Fruitful Vineyard, Fertile Hill Pt. 3 - Cleaning and Pruning

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Welcome to the final church podcast. This is all if we can help you in any way. Here's a short sermon from the last week. Again, thanks for joining us. Good morning. So we've been doing our best over the last few weeks to very stay very present as a church community. We're fortunate to not have any families within our community lose homes to the Marshall Fire. So we've been making connections with other pastors, churches, organizations that have been doing some good work and trying to do our part to be a part. So I just want to offer a little update because I know many of you are still asking for ways to participate, to be a part, to be a blessing. So, first of all, uh this last week we dropped off on behalf of Vine Life two huge gift baskets full of snacks and goodies for the staff at A Vista Hospital, along with 55 thank you cards, all filled with words of encouragement and scriptures that you guys wrote last week. So good job. I talked to the chaplain, he distributed all those cards, gift baskets. He said that the staff was uh was really blown away and um they were deeply moved by the care and the concern. He said the word he uses, they were just delighted to be welcomed back with those kinds of gifts. Um, at the chaplain's request, Fine Life also purchased all those supplies for a tea cart so that the chaplains can launch something called Tea for the Soul. Doesn't that sound awesome? I could use some tea for the soul. Um and tea for the soul is uh you know a new way they're gonna try to connect with both staff and patients to be able to visit, allow them to visit with the chaplains, have a cup of tea, and while having spiritual conversations. So we purchase all of the supplies for this brand new tea card out of this hospital. So go have a cup of tea. Next time you're at the hospital, hopefully for good reasons. Uh have a cup of tea with the chaplain, all right? Okay. Um, and then along with that on Tuesday afternoon, I was able to attend the prayer service to reopen the hospital. Um, probably about 60 staff, doctors, nurses were present. Different local pastors prayed to bless the reopening of the hospital. Many of you guys know that the staff, the nurses, the doctors, they refused to leave the hospital, even though the fire was burning all the way to the edge of the parking lot. They refused to leave the hospital until the last patient was evacuated. 13 of their staff lost homes in the fire. And they said, We're staying until the last patient is gone. And so we just blessed that as the community pastors came in. I'm telling you, it was powerful. We were just praying in the name of Jesus. We welcomed the Holy Spirit into the hospital. We said, This is your place. Just continue your healing work here. Bless the staff, bless the doctors and nurses, the work of their hands, that life can continue to exist there. It was awesome. So they did ask for continued prayers as they're getting their bearings moving into this next season. So continue to pray for those guys. Um, secondly, um, one new development within the Vine Life community. Several of you guys have kind of offered to help with different things. Um, uh I am happy to let you know that Heather Van Pelt, which many of you know, she's not able to be here this morning because I don't believe she's feeling well, but probably watching online. Hey Heather. Uh everybody say, hey Heather! Um she is she's gonna be coordinating a lot of efforts on behalf of Vine Life moving forward about connecting opportunities. This is gonna be a long road, and we do feel like we're called to stay present with this more than the three-week window when everybody remembers to be generous, right? But then moving on, uh we're gonna have a lot of opportunities moving forward. So she's gonna start coordinating opportunities. If you have, if you're doing things that you want the church to know about, you'll want to talk to Heather. We'll get you her info uh very soon. Um but one of the big needs that she discovered this week that we're just gonna present to you today, um, uh, is coming through an organization called Samaritan's Purse, which is a Christian organization, national. They do disaster relief. Um, they they need to identify hundreds of volunteers to help families sift through the rubble of their homes. Many of the families still have not done that yet. Um, likely this opportunity will be only available just for the next couple weeks because the town of superior developers, they're gonna start clearing the land and start kind of um scraping the land and preparing for the redevelopment process. So the window of time is not large. And so over the next couple weeks, um, they're welcoming volunteers who would be able to come for uh you know from about 12 to 4 or so, maybe four or five hours in a single day, and they lead this effort. Um, uh they organize the entire thing, they provide all the safety supplies and they tell you exactly whose home to go to. They connect you in a team with a family. Um, and you can help them with sift through the rubble, um, help them find some uh some items that might still be remaining, and then even uh be able to connect with the family and pray for them. My friend Pastor Matt Carlson from Boulder Valley Christian Church, who were deeply affected, he told me