Pruned (Flourish - Week 4)

In his sermon, Shawn discusses the theme of change and transformation as illustrated by the pruning process in John chapter 15. He highlights how people often resist change due to a preference for the status quo and an overestimation of their own understanding. Shawn emphasizes that God, as the good gardener, prunes our lives to remove unhealthy aspects and to foster growth, which may involve painful losses but ultimately leads to flourishing. He invites the congregation to reflect on what God may want to prune from their lives in order to trust Him and allow for deeper transformation in the image of Christ.

Transcript

Sa Good morning, everybody. Man, so good to see you all here today. My name is Sean. I'm one of the ministers here today. We are going to be jumping into John chapter 15.

And so if you have a Bible app, you can turn there. If you have a Bible with you, turn there. If you don't have any of those, we got some pew Bibles there in front of you. I think it's around like page 768 maybe somewhere that might get you in the general region. But we're in John chapter 15.

Walmart created a bit of a stir on social media recently. Maybe you saw it for the first time in 20 years. They decided to change their logos. And companies will do this from time to time. They'll kind of want a little bit of freshness, a little bit of vibrancy in life.

They want to make it look modern. And so they'll go in and they'll update their colors or they'll update their designs. They'll create some new logos and put it out. And like, this is their mark of who they are going into the Future. And after 20 years, the people at Walmart who are in charge of this kind of thing decided that it was time for a, quote, comprehensive brand refresh.

Comprehensive brand refresh. And so just by way of reminder and refreshing ourselves, this is Walmart's old logo. Very familiar font. The blue, the yellow little pop of flare star thing, recognizable all around the world. But they wanted something modern and fresh and so they came up with this true story.

That's Walmart's new logo. I showed this to my daughter Adelyn this morning. She's like, it just looked like they selected the text and made it bold. I'm like, yeah, I think that actually is kind of what they did. That's exactly what it looks like.

Which is why social media users had so much fun at Walmart's expense on here. They couldn't believe that someone actually paid for this because most of us look at that and we're like, I think I could do that. Like Walmart, take whatever you paid that company, give me a tenth of it, set me up for life and I'll control b that thing. All right, we will make that font bold. I read an interesting article from Forbes because I'm a frequent subscriber to Forbes magazine.

No, not because of that. The headline caught my attention as I was scrolling through my news app. But it was about why the online world was so angry about this new logo. And yes, part of it is just because the online world is angry about anything and everything. But aside from that, they pointed to a couple of reasons that I thought were interesting.

And if you just hang with me for a little bit, we're going to see that. That there's probably some relevancy in our life. And with our text today, the first reason that they pointed to for the uproar is that we typically prefer the status quo. Like most of us, we don't like change. We would rather things just kind of stay as they are.

And so we think, why change when what we're doing right now seems to be working just fine? We settle quite often for the status quo. We choose the status quo. We look at that new logo or that old logo and we're like, there's nothing wrong with that. Why can't we just keep it?

Most of us prefer things just to remain the same. The school of thought behind this is called loss aversion bias, which states that the response to losses is stronger than the response to corresponding gains. In other words, the pain of losing something is stronger than the pleasure of receiving something new. The pain of letting go of something that feels familiar, even if we know that maybe it's not serving us the way that it used to or should, should, that feels stronger than the joy of releasing that and what might come as a result in our life. And so if you've ever set your alarm early in the morning because you wanted to get up and work out, but then morning rolled around and you're like, no, that was a horrible idea, and you hit the snooze and you just went back to sleep, that's loss aversion bias.

The pain of getting up out of your warm, comfortable bed felt more than the joy of getting up and. And working out. Another reason why the Walmart logo received so much backlash is because people believe that we know best. Most of us believe that we have all of the answers, that we know more, that we can do a better job than the experts. I mean, how many people in Bloomington right now think if IU would just let me have a little bit of influence on the basketball program, we would turn this sucker around, right?

Like, we would start getting W's on the board. Most of us have a cognitive bias that overestimates our knowledge and ability. Think the group of older guys sitting around the table at Cloverleaf, solving all of the world's problems. There's something in us. Sorry, Greg, didn't mean to offend you.

