When God Gets His Pruning Knife Out on You — E.A. Johnston

Years ago, I was preaching a Wednesday evening revival institute at the Stephen Olford Center in Memphis, Tennessee, to a room full of pastors, and about halfway through my message, God showed up, and I could see their altered faces, their looks of concern.

One minute, they were smiling and at ease, and the next minute, they looked uneasy, as if they were standing on the very verge of eternity. But I don't put any credit on me or my message that night, but on the two men I brought with me who were sitting in the back of the room.

At the time, I had a weekly discipleship group meet at my home weekly on Tuesday evening, and I chose two of those men to accompany me to the Olford Preaching Institute that Wednesday evening, as I addressed that group of pastors.

And my instructions to these two men that I brought with me was not to pay any attention to me or my message that night, but to continually be in constant, earnest prayer for that group of ministers. I know Finney had much success when he brought Father Nash and Abel Clary with him to a town while they prayed and he preached, so I thought I'd give it a shot as well.

God's Pruning Knife in John 15

And while I spoke that night on John chapter 15 on a message I called God's Pruning Knife, as those two men stayed on that back row praying, God seemed pleased by His Spirit to disturb folks. And it wasn't long that those pastors were getting serious and doing business with God as God was dealing with each of them.

And when it was over, a line formed to grab my hand and to hug me. And I'll never forget, an elderly black pastor stood waiting to speak to me, and when it got up to me, he gave me a big hug and he looked me in the eye and he said, I've been a pastor for over 40 years, but tonight when I get home, I'm gonna get by my bed and pray, and I'm gonna ask God to get out His divine pruning knife on me and my ministry.

And this evening, friends, I'm gonna preach out of John chapter 15 on the divine pruning knife. I don't have my two prayer warriors with me, but I've prayed over this message. I've soaked it in prayer that God's Spirit will apply to your heart and do some probing heart surgery on you.

You can turn in your Bibles, friends, to John's gospel in chapter 15, which I call the pruning chapter. We will be in verses one through eight. It's a familiar passage of Scripture. The first verse reads, I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

Christ as the Genuine Vine

In the Greek language, this verse has deep import and deep impact, for it reads, I, in contradistinction to anyone else, am the genuine vine, and my Father is the tiller of the soil. Jesus here declares that only He is the real deal, the genuine article.

Everyone else are just fakes and frauds. As He is the Son of God, He is the real thing. In essence, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways. My ways, saith the Lord. Too many in our churches today have shrunken God down to our size and think He behaves just like us.

Why, I heard a pastor say, I can't wait to get to heaven, cause when I get there, I'm gonna run up to Jesus and shake His hand for all He's done for me. That seminary-trained pastor thinks he can just walk up to Jesus like he would a deacon in the church hallway and shake His hand.

Reverence Before the Risen Lord

I guess he's never read the passage in Revelation where the apostle John encounters the risen Lord and falls down before Him as if dead. No, this pastor's just gonna slap Jesus on the back like he's his golf buddy.

The Father's Vineyard in Isaiah 5

Then Jesus says, My Father is the tiller of the soil. Often in Scripture, we see God as a husbandman, the keeper of the vineyard, who exercises great care over His vineyard, which represents His people.

We see the vivid imagery of Isaiah chapter 5, which, by the way, friends, is the Old Testament backdrop for John chapter 15. In Isaiah, we read about God the Father as the tiller of the soil. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard?

My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill, and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein.

And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard, what could have done been more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?

Here we see the love and care of the Father over His people. He bought the ground, He prepared it, He planted it, He watered it, He exercised great concern for it, and constant care over it, and He had great expectations for it.

But what happened? Instead of luscious, nourishing grapes, it produces wild grapes, good for nothing. And this brings us, friends, directly back over to John chapter 15, where Jesus is describing an incredible scene of the true vine, and the tiller of the soil, and the branches who abide and produce much fruit.

Abiding in Christ for Lasting Fruit

That word abide in the Greek is the word mano. It means to stay, to remain, to dwell. It speaks of our utter dependence upon Christ. For even He states, for without me ye can do nothing. That means nothing worthwhile in regard to eternity.

