Suffering: God’s “Bruising of Blessing”
Suffering: God’s “Bruising of Blessing”
When your life is over and you are standing before God, will He find fruit or only leaves? While leaves are important in a healthy, fruit-bearing plant, if the plant bears no fruit, what is it good for? Jesus made that perfectly clear in Matthew 21:19 when, “Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.” Jesus said in John 15:8, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” In the Kingdom of God, it’s not about leaves; it’s all about fruit!
When it comes to growing grapes, grape farmers understand the importance of stressing the vine if they want good grapes. So, they plant them in rocky soil, and sometimes even wrap the vines with wires. This causes the distressed vine to divert its nutrients into the fruit, instead of its leaves. They call this the “bruising of blessing” because it’s necessary to produce the most fruitful harvest possible. Without this “bruising of blessing,” the vine produces profuse bushes of leaves, but the clusters of grapes are sparse and very rare.
The same is true of the disciple of Jesus. God, in His infinite mercy and compassion, allows His children to suffer illness and disease, to struggle with heart-wrenching disappointment, to face unimaginable hardships, and to endure impossible afflictions because He knows these are necessary to produce the most fruitful harvest possible in our lives. Did you know God even did this to His own Son? Through God’s “bruising of blessing” in the sufferings of Jesus, everyone who repents and believes in Him “will not perish but have everlasting life.” Beloved, when your life is over and you are standing before God, it won’t be all about your leaves; it will be all about your fruit. So take heart in your sufferings! Trust in God! Your “sufferings” are God’s “bruising of blessing”; you won’t bear a crop without them!
This is Laine Wilder for Carry the Light Ministries, bringing you Insights From an Elder.
by Laine Wilder
Author of “Insights From an Elder” for
Carry the Light Ministries