There's something in us but believes that we know better. That if we were in Charge. Things would be right, things would be done the way that they should be done. And the truth is we are overly confident in our own correctness. I think these two things get at the heart of what we're looking about at today and about why we resist it so much.

We don't like change. Change feels painful. We think about all the things that we would do. Instead of. Takes so much energy, I would rather just spend that doing nothing.

It's so hard. Like, I don't want to go through that. I don't want to experience it. We think that we know what is best and how things should be done. And I think that one of the reasons why scripture in general and the gospel in particular is so, I guess, confrontational in our society today, so scandalous is because Scripture invites us to trust in God and to confess that we don't know what is best.

The gospel invites us to leave behind our old way of life, to crucify it with Christ, to be changed and transformed into the image of Christ. The. The gospel in scripture invites us to make Jesus our Lord and our Savior, the leader of our life and the one who comes in and transforms us. It requires change, and we want to continue to hold on to it. We proclaim this, lord, I want you to be the Lord and Savior of my life.

But then when the rubber hits the road and things start changing and we become confronted with our sin, we become confronted with our old way of living. We're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just. I want to. I want to take that back.

I want to be the Lord and Savior of my life again. And what I find in my own life is that there is this constant battle going on over who is in control. Who am I going to follow, myself or the Lord? I want to surrender to the Lord. I really do.

I want to surrender to him and live a transformed life. But when it requires something that is hard for me to give, I'm like, oh, well, maybe I. I want to go my way instead. The pain of losing control feels stronger than the joy of transformation that I actually desire. When God's word and wisdom confronts my own wisdom, and I think that I know best and that I'm the expert in my life, I say, lord, no.

What do you mean you want me to love my enemies? Don't you know what they did to me? What do you mean, you want me to forgive that person? What do you mean, you want me to let go of this sin pattern? No.

I think I know why I'm Hanging onto all of these doubts and these fears and these insecurities and this anger. We trust our own wisdom instead of His. I can look back on a string of moments in my life where I trusted my wisdom and things just went like we've talked about before, from bad to worse. And our Heavenly Father, he is so patient and kind. He is so gracious.

And we can trust that the change, any change that he wants to make in our life is for our good and his glory. Because he knows what we ultimately need or he knows what we ultimately need to let go of in order to flourish in life. He is shaping and molding us into an image that is not who we used to be. It is not even who we are we necessarily want to be. He is shaping and transforming us into the image of Christ if we allow him to.

I think this is what Jesus is getting at in our text today. Look at it with me. John, chapter 15. We're just going to look at the first two verses.

Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Over the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at what does it mean to have a flourishing life? And not just what does it mean, but how do we find it. And we've seen from John 15 that what it requires is one.

We're deeply rooted in God's Word, like that's where it starts. We deeply root our lives in God's Word so that those root it's being nourished and we're receiving what we need from this. And then as it grows into that vine and we connect ourselves to Christ, and then we are the branches that grow from that vine of Jesus. He is the one who nourishes and strengthens us. He is the One that makes us healthy.

Our lives grow stronger and bear fruit of love and joy and peace and kindness and goodness, and all of these things that we enjoy, but then that others enjoy in our life as well. And when we remain connected in him, our lives flourish because he alone can satisfy and sustain us as our true vine. And at the end of verse one, Jesus says that the Father is the gardener. In John 15, God is described as the good gardener who is always pruning us, who is always cutting back the old to make room for the new. He sees our true potential, and He.

He lovingly strips back everything that gets in the way of that. And that's what pruning is. I'm not a gardener. I have killed many, many bushes in my life thinking that they were weeds and they weren't flowers, things like that. I get a weed whacker in my hand and watch out, like I'm going to start killing things.

The pruning is much more gentle than that. It's cutting back the limbs and the leaves and the twigs that keep the plant from flourishing. And even through. Though pruning is. Is a cutting away, there is.

