A Painful Pruning That Produced an Abundant Harvest
Over this last year, God has been doing some major pruning in my life. The deep cuts inflicted on my heart by the Master seemed unwarranted and untimely. After pouring two years of hard work into my website with my recording label, I was at the threshold of launching it. Then Bam! My life changed in a moment and the actions of others became God’s tool to prune me to nothing.
However, the circumstances of my life did not come as a surprise to Him. His timing was perfect and so was His plan for me. Would I trust Him, or would I allow hurt, pain and betrayal to dictate my course? If I’m being honest, nothing in me wanted to or even knew how to trust Him in this moment. It was much easier to play the victim of my circumstances, so I didn’t have to embrace the lessons they were trying to teach me. It was also easier to allow the sins of others to keep me from seeing my own sin.
Why was God pruning me to nothing when those around me seemed to be getting away with everything? Why was God having me look in the mirror when others were allowed to blame everything and everyone else for their actions? Why was God making me own up to my mistakes while others were allowed to entertain countless justifications for their mistakes?
The privilege of being a child of God doesn’t always look and feel like a privilege. Change, transformation, and yes, pruning is the way one becomes like Christ. Phil 2:6 -7 says, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself (became nothing), taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. ” Jesus didn’t rally for His rights or glory in His godly inheritance. He willingly allows himself to be pruned to nothing for the sake of humanity. He had no earthly prominence, position, or possessions to speak of. He didn’t even have a place to rest His head. The world esteemed Him not. He had no kingship like David or wealth like Solomon. He was the bastard child of a carpenter.
To identify with Him is to identity with being nothing. However, most of us, as believer don’t like that identification. We want to be approved of, accepted by, and loved for who we are. We want to be seen as worthy, wise, and well deserving to be called children of God, like somehow, we have earned the right to be that. We also want to be blessed with everything this life/world has to offer. To lay anything down for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord is foreign to the Christian experience here in America. And yes, when adversity comes to prune us, we resist it, complain about it, or demand that God explain Himself.
This time of deep pruning has shown me the value of becoming “nothing”. There is nothing I can or will ever do to deserve God’s love for me and there is nothing I can do to keep Him from loving me. There is no earthly status that comes with being His either. He exalts “nothing” and “nothing” exalts Him. “Nothing” never competes for glory, rallies for its rights, or thinks about what it deserves. But eagerly embraces its bondservant status and the truth that “apart from God” it can do nothing. Nothing considers “all gain to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord”. Nothing has no problem with the fellowship of Christ sufferings but rather understands the privilege of being counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ as Christ suffered for the sake of us.
Please don’t hear this as a “doormat” theology that breeds false humility. However, if we are to be crucified with Christ we have to become nothing as He was nothing. Whatever status the world tried to attribute to Him, He did not embrace it but pointed them right back to the real source….His Father. Whatever claim to fame the world attempted to ascribe to Him, He refused it and gave the glory to God instead. He didn’t look to man for love, acceptance or approval but sought only to please His Father.
The life of “nothing” cost Him everything! He gladly did it for you and for me. But not so we could become children of privilege that glory in what we do for Him, or gloat about how blessed we are like it’s something we deserve because of how good we are. Don’t get me wrong, He does lavish His blessings upon us but that should say to us, more about Him then it does about us.
I am learning how to embrace my wretchedness in view of His holiness, and to not underestimate or overestimate my flesh but see that any significance in me is God and it’s for His glory alone, not mine. As a result, the insecurities within me are silenced and their hold over me lessens. I can finally shed the “earn it and deserve it” mentality when stuff happens to me. I’m discovering my need for Him in a whole new way and there is great joy in being pruned to nothing so He can do more than I could ever ask or think by His power at work in me!