Growth requires pain. A truth we can all perhaps accept even if we do not want to experience that pain is that growth requires it. In order to run a marathon I must first put in many hard hours and grueling runs in order to train and strengthen my body; the pain therefore is a requirement for the final goal and accomplishment. Various careers require college degrees or even advanced degrees, those degrees taking many hard earned hours of study and sacrifice that is certainly not described as easy. Even as humans in our younger years we experience growing pains as our physical bodies experience physical pain while our bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels and nervous system all grow and stretch to accommodate the expansion of our earthly vessels. So, while we may not choose pain, we can perhaps accept that pain is a requirement for growth. While these examples demonstrate more physical demands to physical accomplishments, the truth is that our very souls experience this same process of refinement during which unpleasant and often painful experiences serve the purposes of spiritual growth…if we will allow them to.

In the gospel of John, chapter 15, Jesus offers up a beautiful analogy of this growth process. “I am the true vine, and many Father is the vinedresser.” (vs 1). Jesus begins by offering us the roles played by both he and the Father. God the Father plays the role of vinedresser, a master gardener as it were. His role is to care for, provide for, and ensure the health of and productivity of the vine. Jesus himself plays the role of vine in this analogy, the very life which flows through to the branches themselves. “I am the vine, you are the branches;” (vs 5) here Jesus demonstrates our role, we are the branches. Within this image we have the vine itself as Christ, that which we are attached to and that which provides life, while we maintain the role of branch, that which grows out of the life of the vine. God himself tends to the vine ensuring it’s growth. But notice for a moment what Christ says about the process through which growth occurs. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (vs 2) Christ explains that branches which are, for all intents and purposes, dead are cut off and removed. A branch on the vine that does not bear fruit is not active, it is not alive, it is not serving its one intended purpose, and therefore to preserve the purpose and life of the vine, it must be removed and discarded. But notice what Christ says after in the latter half of verse 2, that every branch which does bear fruit is pruned. Pruning, in this case, is in fact cutting. So let’s recap, branches with not fruit are cut off, and branches which bear fruit are cut.

What are we to make of this? Our God is surely good, righteous, consistent, steadfast in His love and mercy for us, slow to anger and quick to forgive, a bringer of salvation and above all else, Holy and Sovereign. To conclude that God would cut away good branches through pruning out of anything other than His love and mercy is foolish. God’s intent here is in fact growth. Our God knows and understands better than we that pruning allows for more growth, for more fruit to be born. While this sounds very positive and is in fact positive it also important that we recognize that pruning is still cutting. It is not a destructive cutting, however, but instead a life giving cutting. One which removes that which might otherwise kill the branch, in order to not just preserve it, but allow it to grow even bigger and greater and more productive then had existed previously. Growth, it would seem, requires pain. The concept, I should think, we can accept, however the application is where we often get stuck.

I believe that often times the cutting of branches in our lives is evidenced through suffering and pain. It is the losses we experience that are often the evidences of God’s pruning in our lives, be it the loss of a loved one, a personal freedom, a sacred possession, an identity, a job or career, a relationship, or any other thing to which we hold dear. You see beloved reader, our hearts were made for one singular purpose and that is the worship of the one true God. But along the way through time and history, sin has corrupted our hearts to pursue and worship so many other things. God in his infinite wisdom and goodness will often allow for the suffering, pain and losses in our lives to become the very means by which he prunes us. The beauty here, while often difficult to see in the moment of suffering, is that this is an act of love from a Holy God, not an act of punishment. It is not punitive that God would cut away and prune us, but an opportunity to grow and to experience a life giving relationship with the Lord in a manner we might not have otherwise.

There is one final command in this analogy of John 15 that we cannot close out without first acknowledging. “Abide in me, and I in you.” Approximately seven times in nine verses Christ gives us the command to “abide” in him, which is, to remain, to stay. You see, if growth is to occur in this process we must remain attached to, connected to, and abiding in, the vine of Christ. We cannot grow or experience goodness in this process if we disconnect or seek to grow on our own, that way only leads to death. So, beloved reader, I leave you with this encouragement, abide in Christ. Remain in Him, and look for the goodness of God as he cuts away the parts of our lives which lead to death, in order to allow for new growth. May we find peace in the knowledge that God’s goodness sees past our suffering and loss into the beauty of growth that he allows.