There is a pain and a loss that is involved in pruning. There is a sense of. Of you prune in order to gain so much more that. That what is gained from pruning is so much better and more beautiful than what is lost from it. And the plant receives more nourishment and sunlight.

It's able to grow healthier and stronger and bear more fruit. There's a vineyard in the Napa Valley that puts it like this. On their website, they say, why do we prune? Because if the vine is not pruned, it reverts. Listen very quickly to its wild nature, climbing everywhere with its long, sinewy trunk and tiny, scraggly bunches of uneven grapes.

So every year we need to assess the growth of the vineyards and the vines and decide whether to prune them back harder or to let them grow bigger or return them to the same size and shape that they were the year before. Do you hear the love? Do you hear the care in this? There's an attention to detail. My grandfather would just take things out and start chopping stuff up.

It's amazing that the bushes in front of his house are still alive. He tried his hardest, I think, to kill him. But pruning. And the thoughtful pruner goes in and knows exactly how much to take off. And sometimes it's a lot, and sometimes it looks really painful.

And. And then new growth comes in the next year. And sometimes it's just a little. And it's exactly what that branch needs to thrive. It's done to get the most fruit from the plant, which is why God prunes us.

And sometimes that pruning can be painful. Sometimes we may look and be like, God, that was a lot. That one hurt.

And sometimes we would rather keep the old stuff on us, even if it is sucking the life away from us, because it's familiar. It's known. We don't want to deal with it.

We might think that God is cutting it off too quickly. And there have been so many times where I have just said, God, give the shears back over me. Think I'd rather do it? Not you. But as our good gardener, we can trust that anything that he prunes in us is not for our punishment.

It is for our good. It is so that our lives can flourish and bear more fruit of his love and his joy and his peace and his patience and kindness and all of those things that grow in us when we are connected to Jesus. He has a vision for your life of what it could look like. And so he is constantly pruning and shaping and molding you and me into the image of Jesus. So why does God prune us?

I think it's some of the very same reasons why gardeners prune their plants. God prunes us to remove what is diseased and dying.

He prunes us to remove those old parts of our life that are dead and yet are just hanging on, trying to continue to suck life out of us. It's those secret sins that we hope that no one will find out about.

It's those toxic relationships that are not good for us, that leave us feeling empty.

It's the habits that hurt us and others.

It's those things that suck the life out of us. And they have a way of affecting every part of our life and every part of the lives, often of those that are around us, too. They are the diseased and dying parts of our old life that just won't die and go away. And sometimes it's because we want to keep them attached to us.

God wants to come and prune those off so that we can live fully as the new creations that Jesus is making us into. He wants to prune them away for our good. God also prunes us to remove what is stealing nutrients from us. In gardening, there's these things called sucker shoots. Sucker shoots are little branches that grow out of healthy branches, but they don't bear any fruit.

All that they do is just suck the nutrients out of the healthy branches. And oftentimes, interestingly enough, oftentimes sucker shoots grow in response to stress that a plant goes through. Dry season, hot season, too much water, sucker shoots start to form. If the plant is injured in some way at that point of injury, a sucker shoot might grow off of it, and it steals away. It robs the plant of the nutrients that it could receive.

And all of us, we have sucker shoots in our life that are stealing nutrients from us. A few years ago, I realized that one of these sucker shoots in my life was social media. I had to cut it off. God convicted me, and he's like, this is something I want to prune from you. And I was like, no, I kind of like it.

And it just became more and more a reality that I didn't like who I was. The more I engaged in it, found it made me anxious, it made me restless, it was robbing me of peace and joy. And I finally just had to say, okay, Lord, it's yours. Prune it away. And so if you've sent me a friend request on Facebook over the last three years, I'm sorry, it's not you, it's me.

All right.

Last fall, it became my news app. And that's the thing with sucker shoots. As soon as you take off one, another one pops up in its place. And so it became my news app. It was distracting me from time in the word.

It was. It was making me anxious, and I was getting consumed by all of the stuff happening in our world. God gently convicted me about it. And I just had to remove the app from my phone for a little bit because it just was not healthy. It was taking nutrients from my life that God wanted to give to me.

