Ginger Goss is an amazing woman whose life shines as a testimony of her relationship with Jesus. She has many gifts and serves the Lord with trust and humility. One of her gifts is that she can write. Ginger is a new friend of mine and I am honored to get to share her words with you. I know you will be blessed by her today! – Cindy Grasso
Pruning HURTS! by Ginger Goss
“Ouch!! That’s enough!! I’m not gonna have anything left!!”
Ever feel like screaming that at God as He trims away “branches” from our lives? If I’m perfectly honest, I know I have. And pretty recently too. Pruning hurts. And it isn’t fun. It makes me feel broken. Lonely. Exposed. Hurt. Rejected. Have you been there too?
The past couple of years have been internal “pruning times” for me…God has pulled me back from multiple areas of ministry and called me into a season of waiting, a time of “not doing,” so to speak. Sometimes they made sense, but many times they have not. Often I’ve had a hard time understanding what was going on. It hurt. I haven’t liked it. I fought it. Boy, did I fight it. I didn’t want to let Him trim away the “good” branches… those areas that had produced the most fruit in my past. That REALLY hurt. Plain and simple. Those were the branches that reflected beauty… trimming those off didn’t make sense.
THEN… This morning I came across something that made His process of trimming away just click…
“The late DORMANT season is BEST for most pruning. Pruning in late winter, JUST BEFORE SPRING growth starts, leaves fresh wounds exposed for only a SHORT length of time before NEW growth begins the wound HEALING process.”
Suddenly, things started making sense. I needed my “winter season” … the dormant time for God to prep me for what’s to come. What I saw as hurt, broken, rejected, etc., He was seeing as preparing, prepping, readying me for my new spring growth.
I don’t know what you’re going through. Maybe a winter season too. Maybe you’re being trimmed… or about to be. Maybe you’ve been trimmed and are still hurting from it. Beloved daughter of the King, hold on… spring IS coming!! Look for it! Expect it! Watch and enjoy the NEW growth, the STRONGER branches, the ABUNDANCE of “fruit” that is coming!! Blessings are on the horizon for you!
“He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, AND He prunes the branches that DO BEAR FRUIT so they will produce EVEN MORE.” John 15:2 NLT