At Peace With His Pruning

Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that continues to bear fruit, He [repeatedly] prunes, so that it will bear more fruit [even richer and finer fruit].
John 15:2 AMP

God created mankind in His image, and He blessed us to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:26-28). While this is simple to conceive when we think about physically reproducing and populating the earth, I believe that God also intends for us to be spiritually fruitful as well. Our spiritual fruit reproduces God's presence in the earth through our lives. The way for us to experience the presence of God in our daily lives is to live by the Spirit of God.
A life by the Spirit is one that is guided not by the desires of our flesh but the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Lives led by the nature and desires of our flesh produce the fruit of the sinful nature, as described in Galatians 5:19-21. A life guided by the Holy Spirit is one that makes God's presence obvious in our lives. That evidence is referred to in Galatians 5:22-23 as "the fruit of the spirit", and further described as love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 
I believe that God is always active in our lives helping us to remain fruitful. He loves us with an everlasting love, and nothing can separate us from the love of God (Jeremiah 31:3; Romans 8: 38-39). We are connected to Him, as He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:5). Through our faith, our abiding connection to God, and living our lives by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we remain fruitful. By the Spirit, God searches our hearts and examines every aspect of our lives to identify and prune anything that inhibits His fruit in our lives in quantity or quality (Romans 8:27, John 15:2). Let us condition ourselves to accept and appreciate that. Let us make peace with the process of pruning as God's way of ensuring that our lives are fruitful, producing the evidence of our faith and the manifestation of His Spirit in the earth (James 2:26). What God separates us from in the process of pruning may cause pain or adjustment in the flesh, but let's take comfort in the fact that God's pruning results in soothing and solidifying us in the Spirit (Psalm 30:5). Therefore, let us be at peace with God's pruning to protect and perpetuate our fruitfulness.

Be Blessed!
​~Nina
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Declaration: I am at peace with God's pruning in my life.