that earlier this week he volunteered with Samaritan's Purse. They're actually stationed at a Boulder Valley Christian Church right now, so that's where they're located. And uh he said he volunteered for about four hours. He said, in that four hours, not only were they able to help a family recover several precious items from the site of their home, um, but the family allowed them to pray with them. This family accepted Jesus for the first time. And uh right in front of the remains of their home, if you can imagine that. So I'm telling you, if you if you want a way, some of you have donated, if you want a way to be tangible, get your hands literally doing something, this is it. You have just a couple weeks to do this. Um the easiest thing way to remember uh to connect you with the info, if you go to vinel.com slash connect, we have a link that says volunteer with Samaritan's Purse. Otherwise, just Google Samaritan's Purse and you can you can find the the um the organization, the way they're facilitating it for Boulder. Um and um and and we have some other opportunities as well. We're trying to just parse it one at a time uh for us, but this is a great one, especially if you have kids, uh older kids, um, and you want to do something together to really connect in with the scene. So sound good? Okay. Um secondly, before we jump into the message, I do want to acknowledge this morning, uh last Sunday, we discovered that our beloved uh Cheryl Urusso went to be with Jesus after a fight with uh colon cancer. And uh it it happened faster than we thought. We knew that this was um something that she she was in the process of, but it it really did catch us by surprise. And um this one uh it cuts deep. And it it it it has been a week of grieving um for those who had the privilege of walking with Cheryl. Um if you don't know Cheryl, uh it's it's uh it's kind of it was kind of hard hard to miss her on a Sunday morning. She's pretty much has been a part of the staple vine life experience for decades. Um uh Cheryl was always somewhere in the room dancing before the Lord in worship, uh modeling for what for us what worship that worship is not just a mental or heartfelt practice, it's bodily. With our whole being, we worship Jesus. There's nobody that better represented that than Cheryl Yarusso. And many of you know that Cheryl was she was a pillar in this house, having led the sacred dance ministry for many years. She was a worshiper and intercessor and still is before the throne of heaven. Her last Sunday shear was uh at the beginning of December, and we were able to show her this photo taken the week before. And uh, and I believe this smile, I mean, I can't, I showed her this photo. I said, Cheryl, did you see this photo we got of you? This is you! You ever like take a photo and you realize this is you, this is Cheryl right here, dancing in front of a cross lit with lights? You kidding me? Smile on her face, I just believe she is still smiling like that right now, right this very moment. And so, yeah. So she's where she wants to be. She was she's where she's always wanted to be in the presence of Jesus right now. So um her memorial service, her family's um organizing that, likely that won't be till June, because of family that is wanting to come in town later uh this year. So we may have some other special moments to honor her or recognize her. Um, but today, just as a community, for what she represented. Can we just take a moment of silence? Just hold her before the presence of God, just be with her as she's enjoying Jesus right now. So let's just take a moment of silence together. It falls to the ground, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it can produce many seeds. And so together as a community, we uh we lift up Cheryl before you we thank you that you've received her, and uh we thank you that her life was not just a single seed, but will leave many seeds. We thank you for the seeds that have been planted here in each of us in this community and beyond, all across Boulder. And we pray for a harvest of worshipers and intercessors and dancers to come from her life to bring glory to your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. So um this morning we are going to continue this journey that we've been on the last three weeks. If this is your first time in January, welcome back, happy new year. Um, we know it's been a little jumbled up with all the COVID stuff, with we went online for a week. There's still been some traveling happening, all the things. Um what we've been doing the last few weeks is is um revisiting an old word. I want to start by reading a passage that we've been referring to the last couple weeks, and this is out of John 15. Um, and it's a passage we know is the vine and the branches. I'm gonna read it from the passion translation first. I'm gonna read a differing translation a little what in a little bit. We're gonna start here. You probably didn't bring your passion translation with you, so we'll have it on the screen. And uh, let's just jump in today. If you're watching online, so glad to have you with us. And um we're gonna open the word together today. John 15, verse 1. I am a true sprouting vine, and the farmer who tends the vines is my father. He cares for the branches connected to me by lifting and propping them up, propping up the fruitless branches, and pruning every fruitful branch to yield a