If you are bearing fruit, the Father will prune you. How much the pruning hurts depends on how much you’ve placed your identity in the fruit you just bore. In the natural, pruning is done at the place of connection. The Father is always pruning us back to that place of connection.
One visual of pride and humility can be seen in the pruning parable. Humility would be keeping yourself back in the place of connection with Christ.
Pride is when we start to step out into the fruit saying “this fruit looks good! Look at me! This fruit IS me!” But you are not a human doing, you are a human being. You ABIDE - you BE in Christ and you do produce fruit. But if you get out here and say “this is my human DOING” when the Father says “I am going to reduce you to your place of strength, your connection with Me.” Now you will feel like you are squirming on the ground saying “this really hurt!” The only reason it hurt is because your identity had gotten out there in what got cut off!
Humility is a big deal as it relates to the gospel of grace. Who does God give grace to? The humble!
From a pastoral perspective, if I could just let you into my thinking as I meet with people, humility is the issue. Now, this is a bit circular because actually the grace message will cause you to receive the love of the Father, which will drive out pride - which will position you in humility. The answer for the humility issue isn’t for me to say “be humble. Be humble! Be humble! Are you humble yet?!?” That approach doesn’t work. The grace message - who you are in Christ, His love for you - will drive pride out.
"What is grace?"
- Grace is God‘s performance on our behalf whereas the law / works is our performance on God’s behalf.
- Grace is RECEIVE not ACHIEVE.
- Grace is my past, present, and future sins completely forgiven ONCE and for all.
- Perfect right standing with God regardless of how I feel about it.
Why Grace? It changes the fruit of our lives. It is THE transformational agent in our lives.
As powerful as this is - that grace is Gods’ transformational element in your life - next time we are going to see how the Father loves the gospel of grace for another reason even more than it transforming your fruit … and that’s that it transforms your connection with Him!