I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. John 15:1-2
Dead branches aren’t just deadweight; they take life-giving resources away from the rest of the plant. They do real harm. They must be removed so that what remains can grow and flourish.
Maybe you already know that. You’ve got a branch in your life that you’re certain is dead, that’s doing more harm than good. That’s hurting you by hanging around. So you’ve asked God to remove it. And He hasn’t.
The woman with the bleeding disorder comes to mind. She’d been hemorrhaging for 12 years and had spent everything she had looking for relief. I’d imagine she’d spent a lot of that time asking God to take away her condition. But it wasn’t until she was in the middle of a crowd and she managed to touch Jesus’ robe that the bleeding branch revealed its fruit. Because “the whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed” (Luke 8:47). She became an evidence-giver about the power and compassion of the Savior. She experienced real and serious suffering, and it produced real and significant fruit in her life and in the lives of those around her.
If God has allowed a branch to remain, you can be sure there will be fruit. It might be slow growing and it might come when you least expect it. The blind man in John 9 had been waiting his whole life for that burden to be removed, until the day that Jesus walked by and revealed the reason it was there in the first place – “he was born blind so that the power of God could be seen in him” (John 9:3).
What if our burdens are simply the means by which God’s power will be revealed? Can we bear them more patiently, more willingly, when we know that God doesn’t waste anything? Not our heartache, our mistakes, or our suffering. “Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion according to the greatness of his unfailing love. For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow” (Lamentations 3:33). He tells us flat out that there’s a purpose for everything that He allows in your life – to make more fruit (John 15:2).
God can do much good with the fruit that grows in the soil of suffering – producing things like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22) – if only we are willing to wait for the harvest.