my heart has been so blessed by my blogland buddies ... all in different ways ... some make me laugh ... some make me pray ... some make me think ... but all of you have a daily impact on me ...
one of my first blog buds was Debra ... she inspires me to be a better follower of Christ with her thought provoking posts ... if you haven't visited her site As I See It Now, i'd recommend it ...
here is her Friday April 7th post ... copied from As I See It Now:
Fall In Love With The Gardener
I have found the secret to not dreading and despising the times of great pruning in our lives:
Fall in love with the Gardener.
When you love the Gardener, you won't scream when He steps through the tall weeds toward you with those huge hedge clippers.
You won't pull up your shallow roots and run, crying, toward a hiding place, hair caught in the brambles. You won't cower there and tell Him, "______ needs to be pruned--not me! He's the one with the problem."
Nor will you squeal, "Noooo! Don't prune that away. I adore that part of me.... I just am what I am..."
Fall in love with the Gardener and you'll have passion in the middle of the prunings, love in the middle of the surgeries... a shoulder to cry on when the pruning becomes humiliating... a heart to grow close to while parts of you are dying......
and you will become displeased by what displeases Him, even if it's something you formerly quite liked about yourself... you'll trust that He knows what He's doing and He knows a whole lot more than you do about your own garden...
You'll prefer this Gardener, this Friend, who sticks closer than a brother (who gets busy or leaves)... you'll have an encourager who is never out to lunch (like normal people who have a life away from you, too).
You'll have a God who comes down to your ever-changing, blossoming garden to walk with you in the cool of the evening.
And there is nothing better than that.
***
"Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit." John 15:2
8 comments:
Oh the pruning hurts...but it must be done! I'm in this season of purning! I yield to Him and let Him have His perfect will in my life...What a beautiful post, and so speaks to me now where i'm at in my life..thank you for sharing this and being a yielded vessel of honor! Have a wonderful day...be blessed..xo
mindy ... it made me do a check to see how i handle pruning in my life .. uh, not so well sometimes ... but maybe that is why the pruning shears are at work in us!
What a sweet submissive spirit she has...well said and encouraging to think upon like that.
maggie ann ... and she usually posts atleast 5 times a week ... i have problems coming up with ONE longer post a week at this time ... :o?
I also love this world of blogging. It is nice to peep into others lives and try to find perspective to your own that way. I wish i would have enough time for that but this little I do must do it for now.
Thank you Saija for being there on the other side of the wire! :)
maiju ... time and clarity of thought ... i wish i had both of those! blessings to you!
This was a wonderful post - it reminds me so much of one of Joyce Meyer's shows I saw recently. She had one of her assistants chasing her with the pruning shears to illustrate this point :)
feathers ... *laughing* that must have been a good show!
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