How God’s Pruning Helps Us Flourish

A varietal vegetable wonderland grows in rows and boxes in our yard. Even as frost lies on the ground, a garden blooms in my basement. Under artificial light, small seedlings burst from soil blocks. As long as I live, I hope I never lose the wonder of watching a seed become food.

Eleven years ago, I pressed strawberry plants into the clay-filled soil on the side of our first home. I pruned vines as they grew into the driveway, and I covered the tender plants with straw and netting to protect the succulent red gems from dryness and hungry birds. Our first garden was born.

We learned the hard way the first year we started seeds in the basement. We planted too early. Pepper plants bore flowers weeks before we could safely transplant them outside. We moved the plants out too quickly when spring came. The sun scorched many beyond recovery that year. Surviving plants grew unruly, becoming tangled forests of disease and decay.

We had to prune.

Pruning is crucial to a healthy garden, yet it’s often overlooked. When we don’t prune weak, damaged, or dying plant matter, we leave the plant susceptible to sickness and death.

Much like a gardener prunes crops, God longs to prune dying parts from our lives.

For more than fifteen years, I told myself the lie that my drinking wasn’t a problem. I started drinking in college. I studied hard, but I partied harder. After a few semesters of bad grades and ill health, I cut back, but I didn’t stop. Around this same time, I rediscovered faith. I loved this newfound relationship with Jesus, yet I didn’t change my drinking habits. I still spent more weekends in bars than in a pew.

As I moved from college days to adulthood, I continued to drink alcohol as if everything was fine. The truth was I always drank a little too much, a little too often. I silently judged Christian brothers and sisters who abstained from alcohol, thinking them uptight and legalistic to make me feel better about my poor decisions.

After I had children, wine became my drink of choice. I loved the smell of it, the richness of it rolling down my throat. I couldn’t wait for the kids to go to bed so I could have a glass (or two or three) of red wine. Some nights I poured glasses before tucking the kids in, my toddler noticing the alcohol on my breath as I kissed him good night.

Drinking was a double-edged sword. I craved the relaxed feeling a few glasses of wine offered after a long day at home with kids. I hated the shame I felt when I overindulged, a frequent occurrence. I knew I needed a change when I read a post by one of my favorite writers, Sarah Bessey, where she shared her recent decision to stop drinking. I cried as I read her story, feeling as though she had been looking into both my windows and my heart.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones because I stopped drinking before my habit became an addiction. When I chose to put alcohol aside for a season of sobriety, the decision was easy. I feel better than I have in years. I’m free from all the shame that came with years of abusing alcohol. I’m recovering from justifying a sin I knew God wanted to prune from my life.

As we grow in relationship with Christ and become more like him, the Holy Spirit points out what things in our lives need pruning before they damage the whole. For so many of those booze-filled years, the Holy Spirit whispered to me, pointing out my sin. God stood ready with the shears; I held my dying parts to myself.

Drinking was not the sin in question. My transgression was pride. My was continuing in a behavior I knew was damaging my body and soul. My sin was hearing from God and choosing not to heed his word. My disobedience kept me from a deep relationship with Jesus.

It seems ironic to the sober Christian that Jesus’s first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding feast (John 2:1–11 NIV). The hosts had run out of wine far before the festivities were expected to end. Mary, the mother of Jesus, heard about the deficit of wine and urged Jesus to act. I’ve thought a lot about this passage in my recent months of sobriety. Why would Jesus provide more wine as a display of his power?

Jesus turned the water into wine for one reason: because of shame. Jesus came to save us from our shame. Sometimes shame looks like running out of wine at a wedding feast. Other times shame looks like waking up from another night of one too many, regretting things said and done.

Jesus saved that first-century family from the shame of their inability to provide for guests. He saves humanity from dying in the shame of our sin when we call him Savior. Jesus delivers us individually when we allow him to continue daily work in our lives, pruning what is killing us and allowing the growth that comes uniquely from God.

Are you holding on to sins and shame God wants to prune? Let me be the first to tell you that when you lay those dead things at Jesus’s feet, you will experience lightness and freedom you never knew was possible. What alcohol provided is nothing in comparison to the peace and joy I’ve found in letting God be the gardener in my life.

My life is flourishing as God intended. Will you let him help you bloom too?

Lindsay Hufford is a writer, slow marathoner, home educator and mediocre knitter. Her favorite things include books, kombucha, kitchen dancing, natural wellness, Jesus, and nachos. She spends days with her handsome hubby, three adorable kids, a flock of hens, a runaway peahen, wandering barn cat, and rescue dog. Lindsay shares ways to live simply and love extravagantly at www.lindsayhufford.com.

Photograph © Bill Williams, used with permission