Pruning {Creation Revealing the Glory of God}

I'm so glad you are here! Currently I am doing a series talking about some pretty amazing stuff God created and pointing to what it shows us about Him. I hope you like it! I'm kinda thinkin you will. ;)

We planted a peach tree about a month ago and I just love seeing the tiny little peaches already growing. I had no idea there would be fruit the first year we planted it!

I feel like that sometimes with girls I disciple and my kids. I remember a girl who gave her life to Christ and that same day she went back to her dorm room and shared the gospel with her roommate and they put their trust in Christ too! 

Or like Asher (4) and Uriah (3) asking the pizza delivery guy if he knew Jesus and handed him a tract. The pizza guy said he didn't want it and Asher got very serious and said, "But your in DANGER!" The delivery reconsidered his answer and took it. A few minutes later students came into our house saying they saw the pizza guy sitting in his car reading the tract. 

Sometimes I am shocked by how quickly God can start bearing fruit through someone.

But at the same time I am shocked at His pruning of fruit in our lives. Why in the world would He want to pinch off perfectly good fruit!? Why would He not want a certain place or position for us that seems to be opportunity for more fruit for His glory? Why would He say No to something so good?

Well, since we just planted our first peach tree I had to learn how to take care of it. And what did I learn but that you have to pinch off some of the perfectly good growing fruit because if you don't there will be too much fruit and it will break the branches, rendering the fruit a ton less fruitful than if you just snipped a few peaches. You have to think big picture/long term with peach trees.

"With any fruit-bearing tree, early shaping leads to a maximum bounty... Peach trees generally bear fruit on year-old limbs, so pruning you do now will result in fruit next year. In a commercial setting, old trees are often replaced with young ones to produce more fruit; but as with most things, old does not mean unproductive. Your older peach tree will continue to produce fruit as long as you prune for new growth." 1 

I've heard the older you get the more specialized you get. You better know and understand you're unique contribution. In order to specialize, you have to say no to other really great things. It gives opportunity for each of the body of Christ to thrive since you're not trying to do everything but saying no to the things others can do so you can say yes to what God has built you to do.

Peach trees show us how wise the Lord is. First of all how He can even bear eternal fruit from an imperfect source. But also how He knows exactly how to direct our lives to make us the most effective to have maximum results for His glory. He knows the end from the beginning and is not waiting just to smash us when we finally get an opportunity to do something we love. He is patient seeing the effectiveness of pinching the good fruit to save us from brokenness and bring about the best fruit.

"Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." Francis Chan

Which ones have you missed?

Sound; From Stars to Snowflakes
Blueberries from Blossoms 
Star-Breathing God
Solar Eclipse
Telomerase & the Carrier Protein
Star-Nosed Mole  
Rejection  
Deep Sea Creatures 
Hard-Wired for God
Glow Worms
Okapi
Divine Proportion  

There's only two more days of the Creation Revealing the Glory of God series. Next week I am going to start a series on another thing I get super excited about. Something that I think has potential to be used by God to ignite the biggest revival this world has ever seen, social media. I am going to get very practical on how to use it to glorify God. I hope you'll subscribe so you don't miss a thing.