The Character of God as Agriculturalist: Pruning the branches

YHVH describes Himself in so many ways throughout the scriptures, and many of them involve agriculture. Hebrew society was largely agrarian — even city people generally had gardens and vines and animals, and so the agricultural references in parables and allegories were able to be grasped by the children of Israel.

During the ministry of Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), indeed in the teachings of many of the rabbis of that time period, it was a common thing to relate Kingdom principles using agricultural themes. From the beginning, we see Cain and Abel working the soil and keeping sheep, Noah was a vintner, Abraham was a shepherd (as was Isaac and the sons of Jacob, King David and the prophet Amos), Elisha worked his father’s fields until Elijah laid the mantle upon him. The Pharisees tithed their mint and cumin because they had gardens. Even King Ahab was a vine grower.

These were not, as we largely are, ignorant people when it came to the natural world. They knew the times of the harvest. They knew about the barley, the wheat, the olives that were pressed into oil, and they knew about the grape harvest. They knew that sheep and goats did not live in barns (unlike some believers I have come across). They knew about fruit trees and the importance of the early and late rains. They knew about plowing and sowing and reaping. They knew the difference between the vine, the thick woody “trunk,” and the branches, the more delicate appendages, of the grape. They knew about grafting and why it was done. They knew the difference between wheat and chaff and knew how dangerous a tare was.They had the knowledge base that too many of us guess at, with our citified assumptions, often getting it woefully wrong and therefore misinterpreting the scriptures entirely in some areas.

One of the things they knew about was the importance of the pruning process. We often think that bigger is better and that the more irons we have in the fire, the better. We look at big beautiful branches, busting with leaves and new tendrils, and we think fertility — but we would be entirely wrong. One beneficial thing I did in college for my general education requirement was taking a class in viticulture, which is a fancy latin term for the science of the production and study of grapes. Of course, I just took it for the heck of it, but it unwittingly taught me about the Bible long before I ever desired to read it.

As I mentioned before. most people think that the grape vines are the thin branches that the actual grapes grow on, largely because when people think of the word vine, things like ivy come to mind. But the vine is actually the woody trunk growing up out of the ground, which Yeshua likened to Himself. Out of that grows the branches, which He likened to ourselves. It would behoove us, therefore, to learn all about how to be fruitful branches, and what that looks like, and what must happen for a branch to bear maximum fruit — because it doesn’t happen naturally.

Left to themselves, branches will grow entirely wild. Untrained, they will fall to the ground, produce copious amounts of leaves, and produce very little fruit, and poor quality fruit at that. The branches must be lifted up, secured, and heavily pruned. A branch that spends all of it’s nutrients producing leaves and new branches will have no energy left over to produce grapes. It is the job of the vine dresser to understand what leaves and branches need to stay and which need to go, in order to provide optimal photosynthesis, and in order to direct the energy into producing fruit instead of more leaves and branches.

If I was going to compare it to something modern, I would compare it to writing a book. Have you ever read a book that could have been two chapters long but ended up as twenty? Or saw a movie that had ten minutes worth of plot strung out over three hours? Flowery language, unnecessary side trips, and oftentimes inane dialog that served no purpose other than to show off, or perhaps please a publisher who wanted a minimum number of words. More is not always better, and is often worse (I will mention Tom Bombadill here as proof). If the reader gets exasperated after page 20, then the whole purpose of the book is defeated. That’s where editors come in — getting rid of all the absurdities that do not serve the purpose of the book. It gets shortened, clarified, streamlined — it gets the point across without losing the reader in the process.

We are like those over-leafy branches and we are like those frustratingly verbose books. We need editing so that we can produce fruit. We need the unimportant and unfruitful things eliminated from our lives. We need to lose those well-intentioned time and resource eaters that are keeping us from what we are supposed to be doing and learning. We need those fleshy attitudes and wrong understandings eliminated from our characters and minds.

Interesting thing is this — we can’t see for ourselves what needs to stay and what needs to go. You notice that in John 15, it is the Father who is called the pruner of vines — and not ourselves. Imagine Him with His pruning shears on the outside, running His hand along the branch, inspecting each juncture and deciding what needs to remain and what needs to be cut away. On the other hand, we are in the dark under a wild mass of tendrils and huge green leaves — honestly, we wouldn’t even know where to begin the process. We have one job and one job only — to desire to be fruitful and to be willing to go through whatever it takes to get there. If we desire that, fruitfulness, we will yield the fate of our superfluous foliage to His best judgement. We will let Him cut off the things we don’t need, even when we want them, and we will allow things to remain, even when we don’t want them.