greater harvest. The words I have spoken over you have already cleansed you. So you must remain in life union with me, for I remain in life union with you. For as a branch severed from the vine will not bear fruit, so your life will be fruitless unless you live your life intimately joined to mine. I am the sprouting vine, and you are my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you. But when you live separated from me, you are powerless. If a person is separated from me, he is discarded. Such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire to be burned. But if you live in life union with me, and if my words live powerful powerfully within you, then you can ask whatever you desire, and it will be done. When your lives bear abundant fruit, you demonstrate that you are my mature disciples who glorify my Father. Amen. So we've been the last three weeks in the series called Fruitful Vineyard on a Fertile Hill. What we're doing is we're circling back to this initial, there was this passage, this word out of Isaiah 5 that was key for our founding pastors as they were following the Lord, responding to his leading in the planting of this church back in the early 80s. So we're pushing into 40 years in the next few years. And uh, and and just in prayer, this this last year, we really believe that the Lord is reminding us that he meant what he said, and he's inviting us into this rediscovery of what it means to live in the vine. This is more than just vine life, this is about life in the vine. There's nothing like life in the vine. See, there's more in the ground than our eyes can see because the roots of his promises go really, really deep. So even when we're shaken, we don't have to be shaken because there's something that holds us that we may not even be able to discern with the naked eye. Those are the promises of God. And so there's an invitation for us here in this rediscovery. And uh we're gonna invite you into that. Um, the point of the vineyard in Scripture, the vineyard means a lot of things. You can listen to the last talks, but the vineyard has to do with fruitfulness. It's a fruitfulness that doesn't come from working hard, it doesn't come from growing in fame or influence, it's a fruitfulness that can't be bought, and there are no shortcuts, unfortunately. You can't do that, not in the Lord's vineyard. You can't win your way into fruitfulness, it can't be gifted to you by somebody else. It comes from one thing alone, and that thing we know is abiding in Jesus. Does this mean that if we do not abide in Jesus, nothing good can come from our life? No, I wouldn't go as far as to say that. Um there's plenty of people on this earth that haven't given a single second of their life to consciously abiding in Jesus. And yet there is a common grace because we're all made as loved humans, bearing the image and the likeness of our Father. So there's a common grace on all to be able to make a significant contribution. So this doesn't mean that only Christians are able to do good things, but we're not just talking about good things. It's possible to make a significant contribution to the world without ever having known Jesus. But this this passage about abiding in the vine just goes a step fuller, uh step further. The abiding life is not about what we can do without God, it's about what's possible with God and catching an imagination for a new kind of fruitfulness that's only possible through intimacy with Jesus. So there is much we can do on our own, but what Jesus is saying is listen, there is a kind of fruitfulness that I'm inviting you into that only comes through a daily, a constant, continual, abiding rootedness, flourishing, a flow of life as you remain connected in me. And when you do that, you will be blown away by what is possible in heaven and on earth. Amen? So the abiding life of Jesus is what we're talking about, and it's it's about establishing fruitfulness, specifically the grape, right? Um that's what we're talking about. And Jeanette referred to this a little bit last week. It's really interesting because the grape, as the working metaphor here, is is is really in biblical terms, the grape just represents this multifaceted, um, multi-use, versatile fruit all throughout scripture. Um it's really the overachieving fruit that wants to be all things to all people. Um right now, literally, there are 10,000 varietals of grapes across the world, um, from which we get grapeseed oil, grapeseed uh uh grape leaves, uh, uh, certainly wine, and um and then dried grapes, which we call raisins. And I put a little question mark on that by my notes because I it's hard for me to still consider that a good fruit. Is it a good fruit or a bad fruit? Um my personal opinion is raisins are how you ruin perfectly good cookies. There are a few things more disappointing in life than a raisin pretended to be pretending to be a chocolate chip. See, Solomon would disagree with me. In Song of Solomon 2.5, he he writes a love song. He says, Sustain me with raisins, for I am sick with love. Now, listen, I hate to disagree with the wisest person who's ever lived. But he's sick with more than love, all right? This is not gonna work. Solomon, we're thankful for your wisdom, but you missed it here. The word raisin should never make an appearance in a love song. I'm just gonna throw, I'm just gonna leave it right there, okay? But let's let's let's stick