February is a good month to prune muscadine vines. Last summer we had gorgeous foliage, but little fruit. This will be the third year of growth since planting, so with the pruning, I am expecting fruit next summer and fall. I went online and paid close attention to Professor You Tube, who gave me everything I needed to know how to correctly prune the vines for maximum fruition, along with instruction for fertilization.
God has set things up with a seedtime and harvest principle of times and seasons (Genesis 8:22). On one side of the coin we have the operation of the times, seasons, and dispensations of God. On the other side of the coin we have man’s responsibility of commitment and obedience to what God has already given and set in motion. Jesus said no man can come to the Father except the Father draw him. He also said come unto me and I will give you rest. Paul recognized the dispensations of God’s operations, but he also said “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). In our lives, there is a season of growth and “foliage”, then, there is a season in which there is some “pruning” so we will produce the fruit God is looking for. There was a move of God pruning our lives at OBU and at Asbury University in 1970. There was some lasting fruit from that season. 53 years later there is another season of pruning that is taking place. For anyone anywhere who will truly seek God, believe his Word for cleansing and empowerment, and yield your life to the Holy Spirit, you will encounter God. He will trim away last year’s branches that bore their fruit. But now, it is a new season for new growth and new and supernatural fruit. The season we are in is a season to get rid of the old ways that are not according to the Word and Spirit of God. We are to be living in the power of the gospels and the book of Acts. This is God’s Spirit-inspired record and guide for us to follow so that we might bear the fruit the Father desires to be born in the earth today. It is time to lay aside Saul’s armor of religious protocol, and just take the sling of the Spirit and the smooth stone of the Word of God, and lay the flesh and the devil on the ground and march forward under God’s direction, to supernaturally take the land before us. The world needs Jesus. He must be presented in the power of the Holy Ghost, the supernatural power of the Spirit of God just as he is in the gospels and the early church. Our religious vine must be pruned so God’s power and God’s energy gets the job done. Believers need the reality of the resurrected Jesus. Seek. Believe. Yield. God will fill and guide. Supernatural fruit will be born.