Topic: Pruned For Progress – Streams Of Joy International Daily Devotional By Pastor Jerry Uchechukwu Eze 24 September 2021

Topic: Pruned For Progress – Streams Of Joy International Daily Devotional By Pastor Jerry Uchechukwu Eze 24 September 2021

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Pruned For Progress

Scripture Reading: Psalm 52: 1-9

Focus

“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God…” (Psalm 52: 8)

According to agriculturists, the olive tree can live for long productive years, if it regularly undergoes pruning. Pruning is what a farmer does to his crops to make them yield better. Pruning involves cutting off unproductive parts of a plant in order to stop a drain of nutrients. Pruning ensures that productivity is increased, enhanced and sustained on regular basis. Pruning is what we do to a plant to ensure that it remains relevant to us.

Friend, hear God’s word to you: if you desire to grow green like the olive tree, God needs to prune you. God needs to cut down the unwanted areas of your life so that you can become all that He has destined you to be. God needs to cut down the parts of you that are draining what He put in you. God needs to cut off everything in you that has the capacity to minimize what He has put in you. God needs to prune you for greatness to emerge.

Any man who will be useful to God and to his generation, must be pruned into greatness. Any person who wants to remain progressive and productive must intentionally cut off what is no longer needed. You may have been productive whilst retaining areas of your life that are negative or counterproductive; but in this season, let God prune you for the sake of results that are ahead.

Look inwards and ask God to prune you for the next level. Ask Him to help you break away from unproductive relationships, wrong habits, wrong attitudes, etc. that you don’t need. Ask God to prune you from sin, immorality, inconsistency, prayerlessness, inefficiency, incompetence, etc. Ask God to cut down every part of you that is about to cut short your advancement and productivity in your new season.

Pruning may seem to reduce a tree physically, but it makes that same tree more relevant. As God prunes you, you will grow into the full stature of what He designed for you. God’s pruning may leave you with fewer friends, it may make you look different, but it will also set you on a higher pedestal for impact and relevance.

Don’t retain what needs to be cut off. Don’t retain what reduces your productivity. Don’t yield today and wither tomorrow. Allow God to prune you, and you will have lasting relevance.