with grapes and wine. Let's stick with that, all right? We're in a better territory there. So um the the point though is this that all throughout scriptures we we read about these, the fruit of the vine. And uh and at the end of the day, as Jeanette talked about last week, the vine dresser is committed to our fruitfulness. He is committed to your fruitfulness in your life. He's committed to fruitfulness in your life. And even in this passage, John 15, we read about even a progression. We we read about some fruit that turns into more fruit and it ultimately ends with much fruit. There's a difference between some fruit, more fruit, and much fruit. And God is saying, I love the fruit that's in your life, but I'm gonna continue developing you and cultivating you because I have a vision for much fruit, for abundant fruit to come from your life. And that happens wherever you are planted. You don't have to wait to get somewhere else in life to experience fruit. That is the myth, that is the lie, that we are fed constantly, that things are not good enough where they're at to bear fruit. I cannot bear fruit at my job because it's not the job I want. I cannot bear fruit where I live because it's not where I want to live. I cannot bear fruit here or here or in this relationship or that relationship. And I'm telling you, Jesus, as he's inviting us to life in the vine, he's not inviting us into these possibilities. If I could just get somewhere else, then maybe this is possible. He's saying, listen, if you invite in me, you can be fruitful wherever I have planted you. So in so the question that we want to answer today for a little bit here is how does the vine dresser, the father who is the vine dresser, how does the vine dresser cultivate fruitfulness in us? How does he cultivate fruitfulness? So in a modern Western culture, we would say things like fertilizer, right? Miracle grow. How about that? A climate-controlled environment. You know, what we need for fruitfulness is stability and comfort, right? And we kind of chuckle at that, but pay attention to your prayers. Most of our prayers on each day are God, would you please make things easier today? Because if things go easier, I can be more fruitful for you. And it's almost entirely opposite when you really dig into the metaphor here of how the vine dresser tends to the vine. See, God is committed to your fruitfulness, not just your appearance or your life plan. That being said, we cannot talk about fruitfulness and without also talking about things like cleaning and pruning, and later on skinning and pressing and aging. If you don't want to talk about those things, then you really won't enjoy life in the vine. So metaphors in the Bible get kind of funny, a little tricky, the way we deal with these types of things. Because you know, I was I was talking with some friends on the other side of town near the Marshall Fire. They actually had families that were affected by that. And when we were kind of in a meeting to talk about that, they were like, man, we we are so glad that we didn't tell our church what we felt like the theme was for the year. I was like, what's that? They're like, well, we were gonna launch January 2nd at church with the theme we felt from the Lord. That theme was fresh wind, fresh fire. Yikes! They're like, we're so glad we didn't pre-announce that theme. And uh I was listening to that, I'm like, wow, yeah. Uh that would have been, that probably would have been a little too soon. Um, but you think about that, the things with metaphors, when we typically when we pray things like fresh wind, fresh fire, what we really mean is a gentle breeze and a warm fireplace, right? We don't mean the hurricane force of the love of God. We don't mean the all-consuming fire and a crucible of love. We don't typically mean those things when we pray those things. And I'm not saying that that God had anything to do with the destruction of the fires, and I'm not making light of that at all. I'm just saying when we look at the vineyard, it's easy to look at beautiful pictures of leaves and grapes and and and and and and laying sideways on a couch, being fed grapes and drinking choice wine. And let's let's take that part of the metaphor, but let's leave out anything that has to do with cutting back and pruning and cleaning and trellises and uh growing in rocky soil. And certainly let's not talk about crushing and pressing and skinning and definitely not aging. Jesus, don't make me age. But this is how God produces what he wants to do. And if we pay attention, here's the invitation if we pay attention to the process, we can participate in what God is producing. You guys alive out there? Awesome. So, two things I want to focus on here this morning as it relates to fruitfulness. I do think these are very important for us today. Two things that we're gonna talk about specifically is cleaning and pruning. Everybody say cleaning? Everybody say pruning. Everyone say hooray! This is what we signed up for. So I'm gonna reread the first few verses in John 15, but from the ESV. We're gonna talk about this for a second. He says, this, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. 