Believing Lies Can Corrupt Our Relationship To the True Vine
One of the most frustrating pests for a gardener is the squash vine borer. This nuisance lives up to its name by burrowing into the vine leaving in its wake sawdust like excrement.The difficulty in managing this pest lies with actually catching it before it can do its damage.
Usually, this requires an attentive eye right about the time that you go out of town!
Frustrating your efforts for a good harvest, the squash bug lays its eggs on the underside of the leaves of any type of squash and if not caught, the vine is decimated leaving the plant no way to feed developing fruit or the leaves the water that it needs for photosynthesis.
The bugs remove the sap from the plant and cause it to collapse. I have done my fair share of trying to save vines that have been corrupted by this destructive critter to no avail.
I have picked off eggs, injected nematodes and taped vines in hopes that my efforts would save the plant so that it could flourish but to my chagrin, I have never seen much come of my toil.
Just like the life of the fruit is dependent upon the vine of the squash staying intact, so our lives rely on the true vine which is Christ.
We must stay connected to the vine to grow and thrive and produce fruit!
The Father is the husbandman of the vine, and He cuts off the branches that don't produce good fruit in our lives.
...and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
He does this because He loves us and His desire is for our lives to produce good fruit.
Because we are His sons and daughters, he does what all good Fathers do, He disciplines us!
Hebrews 12:5-11
"My son, do not regard lightly
the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him,
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives."
It is for discipline that you have to endure.
God is treating you as sons.
For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
If you are left without discipline,
in which all have participated,
then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers
who disciplined us and we respected them.
Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time
as it seemed best to them,
but he disciplines us for our good,
that we may share his holiness.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,
but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who have been trained by it.
The point is good fruit production! This hits home today as I write this because my middle son was just caught in an ongoing sin of lying.
He was deceptive for an extended period of time but by the grace and mercy of God, today He cut off that branch of deception that had the potential, like the squash vine borer, to severe his relationship with the true vine.
Our relationship has been corrupted by deceit and now trust needs to be reestablished but through this process I know that God will be glorified.
Many persistent pests in our hearts can burrow into our relationship with the Vine and cause us to not hear or receive what He is saying to us for our growth and development.
We don't often agree to look on the underside of our hearts to find the eggs laid there by the enemy.
We don't often realize that the thoughts of the culture that are tended to by what we feed on have a bearing on our view of God.
Jesus is the TRUE vine but the world tries to get us to buy into the lie that there are other life giving vines.
Are we buying into a false gospel? Galatians 1:8 NLT says;
Let God's curse fall on anyone,
including us or even an angel from heaven,
who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you.
It is possible that seeds of deceit have been planted in the tender hidden parts of our hearts.
Isaiah 59:5 alludes to the destructive nature of eggs laid by the enemy and how sin is a deceptive trickster that leads to death.
but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face
from you so that he does not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness.
Not one enters suit justly;
now one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas,
the speak lies,
they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
They hatch adders' eggs;
they weave the spider's web;
he who eats the eggs dies,
and from on that is crushed a viper is hatched.
Gill's Exposition of the text highlights how wrong thinking can lead to a web that can entangle our minds and ultimately disrupt the sound doctrine of the true VINE.
They hatch cockatrice eggs, and weave the spider's web,.... Invent false doctrines according to their own fancies, which may seem fair and plausible, but are poisonous and pernicious; as the "eggs of the cockatrice", which may look like, and may be taken for, the eggs of creatures fit to eat; and spin out of their brains a fine scheme of things, but which are as thin, and as useless, and unprofitable, as "the spider's web"; and serve only to ensnare and entangle the minds of men, and will not stand before the word of God which sweeps them away at once; particularly of this kind is the doctrine of justification by the works of men, which are like the spider's web, spun out of its own bowels; so these are from themselves, as the doctrine of them is a device of man, and is not of God:
Lord, help us to not buy into the lies of the culture that would have us paint a god in our own image but help us to continually look for eggs of deception that have the potential to ensnare our minds and sever our relationship with the TRUE VINE.
May we always be connected to You and thriving in truth as we go to Your word may You illuminate the truth of the good news so that we will not be deceived by the culture or our own thinking.
We know that You are a good good Father and if we need discipline let us remember that you discipline those You love and You are not a overbearing Father that is angry but Your desire is that we stay connected to You through our living and thriving relationship with Christ!
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