Pruning the branches doesn’t happen once, but year after year after year because the branches always want to grow more leaves than they need to, especially when the vine is good and the soil rich, the water and sun plentiful. We never outgrow the vine dresser, we never stop needing to be trained, secured, judged and pruned. And we will never, ever become able to dress our own vine — but if we are faithful and patient and wise, we will learn to hear the Master’s footsteps, and yield to the process.

Developing Godly Character Pt 7: Rejoicing with those who rejoice

You might think this would be the easiest part of “loving your neighbor” (Lev 19:18) to follow, and if you thought that, you would very much be wrong for a great many people — including myself.

Two weeks ago, I covered the flip side of the Romans 12:15 “weeping with those who weep,” taking advantage of the death of Robin Williams and many of the distressing rebukes I saw leveled at those who were saddened at his passing. In a nutshell, it is not for us to judge the grief of another person, not ours to degrade their sorrow or cause them to feel guilty for it, but to simply mourn with them. It is an application of the commandment that requires we be selfless, and oftentimes one that means we shut our mouths for a while. It can be an extraordinarily difficult way to show love to someone.

Just as difficult is the directive to rejoice with those who rejoice, because we are very selfish people, by and large. I am utterly amazed at those people who are able to rejoice with others, even in the midst of their own tragedies. But until we are able to rejoice on the inside and on the outside, it really only amounts to politeness. Here’s the reality —

When you are barren, it feels like a knife in your heart when you find out your friend is pregnant again.

When you are single and alone, it’s hard to listen to tales of your friend’s exciting new romance.

When your child is in a wheelchair, it’s hard to listen to your friend go on and on about Johnny’s football scholarship.

When your child has an IQ of 79, it’s hard seeing all those honor roll stickers.

When you’re hungry, it’s hard listening to people who are well fed talk about the feast they had last night.

You get the picture.

And yet — we want for everyone to have those blessings. We don’t want for people to be barren, alone, disabled, hungry, thirsty or homeless. So really what holds us back from our rejoicing is our ingratitude for our portion. We have our own wonderful things in life that we rejoice about, and we want people to rejoice with us and often don’t even see the disconnect. We rejoice about what we have and weep about what we do not have — and then instead of rejoicing and weeping appropriately with others, we rejoice about what they are rejoicing about if we have it too, and only weep about what they are weeping about if we can relate.

What does this mean? It means that the weeping and rejoicing become an extension of ourselves instead of an extension of Messiah within us. Does Messiah rejoice over new life, does He rejoice when people are healthy, well fed, safe and sheltered? Doesn’t He mourn when we lack what is good? To faithfully walk out His character requires a heart change, and a pause to take effect before we act — “does the sadness and resentment I feel reflect the heart of my King, or simply my own flesh?” Is God offended that my friend has a large, healthy, happy family with food on the table? Of course not, and so I know that attitude must come from within myself, from a place of evil and not good.

You see, sometimes we simply exist in emotion without properly examining that emotion. I am barren. I do not want anyone to be barren. It grieves my heart when someone knows that pain. The flip side of that should logically be that I am thrilled when someone is fertile. But emotions are not logical, and will never come into alignment with the will and Spirit of God until we challenge them and force them to conform. I must constantly remind myself that if I say that I hate barrenness and infertility, and yet hate it when a friend is fertile, then I am a liar in the deepest sense. Not to mention a hypocrite!

It is resentment, pure and simple, which gets in the way of rejoicing with my King over the blessings He has bestowed on others, as well as ingratitude for the many things He has given to me. And it is a good thing to know that.

It is also a good thing to be deprived of the desires of our heart. I was contemplating this morning, how terrible it would be to have everything I have ever desired, because then the evil within me would exist in secret — poisoning myself and others. There would be nothing to drive it to the surface where I could see it, and I would live a life of smug self-righteousness, believing that my blessings were the result of my deservedness instead of His grace. I have seen people who have absolutely everything, who have never faced serious challenges, and I am incredibly grateful not to be among them. Because someday I am going to be able to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice, and it’s going to be real. I won’t have to fake it, and I will know that I am changed more into the image of my King.