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. Already you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. So you'll notice very quickly, one of the there's a uh there's an interpretive challenge here for for Bible scholars as they're looking at this particular word, uh, that's this word that they translated in the ESV as to take away. The actual Greek word is arrow, um, a e-r-o, and it actually means to lift up, to bear or hold, or to take away. So to take away is a legitimate um definition of this word. But when you when you get into this in context, um many scholars would argue that the word arrow here may not be translated as to take away, but a better translation would be to lift up. So arrow is where you get the word arrow space or airplane or whatever. So arrow means you imagine to lift up. So it so if you can imagine, it changes the way this particular uh passage is translated. And so going back to the passion translation that I read at the beginning, I I believe that this is maybe a better interpretation for us. This is I don't have the only opinion on that, so you do your own work on that. But I I love the way the that they translated this. It says, He cares for the branches connected to me by lifting and propping up the fruitless branches and pruning every branch to yield a greater harvest. So when it comes to cleaning and the way the Lord cleans us, um uh rather than thinking of it as a fruitless branch of a not bearing fruit, God just removes me. I believe this this shift is monumental because to know that if we're fruitless in our life, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're discarded or that we're not abiding. It also means something else. So a vine dresser that is coming into his vineyard to care for his vines, her she or she that would care for their vines, oftentimes the vine would actually topple over, some of the vines as it would produce branches would fall down and fall down into the mud. And it would be unable to produce fruit because it sank down beneath, and now it's covered in mud, it's covered in dirt in dirt, and it's not exposed to the sun. So it's fruitless, but it doesn't mean it's disconnected. Okay? So a good vine dresser will be able to go into his vineyards and look at those vines and carefully take up to lift up the vine, clean it off, and go and fix it back to the trellis where it could be exposed to the maximum amount of sunlight for a day. I want us to think about that here for a second. The vine dresser loves his vineyard. The vine dresser cares for every single vine. And from time to time he sees the vines in the dirt, removed from the sun, and he raises it up and fixes it to the trellis. This is what Jesus does with his words, even says as to the disciples, I've already cleaned you by the words I've spoken to you. Jesus cleans us with his words, he extends grace and mercy, he reminds us of our true identity, he anchors us in reality. There's nothing more pure than the words of Jesus. So here's why this matters for us today. This is, I really believe this is important for many of us. Some of you would say that you have not been bearing fruit in your life, or at least fruit you're proud of. But it's not because you've forsaken God, or it's not even because you're not abiding in God. For some of you, you've fallen to the ground and you've been stuck in the mud. Maybe there's circumstances, maybe there's pressures, maybe there's unexpected events that would come your way that would cause you to cause you to fall lower than you've wanted to be. Maybe some of you here today, you feel the lowest that you felt in a long time. And you're wondering what Jesus has to say about that. And you felt some shame. You know that you should be fruitful, but that feels like either a past reality or a distant dream. And I believe the word of the Lord to some of you here today is that if you're not bearing fruit, Jesus does not hold that against you. He is not judging you for that. In fact, he sees you, he knows you, and he's stooping down on his knees to gently lift you up to clean and clear off the mud, the grime that has affected you. And he's going to affix you back to the trellis to grow again and to bear fruit. I just want to speak that. I just want to drop that for some of you. That might mean something for you. That the Lord is tending to you in this season. He's cleaning you with his words. And he has a trellis in place for this purpose. Now, a trellis is a structure. A lot of us don't like structures, we don't like limitations, but the vine dresser knows that for you to bear fruit again, I gotta tie you to this trellis. I gotta fix you to this trellis. And that's what a vine dresser does. He fixes us to the trellis and he ties us up. Sometimes that's knitting us back into community. Sometimes that's that's fixing us into his word, it's fixing us into rhythms again, and in a way of life. Maybe it feels it might look like limitations God has placed on you, but he's calling you back into a way of life with it with him that maximizes the amount of light that exposes all of your life so he can heal you and raise you up again. You guys hearing me today? So the Lord cleans us. He cleans us. It's one way he establishes us back into fruitfulness. Now, later on, it does talk about those, you know, life, what life looks like when we're not abiding. And it does talk about branches that have shriveled up and are thrown out. And this was uh this is much what it what it's like when when we're the fruitfulness of our life apart from Jesus. We cannot be truly supernaturally fruitful apart from the work of God. Our