WE ARE JUST A BUNCH OF PRUNES

Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. — Micah. 7:8

B.H. Clendennen says, “There is always more in resurrection than there is in birth.” This being true can mean only one thing: Even that which God births in you is predestined to go through the pains of death before it can ever really live. Abraham had to learn this before Isaac could ever come forth. Human strength can bring forth an Ishmael on demand; they are a dime a dozen. But it is only after circumcision can the Isaac come forth. Circumcision was an outward sign of an inner impotence: It represented mans utter inability to produce the life that God commands. Only God can raise the dead!

Jesus said in John 15:2, “Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit.” Sometimes this is most painful. We look and see nothing wrong with this healthy branch of ours and suddenly here comes the Holy Ghost lopping shears and it is gone. As in the natural, after pruning our promise often looks dead: One thing is for sure, it sure looks naked! One way you can know you are being pruned is this sense of embarrassment you feel when others look at you on your cross and say, “I thought he said God had told him to have a gospel orchard: Some orchard!!

If you have been pruned back to where it looks like you have been taken all the way back to zero, I have good news for you. God is at work; you have been taken all the way back to nothing because God does his best work with nobodies. Your branches are going to “load up” this year and we will all know that this had nothing to do with you—it is the Lord’s doing. There is always more in resurrection than there is in birth. Your times are in his hand.

This daily death and resurrection is the Christian walk: “And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12 23-24). Jesus plainly said that unless we take up our cross and die daily we could never live, yet he said that he came that we might have life. Here is what you must see: The root, which is Christ, is never pruned. He prunes away the death of our branches in order that we depend totally upon the strength of the divine life that flows unceasingly from the root. Above all things he wants us to live, but always on this one condition: That we learn to live the life of another,that Jesus would truly live in us. This is truly what it means to walk in the Spirit; to have our natural strength "cut off" everyday and replaced with his super natural power. I guess you could say we are just a bunch of prunes!