Developing Godly Character Pt 6: Passing the Division Test

So, back in 2006, YHVH told me something I have never forgotten, even if I have not understood it.

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“Do not suffer to be divided from anyone on the basis of anything other than Christ and Him crucified.”

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Now, I thought that simply meant that whether I liked it or not, I was bound to all other believers in Yeshua the Messiah. But that wasn’t what He said. I know because this week He has been telling me exactly what He meant —

“Don’t you dare think you have the right to be divisive. Messiah is divisive, you don’t get to be, you don’t have the right to presumptuously divide the Body based on what you do and do not like, do and do not agree with.”

I had this dream a few days ago, and it really upset me. I had a test in my hand, and on it were long division problems that I knew were complicated, and I didn’t want to do them, and I in fact refused to do them. Well, I woke up quite upset and asked a friend — how can I pass a test that I refuse to take? I could have done all that division, why didn’t I just take the test? I love math tests!

Her response, “Sounds to me like you aren’t willing to be divisive.”

Oh. A pun. I was so determine to see the dream as an indictment of myself that I missed the pun, which is one of my first rules for interpreting dreams — look for puns and plays on words. Yes, it was a test, and I recognized that the situation was complicated and I refused to be divisive. It was after that, that the Word from YHVH came back to me and I finally understood it.

You see, there will be division in the Body, and people will divide from me based on this or that thing — and that’s on them. They might decide they disapprove of my saying Yehovah instead of Yahuah or Yahweh, and they might divide themselves from me even if only in their hearts, They might disapprove of my keeping the first sliver calendar, and they might divide from me, even if only in their heart. They might come up with reasons why they figure I do it and then judge me based on those reasons. And that’s on them. That is their choice, to be divisive. They may never say anything, but even if they put up an internal wall against me based on these issues, they have acted divisively.

Did you know that the second day of Creation was the only day where nothing was called good? On that day, only division happened. At the heart of any division problem is the denominator, which is not the number that is divided, but the number which divides. It has the same root word as the word “denomination” and it is not unique to Christianity. Judaism and the Messianic movement also have many denominations. Sadly, I have found that these denominations result because we do not want to focus on the major issues, but instead get hung up on the minors – generally the things we can’t prove, things that are either mentioned only once or eluded to or which are not based on scripture at all.

And that is the very heart of division at the personal level. If I want you to agree with me more than I want to find out how to agree with God, then that is simply a form of idolatry. Perhaps we could strive to humbly look at people and say, “I wonder why they believe that?” instead of “How can they believe that!” They believe because they believe — and as my dream said, it’s complicated.

I have spent too many years being wrong on things now to waste my time dividing over issues I may not fully understand. We have all been desperately wrong about so much, and we will always be wrong about things.

Matt 10:34 – 36 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

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So we should not suffer to be divided from anyone based on anything other than Messiah, and Him crucified. Let Him create His own divisions. He brought the sword, and on that night in the garden, Messiah showed us what happens when we wield our own swords without waiting for His permission — He ends up having to fix the mess we create.
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Luke 22:49-51 When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.

Division will come to us, it doesn’t need our invitation. There will always be plenty of people who bring it to the table — who say, “You can’t worship with us if you believe or say such and such.” And that’s fine, they brought the division, and we honor that division by acknowledging it and separating ourselves from them. But we are not to cause it ourselves.

Titus 3:9-11 But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretick (aihretikos, meaning schismatic, divisive) after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

At the end of the age, the wheat will be separated from the tares and the sheep from the goats, by Yeshua. Until then, we are to avoid divisive people and by definition, refuse to be divisive ourselves over this or that pet doctrine. Rejecting a divisive person is not causing division, it is quite simply acknowledging and protecting ourselves from the sin of it.

Developing Godly Character Pt 5: The Virtue of Doubt

The importance of being Thomas.

Doubt is a virtue. That is difficult for anyone to swallow who has grown up singing The Hymn of Joy lyric “drive the dark of doubt away” and has listened to countless slurs against one of my favorite apostles — Thomas. You know, the one they call “doubting Thomas.” But when I teach about Thomas, I don’t teach about doubt, I teach about trust and the importance of knowing exactly who it is you are following.

