the vine
“You are like the vine in the calm. The weather is sunny and the air is warm and there is little to push you firmly onto My trunk. You know that through wrapping yourself around Me you will be stronger, but there is also no present danger or imminent reason to grasp onto Me for life itself.”
and the gardener
“I send breezes your way, I nudge you toward the tree, and I send little showers and little winds to help you come closer to Me. If your desire is truly to be wrapped around Me fully, having no other motivation or desire in your life except “I’d rather have Jesus than ANYTHING‚” then you would be a wise vine to take each breeze and let it push you onto the trunk.”
“I am a faithful Gardener, and I know what you each need to bear fruit. That’s why I coax and water, trim and prune, and then sometimes I have to roughly chop and cut and expose you to the winds and the rain. If your desire is to bear the fruit that I would have you bear, that of love and yieldedness and the fruits of the Spirit, then I will‚ in My time, bring it forth in your life.”
john 15:1,2
“If you can bear this kind of fruit through the gentle breezes and the soft waterings, then so much the better. Yet I know that most of My plants will at some point in their lives need to feel My breakings removing their supports and their coverings, exposing them fully to the fury of the elements. I know that‚ although it is not joyous for the present, eventually the peaceable fruit of clinging tightly to the tree will minister to them so much happiness and usefulness that they will never want to leave.”
“Yet even after those times‚ even a chastened and pruned vine will eventually begin to grow away from Me if the utmost care is not taken. Thus I begin the cycle again, the gentle breeze, the soft rain, and eventually another time of hard pruning and a time of storms. This is the cycle through which I wind your life around Mine, always bringing My faithful brides back to their First Love.”
Jesus is enough
“This is why you shouldn’t look for a time when the pain of battles and breakings will end, but rather you should embrace them.–From the deepest‚ darkest lows of your life when everything is stripped away from you‚ to the smaller breakings of continually saying yes to Me, to even the small ouch your pride receives when you go out of your way to raise your hands in praise to Me or give someone a hug or a word of appreciation.
“To reach that point of purity of love for Me, you must willingly surrender those things that I would have required of you later. But this is so hard for My children to do; there is so much fear and doubt and reservation. But it is the only path to truly being free to serve Me without hesitation‚ without thought of self‚ and it is where true power in My Spirit lies.”
“You must taste and see that I am good. You must surrender that which is dearest to you again and again, turning not to other crutches and desires‚ but only to Me, and let Me prove to you that with each thing you give up, I am enough to see you through. As you do this again and again–some through your own offerings, some through what I require of you–slowly you will come to that place of having so little of yourself and so much of Me instead.”