works are burned up in the fire, they are exposed in the light of day. The day will reveal, as Paul would say. So he cleans us with his words, but the second thing he does is he prunes us. The other method the vine dresser used to cultivate fruitfulness is to carefully take shears and trim back the vine where it needs to be trimmed back. This is possibly the most, the single most important paradigm shift for entering into the abiding life of Jesus. If we do not understand the principle of pruning, we will we will misunderstand the way of the Father. And many have and many will, but this is all part of life in the vine. So it's interesting. Um, one of the benefits of having a church name like Vine Life that used to be called Boulder Valley Vineyard, is that we actually get magazines delivered here for that actually think we're a vineyard. And so, like viniculture, your grapevine, your best viniculture information source. So we get these vine, these these magazines periodically, and I always kind of chuckle, but then I always read through because all these tiny like little revelations and stuff and these things. And so I was just reading this really fascinating article about pruning in in this uh this magazine that we get delivered to the church here. Um this particular article was written by Alyssa Ox. Um, it's called Pruning Phases Tools and Techniques for Vineyards. Interesting. She says, now that harvest is over, grapevines enter into a winter dormancy phase, losing the rest of their leaves and exposing only bear cane shoots in their canopies. She says, pruning is described as bro both a science and an art. Pruning is an essential part of managing a vineyard to remove foliage, fruit, and branches. But the ultimate goal is to maximize the wood on each grapevine without letting the plant make more grapes than it can support. I could keep going, but we're getting to some deep water here, talking about pruning. In her book Chasing Vines, Beth Moore says pruning season occurs primarily during winter months where limbs are leafless and dormant. The vine dresser typically uh pulls his shears just before the bud break, which feels like the worst possible timing for the branch. Just before the bud is about to go, the vine dresser swoops in and clips that bad boy. Have you ever felt like that in your life? Have you ever felt on the cusp of something great, your life is headed in the right direction? New opportunities await you, and then something happens, they just dry up, they just vanish, they disappear, or something dramatically shifts. Now, to be clear, not all loss is the pruning of the Lord. I just want to be clear about that. Not all loss is the pruning of the Lord, but all pruning will feel like loss. And it will feel cruel. It will feel like absolute death because that's kind of what it is. Clipping off something that may still be alive. But the promise is this: anything he cuts off is to give space for what he's trying to add. Anything that the Lord cuts off in our lives is only making space for what he's trying to add. A vine that is not pruned ends up suffering from overcrowding, or what experts call overcropping. Okay, another viniculture lesson for you today. We'll do a quiz after the service. One expert wrote this. He said, overcropping in a given year reduces the fruitfulness of buds in the subsequent year. So the best way to guarantee that your vines produce adequately year after year is to prune them properly year after year. An unpruned vine will have from 10 to 100 times the buds necessary for a good crop of quality grapes. The vine struggles for quantity, thus maximizing its chance to reproduce. The vintner struggles for quality, maximizing his or her chances for vine parfait. So to catch that again, to the branch, success is quantity. To the vine dresser, success is quality. Does that ring true for anybody? Is it just me? See, the thing is when a branch, when a vine is comfortable, when it feels at home, when it has no resistance, as Jeanette talked about, if it's not planted in rocky soil, it actually gets too comfortable. And when it starts to get comfortable, it starts producing many buds, flowers, and shoots. But when it gives so much energy producing the appearance of life, the grapes that it produces are actually small and worthless. And so when you look at the life cycle of a vine, a vine is totally happy. When it's super happy, just everything is going for it, it'll start creating the appearance of growth, it'll look like, it'll be foliage galore. You'll walk into this vineyard like, oh my gosh, this is beautiful. Flowers, leaves, woo! Growth! It's green, right? It looks like things are happening. It's the appearance of life. But the vine dresser acknowledges each vine and says, Yeah, but these grapes are not as big as they should be yielding. So the vine dresser comes back in and says, We're gonna take those flowers and those leaves and those shoots, and we're just gonna boop, we're gonna trim those bad boys off. Because that's not what this was made for. It wasn't just made to look good and have the appearance of growth, it was made for fruitfulness. Come on. Come on. So in a Western lens, though, again, we're taught that success is when everything in our life grows up and to the right. It's the stock ticker that just keeps going up. So we're taught if our life isn't doing that, in every area, something is is