It seems that assuming the worst of Thomas has become established church doctrine, but this was a man who was chosen by Yeshua (Jesus) to be a disciple. This was a man who willingly walked into a situation he knew might mean death when Yeshua went to raise Lazarus even though there were men waiting and scheming to kill Him, and he encouraged the other disciples to follow Him to Bethany too.

John 11:16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

And yet, we are told not to be like Thomas, we are told not to doubt, not to question. But what are the reasons we are told not to doubt and not to question? Moses told us to doubt. In Deuteronomy 13, he said that even if a person says things that come to pass, and even if they perform signs and wonders but they depart from the Word of God in telling people to worship contrary to it, that they are not to be believed. That is a commandment to doubt even when faced with the evidence of signs and miracles!

Yeshua spent chapter 24 of Matthew telling His disciples to doubt, because false prophets and false messiahs would rise up. Paul warned of false teachers and false doctrines. The prophets warned of false priests and false teachings. Throughout the scriptures we are actively taught to doubt for one important reason — to make sure that we are following the correct Messiah, the correct God. The scriptures exist to teach us His character (and by extension, what our character should be) — what God approves of and does not approve of, what we are to believe and what we are not to believe, what to put our faith in and what not to pt our faith in, what to run towards and what to run from. Scriptures tell us what to doubt, which is why it is vitally important that we do not downplay any portion of scripture. The Word is eternal, and the LORD, YHVH does not change (Mal 3:6). He was, is and is coming (Rev 1:8). He is the same today, yesterday and forever (Heb 13:8).

Thomas had undoubtedly learned the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) growing up in the synagogue each Sabbath, as well as the Prophets. From Moses he knew the dangers of following a false prophet, a false Messiah. Thomas had also been taught Torah and the prophets by Yeshua, day after day, as they ministered to the Jews. He knew Yeshua, he knew His voice, he knew His teachings. He knew the sound of His footsteps, and very possibly the sound of His snoring. He knew what Yeshua sounded like when He laughed and when He cried and when He was angry. Thomas was there when Yeshua said this

Matthew 24:26 So if they say to you, ‘Behold, He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, or, ‘Behold, He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe them

So when the other disciples came to him saying, “We have seen the LORD,” don’t you think Thomas remembered what Yeshua Himself had warned? Was it not simply obedience to doubt when people started telling him exactly what he had been warned they would tell him? In light of that, his pronouncement of “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe,” is not to be taken as a lack of faith, but instead as an indication that this disciple who had walked and talked and eaten and suffered with Messiah for so long was not willing to risk believing and following anyone except Yeshua!

Thomas knew Yeshua, and once we truly come to know Him, we are not so willing to follow anyone else. We doubt, we question, we push and strive to find out if it is really and truly Yeshua we are following — instead of simply believing and therefore following our Pastor, our denomination, the “Church Fathers,” or our favorite Christian author. We cannot afford to make the mistake of following after mere men, because we were afraid to doubt. In the garden Eve doubted. She should have doubted the snake, but instead she doubted what God had said to Adam. Doubt in its proper context is life. Unfortunately, snakes will always try and get us to doubt all the things we should not doubt so that we won’t doubt the things we should. And sadly, not all snakes know that they are snakes. Therefore we must never be afraid to doubt, to test everything so that we can hold on to what is holy (I Thess 5:21). Test what is being preached, test the doctrines, test the traditions. Yeshua is the Living Word of God, and therefore He is the Living embodiment of every single Word of scripture — to follow Him we must follow the Word, we must know it. Those who do not desire to know the Word even though they have ready access to it, do not really desire to know Him.

But Thomas knew the Word of God, and he was only willing to believe and follow that Word. Thomas knew intimately the character of Yeshua and Thomas knew he could not afford to follow anyone but Yeshua.

So we have heard Preachers slur Thomas in an attempt to get us to shut up and accept what they teach. But what did our Master say in response to Thomas’ doubts?

John 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless (apistos), but believing (pistos). 28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

Thomas was not rebuked, nor was Thomas called faithless (I hate it when KJV takes the negative of the same greek word and makes an entirely different word out of it) — he was simply invited to do something that would remove his disbelief. The other disciples had already believed because they saw and verified, and now Thomas was rewarded for his doubts. Rewarded? Yes, I can think of no other word to describe the privilege of touching our Master’s hand and side. Would you not ask a thousand questions if at the end it meant you could touch Messiah? If it meant that you could know the intimacy of that depth of relationship?

