A new lesson learned from our garden at our country home is about \”Pruning Your Fruit Tree.\”

What I\’ve learned is that before you begin to prune a tree, you must first walk up to that tree, look at that tree, look at how the tree is growing, analyze the tree by looking at the branches, etc.  Then you want to see which branch is the main stem because the main stem of the tree is where all the other branches get their power from.  When you begin to cut, you want to first cut at an angle, giving it a nice cut so that when it rains, the rain will not land on the exposed branch and cause it to be infected or cause some type of fungus.

What I\’ve learned in my life is that you have to consistently analyze your growth in Christ. You have to consistently analyze who\’s around you. You have to question, \’Who\’s growing around you?\’ and \’Are they growing around you in the proper way?\’  When a fruit tree grows, it wants to grow outward. God told us to go out and teach all nations as specifically noted in the Bible in the book of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 19 & 20; \”Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.\”

When fruit trees properly grow, they grow outward, not inward.  We don\’t want any branches growing inward toward the crown. We want that crown to be free to give the power to the fruit tree and branches.

What I have learned is that sometimes there are people in your life that will want to grow in your life. But maybe they\’ve given you gifts like money, or types of worldly support that you really count on. When you compare that with the lesson of pruning a fruit tree, sometimes you may walk up to the fruit tree and think, \’Man. I\’ve got to cut this branch off because it\’s about to produce a lot of fruit.\’  But if it\’s not growing in the right way nor in the right direction, you\’ve got to prune that fruit tree branch off. If you don\’t cut it while the tree is young, fragile and still growing and decide to wait 10 – 15 years, that branch that you should have cut off – but didn\’t – can really damage the tree. It can kill the whole tree and now you\’ve wasted 15 years with that tree and now it\’s about to die because you let that branch grow in a way that\’s detrimental to the growth of the tree.

I say all of that to say this: When you go through life, there\’s going to be some people that you have to cut off and you have to cut them off early.  If you don\’t, it\’s going to be harder and harder and harder and harder to cut them off in the years.

For ladies, who are dating that guy for years and years and years, shacking up, having pre-marital sex and you keep doing it, it\’s going to be harder to cut that guy off years and years and years down the line because you may now have babies – now producing fruit like the fruit tree. It\’s going to be harder because now you don\’t want to cut that branch off due to the fruit produced (babies/children) from the fruit of your womb.

For men, vice-versa in the same way.

We\’ve got to understand when we grow in Christ, we need to analyze ourselves and analyze our growth and who\’s growing around us.  We need to ask ourselves are they going to be detrimental or are they going to help us grow outward in Christ.

That\’s what I learned with \’Pruning the fruit tree\’ and that is the title of this message. I hope that you all are Blessed. I pray that you all whom are seeking a country home, to really do it now because these lessons are very, very uplifting; because we want to grow out and spread out as a fruit tree.  We don\’t want to be crowded in the cities because in order for us to grow (like for a fruit tree to grow) we need space.  In order for us to bear fruit, we need to cut off those limbs that are detrimental to the tree: limbs meaning worldly people or whomever it may be in your life that\’s not helping you grow towards Christ or bear the Gospel truth which is the fruit.  We are preparing to receive the fruit of the tree of life when Jesus comes back.

I pray for you all and I pray that this message reaches someone. I pray for God\’s people whom are preparing to stand for the evil days that are coming.

Be Blessed!

~ Antajuc Acres