Oh, we can do much today in the church on money and manpower, but it's all in the flesh, and those works will end up only in ashes of wood, hay, and straw. Only the believer who has the abiding life in Christ will produce the fruit that lasts and brings glory to the Father.

We read in verse 8, herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. The title of my message this evening, friends, is When God Gets His Pruning Knife Out on You, and we're going to zone in on the very heart of this chapter, and chew thoroughly on the meat, off the bone.

Pruning Away Self-Reliance for Greater Usefulness

I'm going to make a statement, and you can disagree with me if you want to, but if you do, you're just dead wrong. My statement is this, if you really want to be used of God, then you must submit to His divine pruning knife.

God's got to get His divine pruning knife out on you, just like that elderly pastor prayed by his bedside that night. He was getting serious with God, and we do too, because before God can use you more, He has to have more of you.

Do you believe that, brother pastor? If you want to have a ministry that has legs, that's going to crawl all up and down over the devil and disturb him, because you're pushing back his kingdom of darkness in your community through your anointed heart search and sermons, and your tear, travail, and prayer, and your bold witness against the sins of the land, then God's going to have to strip you down and prune you of all your self-reliance.

Mordecai Ham's biography is entitled, 50 Years on the Battlefront, and his life reads like a chapter out of the book of Acts. He knew the cost of fighting the devil on the front line of the battle, where the action is fierce and hot.

The main reason why many pastors never have much spiritual impact on eternity is because they prefer to hide in the fourth ranks, where it's safer, predictable, and more comfortable, rather than stick their necks out on the front line, where it can get chopped off, where the heat of the battle is fought tooth and nail.

Suffering and the Cost of a Fruitful Ministry

If you have a ministry that's on the front line of the battlefield, you'll get your battle scars for sure, but you will also push back the darkness in your community, set some prisoners free by pointing them to a bloodstained Christ who has power to save, but you're going to have to die to your reputation, because if you want more of Jesus, be prepared to have more of his cross.

Philippians 3 .10 declares that I know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death. In other words, if you want to experience the power of his resurrection, then you must be prepared to experience the fellowship of his sufferings, and that's plural.

The risen Lord told Ananias concerning Paul, for I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake. Do you want your ministry to read like a chapter from the book of Acts? Then pay attention to Paul's laundry list of uselessness, as from 2 Corinthians 11, beginning in verse 23, in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes, save one.

Thrice I was beat with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, besides those things that are without that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.

The Pruning Process and Spiritual Fruitfulness

Well, that's quite a list, friends. This whole issue of usefulness to God is a very serious matter that demands our attention in a day of apathy and lazy Christianity and compromise in the church. This striking passage of Scripture, seen in John chapter 15, centers on our usefulness to God by our abiding in Him through an intimate love relationship with Jesus and how if we want to be more useful to Him in a life of fruitfulness, then we must submit to His divine pruning knife in our life.

Verse 2 declares, Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he purgeth it, that means prunes it, that it may bring forth much fruit. I know in my own life, friends, what cost counts and what counts costs.

I know that revival is not only possible, it's probable. As long as we are expendable, and as much I know, God builds His servants through His divine process of reducing and decreasing by His pruning knife, and gold must be reduced to its purity in the furnace of affliction.

A branch must be trimmed back, stripped, and decreased before it can grow more fruit. If we desire further usefulness to God, then we must submit both to the refiner's fire and the divine pruning knife.

We must be willing to be reduced to nothing so He can be everything through us. This is real spiritual fruit that remains. It's not what we do for Christ that lasts as much as it is what He does through us.

We are only the fruit bearers of His power laid in sap that runs through a clear and empty channel. Well, I hope this little message, friends, has been of some help to you. You may want to take this time now to get alone to a quiet place and get down on your knees and get serious with God.

Ask Him to give you the grace to go deeper with Him in a life of more usefulness to Him. That you have come to the place where you desire His searching spotlight of His Spirit to probe you and prune you and mold you in His nail-pierced hands.

All for His glory and His kingdom. Let us pray.