Thomas was given that gift because he was not willing to follow and believe anyone except Yeshua — not even his closest companions. Thomas had his eyes set on the things of God and not on men. He remembered the warning of his Master and followed it even when it meant doubting his fellow disciples.

Thomas passed the test, and as a reward — he touched Yeshua. And when we strive and battle and question in order to make sure we are following the correct Messiah — that touches Yeshua too.

Relational Sanity: Wisdom in Restoration

True restoration in relationships cannot come without an honest appraisal of what that relationship truly is.

Oftentimes, when there has been an matter of betrayal or disloyalty, there is a push by people on the outskirts of the issue towards “full reconciliation and restoration” but I believe that something important needs to take place first.

I believe that before there can be a restoration, before reconciliation (meaning “friendly relations”) is truly possible, one needs to take a good hard look at the relationship and see it for what it is because sometimes we really do not have much of a relationship at all and when we go back in to it, we have to go back in realizing that.

The restoration of a casual relationship is going to be entirely different than the restoration of a familial or marital relationship. If I am friends with someone who I give my all to, and they repeatedly show me that they have absolutely no regard for me, then I may need to restore the actual, shallow relationship, and not the one I wish existed. And there is nothing wrong with identifying the shallow relationships in our lives — in fact, doing so protects us from bitterness and anger. After all, we cannot force someone to feel more for us than they do, and we don’t really have a right to. We also cannot force them to be loyal, or kind, or to do what is right. We cannot keep them from betraying us, or slandering us, or sinning against us — only love can do that and we have no control over whether or not someone loves us.

So restore the relationship as it exists, not the fairy-tale one. If a generally wonderful person screws up, and is genuinely repentant, then that is a case for restoring them to where they were. But if we are simply ignoring the fact that we are in a non-existent relationship (meaning no exchange, no mutual give and take), then restoring that relationship to our fairy tale idea is not restoration, but instead elevation. And there is nothing I can think of in scripture telling us to pretend that there is more to a relationship than there is.

There are people in this world that are impossible to have genuine relationships with — gossips, slanderers, bullies, people who are quick to assume the worst, people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, adulterers, etc. And it is okay to recognize that without feeling guilty about it. It’s okay to say, “I forgive you and I see that we really don’t have a relationship here. I thought we did, but looking back I see no evidence of a real relationship and so I am not going to pretend. I wish you well, but we have no basis for intimacy.”

We do not owe a relationship to those who do not have a relationship with us. That’s how the Body of Messiah gets into trouble, with dead-end relationships that require not just forgiveness but compromise. And the compromise is always at the expense of the person who is on the giving end. It’s the cheap grace version of restoration — hyper-restoration, if you will. But hyper-restoration is dishonest, and we cannot afford to be dishonest in our relationships, we have to see them for what they are.

Now, are we to be long-suffering with those who are actively escaping sin and trying and fail and are genuine in their repentance? Of course, that is grace in action, that is true grace. But there can be no true fellowship between two people when one of them has absolutely no desire for relational accountability, no desire to see themselves as wrong, only a desire to justify themselves and take from whoever will give.

So, when there has been a breach, look at the relationship carefully. Forgive the person. Look at the other person carefully. Ask the Father to show you the reality of the relationship. Then carefully restore the person to THAT relationship, the real one. In this way, you can deal with them as they are and not as you wish they were, with no illusions and no unrealistic expectations.

Forgiveness means seeing who a person is and not holding it against them. Restoration means recognizing exactly who they are and having the appropriate level of relationship in light of that.

Look at it this way — you have a piece of solid oak furniture, and even if it gets dented and stripped of its finish in some places, it’s still oak and can be restored. But if it’s just particleboard, you have to recognize that it is particleboard and hope, but not expect, that the particleboard will want to be oak and start doing the work to swap out its own parts. The relationship you can have with a piece of oak furniture is not the same as the relationship you can have with particleboard, and that’s a fact. And it’s okay to recognize it. It’s not okay to keep depending on the particleboard to respond like oak and then be bitter when it fails.