EFFECTIVE PRUNING
Ephesians 4:22-24
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Well, the first snowfall of the year has hit. Everything is covered with a layer of white. The old song keeps playing through my head, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". This week Christmas tree lots will pop up on the side of the roads and in parking lots all over the country.
I've got a friend that raises Christmas trees on his tree farm. He raises balsam fir, cedar, scotch pine and other species for Christmas trees, wreaths, garland and other products. I was amazed to learn that there are almost 30,000,000 (30 million) Christmas trees sold every year as well as millions of wreaths (Wisconsin alone produces over 600,000 wreaths each year) and other products made from evergreen boughs. Bill's operation alone harvests nearly 100 tons of evergreen boughs every year. Think about that... 100 TONS of evergreen boughs, that's about 20 semi trailers full of boughs, all harvested in 3 weeks, each year.
Most Christmas tree farms plant trees and then harvest them after 10 years or so. Bill doesn't farm the trees the way most others do, by planting then harvesting his trees. Instead he prunes and works naturally growing trees to produce what he needs. In the middle of big patches of balsam he removes the trees that are not producing what he needs to become good Christmas trees. This allows the other trees to be pruned and shaped into what will become a beautiful end product.
The same is true of our lives. If we don't remove all of the things that drain us, or choke us out, we can never allow the new growth to produce what we need. Eventually, like the trees, all of our old growth becomes useless and drags us down.
We need to get rid of our old way of living, our sinful patterns that keeps us from growing and producing. In John 15:2 Jesus says this, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:2)
We must allow our God to remove the things from our lives do not produce the good things. If we allow the old growth (from our sinful past) to continue to grow, eventually it will overtake the good growth and choke it out. If we want the beautiful life that God intended for us, we must continue to get rid of anything that may hinder a godly life.
2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new".
Continue to be on the lookout for old growth that grows up in our lives that might overtake the good things of God. We must continually cut back or prune the things that keep us all we can be as a growing and effective Christian.
We must continually practice "EFFECTIVE PRUNING"
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