The passage of the True Vine in John 15 has been preached, taught, written about and studied many time. One simple application I have made comes from my own garden. I have a small grape arbor. Each fall I cut back the vine – I prune my grapes. It was difficult for me to do that the first couple of years as I had just started to get my grape vine going. However, the reason I cut back the vine is because no matter how extensive my grape vine grew – I was not trying to grow a large vine with pretty leaves. I was trying to grow grapes. It I wanted shade I would have planted a tree. I wanted the grapes. I want grapes for canning. I want to eat the grapes. I cannot use beautiful grape leaves.
In the Christian life we struggle when trials come. We don’t like the pruning. We understand getting sin out of our lives, but we really struggle when God prunes seemingly good things from our lives. Why did our parent get dementia? Why did we lose that job or not get that promotion? Why did my child fall ill? We struggle with things that enter our lives that seem like they conflict with our happiness.
The bottom line is – we are not here to grow nice leaves. As Christians our purpose is not to look nice and ‘pretty’ in our Christian life. God’s goal for us is to be fruitful and then to produce more fruit. We want to be a nice looking ‘plant’ in God’s garden. God wants us to be productive and give forth that which He designed us for.
We are not here to grow nice leaves – we are here to produce fruit!
– Pastor Wes Gunther
