Day 5 – Fruitfulness In The Waiting

“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)

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” (Galatians 5:22-23, NLT)

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10, NLT)

There’s an underrated skill I’m convinced should be an Olympic sport. If it were, I wouldn’t even make it on the medal stand. The skill: trimming a squirmy baby’s fingernails. It’s a bit easier now that he’s a toddler, but when my firstborn was a baby, he couldn’t stand having his fingernails cut. Sitting still for ten minutes so mama could complete this dreaded but necessary task? Hard pass.

The problem is, I can’t simply let the task of trimming fingernails slide, no matter how much my babies don’t like it. If I do, they’ll end up scratching themselves. So as they try to squirm away and sometimes cry while I cut their nails, I tell them, “I know you don’t like this, baby, but Mama has to do it, or else you’ll hurt yourself.”

Isn’t this God’s heart when He’s pruning us? We don’t like it because it’s uncomfortable—even painful—and because we feel like it slows us down and keeps us from doing the things we want to do. Yet God knows that unless He cuts certain things away, we won’t be able to grow, we’ll be limited in the good works we can do, and the very things that should have been trimmed away will end up hurting us.

What is pruning? To prune is to cut away the dead or overgrown parts of a plant to increase its fruitfulness and growth. God prunes because of His love for us and His desire to see us bear fruit. We don’t always know why He allows us to go through long seasons of waiting or other situations that seem to strip us bare. But we do have the promise that He will always be with us in the things we walk through and that He will always work good from them. He will use our waiting seasons to produce in us the fruit of greater growth into the likeness of Christ and maturity of faith.

Each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made, with a purpose: to bear fruit for God’s glory and our good. With God’s Spirit in us, we have the ability to produce the fruit talked about in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We were created to walk in the good works God prepared for each of us to do for His Kingdom. In pruning us, God cuts things out of our lives—maybe certain relationships, bad habits, old mindsets, or our attachment to the plans and timelines we had in mind for how our lives were supposed to go. But as painful as this process is, it’s the only way to grow.