That's what sucker shoots do. They rob our lives of nutrients that we need to flourish and bear fruit. You can probably think of some of them in your life right now. One of them in my life is golf. This is the reason I don't golf.

Nothing good in my life grows when I golf. And praise God, he pruned that out of me a long time ago. He made me horrible at golf so that I wouldn't want to play it. And is there something in your life that is stealing nutrients from you that is keeping you from flourishing? Maybe the Lord wants to start pruning that off today.

And this is the hard one for me. He also prunes us to make us healthier, to make healthy branches even stronger. God cuts back the bad to make room for the good. But sometimes what I. What I've found is that God will also cut back the good to make room for the better.

God loves you too much to just leave you at good enough. He's constantly inviting us into a deeper level of trust, a deeper relationship with Him. He's constantly molding and shaping and making us more into the image of Jesus, which means that there are some times he will take the good things in our life that are keeping us from that, remove them so that we can find the better. Remember what Jesus said in verse two? Yes.

Every branch that doesn't bear fruit will be. Will be cut off. That's. That's part of the pruning. But then he goes on and he says, but every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

There are times when God will take away what's good, deal with what's good, to get to what's better at the end of the year. Last year, that week in between Christmas and New Year's, there was just a lot of, a lot of pain in our church, a lot of loss. We had a handful of people who passed away, we had people who were dealing with sickness, there were, there were people who were moving from their home into assisted living or nursing home. And it just kind of seemed like it all happened right in that week between Christmas and New Year. And for the last few years, we've given our entire staff team that week off just like, hey, this is a gift from our elders.

We just want you to go spend time with your family. And Amber and I and the family we were, we stayed in town this year. We didn't go anywhere. And, and as things started popping up and coming to us, I didn't want to ask any of our staff to take care of that. And so I just started going to the hospitals and making the visits and going to the assisted living homes and doing all of these things throughout that week.

And I hit a point towards the end of it where I just realized, God, I have nothing to give. Like there are people who are dealing with so many losses, with so much tragedy in their life, so many changes. A young wife who, whose 28 year old husband passed away, like, how do you comfort somebody in the middle of loss like that? And it weighed on my soul. And I woke up one morning, it was 4:00 in the morning.

I'll never forget this.

I woke up and I was feeling the weight of all of this on my chest. I was thinking, I need to be, I need to do more, I need to do this. And then, and then all of that that I need to do, I need to do it was, was also combined with a yeah, but that's never going to be enough. And I felt this inadequacy inside of me. And at that moment, the gracious father whispered to my soul, Sean, that is why I came.

It was right around Christmas. We had just celebrated the birth of Jesus. And he reminded me, this is why I came. And the father took this branch, this good intentioned branch that was growing out of me to be everywhere and to be everything for everyone. And he said, that's not who you're supposed to be.

Good Intentions. I'm going to lop that thing right off in order to make room for something better, which is to remind you that they don't need you. They need me. And what I've asked you to do is point people to me, and that's enough. God removed the good intention to bear better fruit in my life.

I was grateful for it. God loves us so much that he will sometimes prune away the good because he has something better in mind. That he does not settle for good enough in our lives. He refines us. He cuts away even the smallest parts so that our lives will bear more fruit.

And as our good gardener, we can trust God to prune us for our good. And it may not always feel that way. We may sometimes just prefer that he leaves us alone or lets us take care of it. But he knows what is best for us. He knows what will truly allow our lives to flourish and bear his fruit.

I'm wondering, do you believe that today?

And maybe you're like me and. And you want to believe it, and. And I think one of the most faithful prayers in Scripture is, lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Maybe that's where you are today. You do believe it, but there's a sense of, yeah, I believe it, but I'm not quite to the point of trusting it yet.

I want to. Do you believe that God is good, that he cares for you, and that any pruning he wants to do in your life is for your good?

I want to invite you just to kind of get a little comfy with me. And if you've gotten a little too comfy this morning, go ahead and wake up. I need you. Bring it in. Bring it in.