unbelievably wrong. I'm getting something wrong, I'm a bad person, God has forsaken me, right? I've screwed it up, I've failed. So you look at your career, if it's not just upgrade after upgrade, promotion after promotion, your finances, your possessions, comfort, convenience, opportunities, dreams. We take every type of thing, and if it's not going up and to the right, we're convinced that life does not work here. Like I have broken life. Whatever life is supposed to be, I've missed it. I should be doing something else. But this is not how the vine dresser evaluates the life of what he of the kingdom, of what he's producing. Life in the vine is not just about the appearance of life, it is about fruitfulness. According to Jesus, we can have all of the things. Our life can look amazing and still not be fruitful, which is why he says, What good is it to gain the whole world and still lose your soul? Some of you guys know what this is like. You have backyards, right? You have plants, you have trees. Have you guys done this thing? Have you seen this thing where the tree starts to grow and then all these little shoots start coming out of the bottom of the tree? Those little things that just start growing up. It's like, where did that come from? It's just it's starting to produce things that weren't even really a part of the tree. It's just these new shoots that are coming up. You know what people call those? Suckers. We all have suckers in our life. We might be the sucker, who knows? We have suckers in our life. We have growth that is happening that is not contributing to what the original intention of that tree is supposed to go. It's the appearance of life, but what it actually is do is diverting the life flow into other places. And I'm telling you, one of the biggest challenges for us is understanding that not all growth is good growth. Not all momentum is good momentum. We have to be flowing in the life of the Spirit, which is why the vine dresser has no issues cutting off things that aren't leading to our ultimate fruitfulness for his glory, not just our fruitfulness, but the glory of his name, that the world would see that we are mature disciples and it would prove to them that God has done something among us. And so all of us have things in our life. New opportunities, new relationships, new whatever. I'm not saying all new things are bad, but I'm just saying what happens is there's things, there's movement and activity that happens in our life, and just because it's activity doesn't mean it's good. And the vine dresser knows what needs to be removed and what needs to stay because he is pulling us into fruitfulness. And so, really, the big idea here though is if we don't understand this part of God, we will get disillusioned with him. We'll think he's just careless about the things in our life. He's just letting things be removed. Does he even care? I'm missing out on all these opportunities. Does he even care? Or we'll think that he's mad at us. And this is just God coming down hard on me. And I do believe in discipline. I believe the Lord disciplines us. He disciplines the ones he loves. It's very biblical. But listen, and what comes to pruning, hear me out. The pruning of God is not the passivity of God nor the punishment of God. It's the provision of God. God prunes you for what he is producing inside of you. This is where many believers jump off the train. They quit the life in the vine altogether because it doesn't match the worldview that we've been sold of the kind of life promised. I thought a Christian was supposed to be a problem for you life. I thought following Jesus meant that everything was just fixed. That I would never go through pain again. Like, where did you read that? Like, what show me in the Bible? Where did you read that? Who's telling you these things? Listen, God is life in Jesus. There is nothing like it. It is a life of flourishing, it is a life of abundance, but it's most of the time it's abundance in ways that we wouldn't suspect. It's abundance of the spirit, abundance of the soul. And if you need any proof, think about anybody in your life that you consider to be fruitful. Who just think about somebody in your life, in your experience, that you would say, that person, aha, that person, that person's fruitful. Cheryl Yarusa, she was fruitful, right? Think of somebody else. Think of that person. You look into their eyes, you're like, oh man, you you know it, you've got it. And I don't know who you're thinking of right now, but I guarantee you, I can almost guarantee you that that person developed a fruitfulness not just out of good times, but out of hardship and suffering of some kind. They know what it means to be tended to by the vine dresser. And so this morning, the invitation is this it's it's to submit, it's to trust in the careful hand, just as we were singing earlier about the new wine. We're trusting in the careful hand of Jesus. I'm telling you, Vine Life, or if you're new to Vine Life, welcome to the party. Part of what we're part of what we're what it means to be a part of this community, I hate to break it to you, part of it means that you're gonna, we're gonna together walk through what it means to be tended to by the vine dresser, which means that it's not all just, you know, glitter and ponies and unicorns and and and sparkles and you know, it's we're walking through a life of cultivating