? Let’s look at the scripture.

1 Peter 3:18-20

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 

          One of the amazing things Jesus did in the three days between His death and resurrection is go to hell, snatch the keys of death, hell, and the grave, and preach to those who were in prison there. Although this verse only mentions those in Noah’s flood, He preached to ALL those who died without the Law.

Let’s take a closer look at Romans 5:14

Romans 5:14

death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

          How was Adam’s sin different from all those who came after? Because Adam was not born with a sin nature. He had a choice. Everybody else, including you and I, are born with a fallen, sin nature that was no fault of our own.

          God knows that it is not our fault that we act the way we do. He knows it wasn’t our choice to be born into sin. That is why He sent Jesus to buy back mankind and give us a choice that would allow us to live under His power and authority while still on earth, tethered to our fallen nature. It is an amazing mystery!

          The first Adam made a wrong choice that effected, and infected all of mankind. The last Adam, Jesus, never said yes to sin and took back death’s reign over mankind. Death is no longer in control… Unless we choose it.

          God is just. His judgements are righteous judgements. Don’t question God’s love and mercy because you misunderstand the mystery.

          ALL those who died without the Law are now in heaven.

Thank you for visiting truthpressure.com. I hope this has been a blessing to you.

JC