WEEK TWO: PREPARE FOR THE PROMISE

According to a mayoclinic.org article from May 6, 2022, “robotic surgery, also called robot-assisted surgery, allows doctors to perform many types of complex procedures with more precision, flexibility and control than is possible with conventional techniques.” This allows for smaller incisions, shorter hospital stays, and quicker recovery times. “The most widely used clinical robotic surgical system includes a camera arm and mechanical arms with surgical instruments attached to them. The surgeon controls the arms while seated at a computer console near the operating table. The console gives the surgeon a high-definition, magnified, 3D view of the surgical site.”  Because of this advance in technology, the National Institutes of Health report that robotic surgery has risen from only 1.8% of surgeries done robotically in 2012 to 15.1% in 2018. However, regardless of how the surgery was done, it is still a surgery. Something had to be cut away.

In the gospel of John chapter 15 verse 2, Jesus talks about branches that are cut away from the vine or, in other words, are pruned.  This cutting process is necessary in plants to help them be more productive when it comes to the fruit they produce. But Jesus isn’t just talking about plants. He is talking about our lives becoming more like him.

In every one of our lives, there are things that shouldn’t be there. And there are other things that aren’t necessarily bad, but they just get in our way of producing the most and best fruit we can. God wants to prune each of our lives so that the “dead” things can be removed and the things in our lives that are fruitful can become more fruitful. Unfortunately, sometimes what God wants to trim away is exactly what we want to hold on to. We see his pruning somehow as a punishment, but it is anything but that. He prunes away the good to give us the great! He removes the unnecessary to give us the necessary and to increase our kingdom impact, making us more effective at what he has given us to do.

But it is our choice. We can hold onto those things that are dead or nonproductive. We can choose to keep doing instead of becoming what God wants us to become. Just like the surgeon using the robot, God will precisely remove—prune away—what shouldn’t be there and repair what needs to be fixed, if we will only let him. The hard work is not what or how much you can do for God, but rather about what God wants to do in you.