I'm gonna read some things that God may want to prune from your life today, just like he wants to prune from my life. And if you trust that God is good and loving and kind and has your best in mind, I want to invite you to pray a dangerous prayer. Lord, change me, prune me. I'm going to read this list, and if there's one of them that hits you after I read it, that might be the Holy Spirit, which is one of the ways that God changes us. His word and His Spirit.

If the Spirit prompts something in you, let yourself linger there and pray for the ability just to release it and say, God, prune this from my life.

Are there any dead and diseased branches that you need to let go of?

Any addictions that you need to seek help for, any toxic relationships that you're in that aren't honoring you and aren't honoring the Lord.

Is there anything hidden in darkness that you need to pull into the light?

Can I just add, if there's anyone here this morning that is in an abusive relationship, physical, emotionally, sexually, whatever, that person may be trying to convince you that you need to keep them in your life, that it's not that bad, that you can't tell anybody because it might just mess everything up. God wants to prune that relationship from your life. He wants to do something and we want to help you with that. And so if you are in that abusive relationship and you don't know where to turn for help, we want to help you come to us so you don't have to stay in that situation. Maybe it's time to let go of it.

Is there any bitterness in you that is poisoning the branch of your life, keeping you from being fully connected to the vine, being nourished so that you can bear fruit? Is there, is there someone today that you need to give grace to, someone that you need to forgive, even if it is yourself?

Are there any fears or insecurities that you are holding onto and are holding you back from bearing fruit in your life? Are there good things on your calendar, your to do list, good things that, that, that get your time and attention, that, that God's maybe saying, I, I want you to, to cut that away so that you can give your time and your attention to the better things.

Is there anything in your life that you have a white knuckled grip on that maybe God is just inviting you to ease up just a little bit and let him shape and mold you into the person he's making you.

I want to pray over us. God, help us believe that you are the good gardener and to turn control of our lives over to you. Because you know truly, Lord, what is best for us. You know what will lead to a flourishing life. So prune us, Lord, into the image of Jesus so that our lives will bear more fruit of your love and your joy and your peace and your kindness.

Lord, may we not refuse it, may we not be afraid of it, but may we see that it will draw more life out of us than what we could even imagine. And so help us to trust in you in Jesus name. Amen.

The truth is, is that all of us need God to be our gardener. And we never grow out of that. We never get to a place where we're like, okay, we're healthy, we're flourishing, things are good, we always need the Lord to come in and keep chipping away. Without him, we are like branches that are cut off. We are unable to produce life on our own.

But through Jesus, we can experience forgiveness and renewal. We can experience the abundant life that God has created us for. And listen, if you have been trying to do life on your own apart from the vine, Jesus is inviting you into something better. He is inviting you to trust in him, to allow him to prune and shape your life so that you can grow into the beautiful image of Christ that He has has for you. And you don't have to have it all figured out.

None of us do. Every single one of us in here are still in need of God's grace. You don't have to clean yourself up first. Jesus meets you where you are, and he offers you a life of connection and growth and purpose in Him. And if you are ready to take that step, if you are ready to trust in the good gardener and follow Jesus, we are ready to walk alongside of you.

And maybe you just need to confess something to somebody today and get that word out into the open. We have people around the room with lanyards that would love to pray with you, come alongside of you. They are safe people. You can have confidence in them. Speak that out.

Or if you say, I am ready to follow Jesus, I'm ready for this new life, this new beginning of being rooted and connected to Him. We'd love to help you take that step of baptism, confession, faith. We're going to move into a time of response, and part of that is also communion. God prunes us through His Word, through His Holy Spirit, but He also prunes us through the cross, shapes us and molds us. God.

God sets that image before us as a. As a way of saying we're dying to ourself to become who he wants us to be. And it's through the cross that God removes the old and brings on the new. And so we take communion to remember that it's through Jesus body that was given and his blood that was shed, that we can even be made new to begin with. So come up, grab a cup, take it back, and share in communion whenever you're ready.

God, we give this time to you. Do in us, Lord, what maybe you've been longing to do for a while. In Jesus name, Amen.