Sanctification

 

He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.

JOHN 15:2 (NLT)

This verse is a warning. If we profess faith in God, but don’t bear the fruit of the Spirit, we will be cut off from God. It’s not that we can lose our salvation, it’s that if we don’t bear fruit for God, we were never saved in the first place.

Even if we do bear fruit for God, there’s a warning in this verse for us. It’s not going to be all sunshine for us. As a gardener prunes plants, so God will prune us spiritually so that we might bear even more fruit for Him.

I can’t imagine being pruned is a particularly pleasant experience for a plant- to have parts of it cut away. Yet it is for the plants good. Similarly, for God to cut away unnecessary or bad things in our lives is an uncomfortable experience.

A more spiritual word for ‘pruning’ is ‘sanctification’. It’s not just by tough circumstances that God sanctifies us. He also sanctifies us as we apply His Word to our hearts.

‘Dear Lord, please sanctify us in Your truth. Please cut away all that is unnecessary or unhelpful in our lives. For the honour of Your name we pray, amen’.

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