Have you ever had to deadhead your rose bushes? What is that, you ask? It is the act of pruning the faded blooms off the bushes.  Pruning roses serves two purposes. First, it causes them to produce more flowers and second, it keeps them from going wild. A while back it occurred to me that the Christian life is a lot like those rose bushes. In order for a rose bush to produce more flowers you have to remove all the dead roses from the bush. In much the same way, God gets a Christian to produce more Christlikeness when the dead weights and sins are pruned from a believer's life.

 Hebrew 12:1 puts it this way: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." As we walk through our Christian lives, we should be ever pruning the dead weight of sin and hinderances that we collect in life that can slow down our walk with Christ. When we fail to do this ourselves, God the Father does it for us. We see this in the parable Jesus gave in Luke 13 :6-9: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bears fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.” We should always remember that, while pruning may not feel good at the time, it makes us more like our Lord. Anything that stands in the way of serving Christ can become an idol in our lives. Idols must be removed if we are to make progress in our Christian lives.

We understand that sin must be removed, but sometimes things that are not sin can also hinder our Christian growth. Our choices of friends, entertainment, and extra-curricular activities can become hindrances to our Christian walk.  While the dead roses are a part of the bush, they need to come off in order for the bush to produce more new roses. Likewise, every weight and sin in our lives must be removed in order for us to grow in grace and in the likeness of Christ. Either we lay aside every weight and sin, or God the Father gets out his pruning shears and goes to work on us.

God’s pruning in our lives is designed to get us to be more like Jesus and to produce more fruit in our lives for God’s Kingdom. This pruning, called judgment or chastisement, may not be pleasant at the time, but it produces the "peaceful fruit of righteousness" in our lives. As the pruning of the rose bush causes the bush to produce more beautiful roses, God's pruning of our lives produces more fruit to His glory--or judgment if we fail or refuse to benefit from the Father’s pruning. 

Daily confession and repentance of sin, and the renewing of our minds in the Word of God can help us avoid the necessity of God's pruning hand in our lives.  For, as 1 Corinthians 11:31 says “if we judge ourselves, we should not be judged.”