fruitfulness together, which means we're yielding to the careful hand of the vine dresser. I'm saying some of you here this morning, you're in a season where maybe the fruitfulness hasn't been what you have hoped it would be, and maybe you feel like you've been tamped down by things that you walk through. I just want to declare to you again that there may be an invitation for you here today that the Lord wants to He wants to minister to you. He doesn't want to discard you. He wants to lift you up. And He wants to clean you. And He wants to bring you back into the fruitfulness you were made for. And if that's you, I mean I just might I just want to encourage you wherever you're at just say yes, Jesus. I need you. I need your words, I need your voice. And then some of you have been in a season of pruning. Or about to head into a season of pruning. Neither one or bad. Some of you entered that season of pruning as soon as that pandemic started. It's just a big global pruning. Again, I'm not saying that God sent a virus just to prune it. I'm just saying it's a pruning. There's things that you're not doing now that you were doing two years ago. There's people that you're not spending time with that you were spending time with two years ago. There's opportunities you were pursuing that you weren't doing two years ago. Some of that, some of that may be the Lord saying, listen, I'm taking, I'm removing certain things from your life because I'm drawing you into a deeper abiding, a deeper rootedness that you were maybe trusting in those things, maybe to a degree that you shouldn't have been. And I'm bringing you in to a new fruitfulness that only comes from my words and my voice, from abiding in me. That is a good thing, that is the grace and mercy of God in our life. But maybe some of you have been through a pruning and you're looking at your life and you're thinking, Well, thank you, Pastor Luke. That's great, but I don't know what else could be removed. In fact, this this trunk is starting to look a little ugly. This divine dresser got a little carried away with his shears. That might be what you feel like, and I get it. I know what that feels like to be pruned. I know what that feels like to miss out on opportunities. I know what that feels like for life to take a twist. And you might even look at your life and saying, this is ugly. Too many branches were cut off this one. You overdid it. But I'm saying, I just want to remind you again, God is not committed to our appearance, he is committed to our fruitfulness. When we see ugly, he sees a vision of harvest. He sees harvest. And he's committed to harvest. And he will develop that in you and grow that in you. And he is not immune, he is not numb to what you felt and how it's felt for you. I just want to speak that over you. He's not careless, but he knows what he is doing. So I speak over you today. I speak anybody that's been in a season of pruning, I just speak over you. Trust in the Lord. Just close your eyes with me. God, I pray that our community, that today, here together, that we become a people. No matter how it looks on the outside, no matter how it appears, how we would evaluate the season, Jesus, I pray that today that you would unlock a new yielding, a new surrender, a new trust in your careful and steady hand. That we would not despise or neglect or dismiss or ignore the important work you're doing as less significant than what we were trying to get to before. But I thank you, Lord Jesus, that both cleaning or pruning are not done from a distance, they're done with the careful touch of your hands. It's one of the most intimate places the vine dresser will be in the vineyard, is when he's pruning his vines. He'll take one hand and hold it, and the other hand he'll carefully remove what doesn't belong. There is a nearness of the presence of God available to us if we're willing to receive him. And I thank you today, Jesus, that all of this, it's not just about fruitfulness, it's about joy. It's that our joy may be full, it's that the Father may be glorified, it's that the world would see something so deep, so unlike what anybody else can offer, that the world would see something in the church among those abiding in the vine of Jesus, that we would give ourselves, that would something would happen so significant on this earth that it would be uh it would be proof that Jesus, that you have done something great among us. So we thank you, Lord Jesus. We thank you, God. We bless whatever season we're in. I bless whatever season my brothers and sisters are in. Not to be despised, but to be received with thankfulness because of the fruits that's coming. I thank you for harvest that will come through the fruitfulness of this house. We love you, Jesus. We love you, Jesus.

unknown 50:15

Amen, amen.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

I encourage you to dig into this stuff. Dig into John 15. There's much it goes much deeper. One of the things though that we're excited about, that Jeanette mentioned earlier, next week is going to be an important week for us because we're joining with a collective of other churches in the area. There's something called kingdom assignment. And really, what it is, it's a I would say it's a continuation of what we're talking about. It's about God sowing new seeds into the region and through us, us bearing fruit in a way that lives are changed.