Welcome to the daily disciple podcast where we seek daily to be with and to become like Jesus our teacher I hope you all have been thinking and pondering the big question that we've all been asking ourselves time and time again over the course of These days and years and decades and now before I relay this question, which you're wondering like what question are we pondering? We need to understand how particular this response is and the title of the podcast is pain but for good Pain but for good. My name is Kelvin and I'm your host. They were going to be in Chapter 15 of the gospel of John so you can turn in your Bibles there on your tablets But if this is this question the way I'm prefacing it for this reason It's not just a general response to this question that I'm thinking of when we think of this big type of question And that is why this is the question why do bad things happen to good people?
Now you can understand the caveat to this question is who are these good people That we're referring to when we say this So I'm not just making one general statement for you And for you alone, but you would know who's the good Person or who are the good people that these people are that we're thinking of That you've had in your life or experiencing in your life, which I've experienced in my life So let's just think of those those people who were God fearing faithful devoted to their family devoted to their community their church their mission Why do bad things happen? You know to their church we've like as far as church goes we've all experienced this type of Person or in my case in my life. It was a friend and it was a very difficult thing for me to go to I Went through a very difficult season with my friend being hurt Traumatic and I didn't understand why this was happening to him. He was a good person.
He was a good man you know, you could easily think of many other people unfortunately or even more so yourself when you're trying to figure out why do Bad things happen to people you consider good or why things happen to people in very you know difficult and traumatic ways these things can they can sit on our hearts and We're not sure we we question these things and I don't think that it's wrong for us to question them I think pain is something that is widely misunderstood In our generation whether we're talking about physical or emotional or mental pain Like when we have pain in our bodies we understand that Our bodies are trying to let us know that we are suffering in a certain area that there is some sort of misalignment or There's something that is not working correctly in this one particular area. It's enduring something that Your your body has to signal you to let you know that it's reached its threshold and it can't deal with it. It has to Express itself So let's just think about that. We're going to be in The gospel of john chapter 15 and I'm going to be reading from verse one and let's just Take a time to examine this We see a lot that goes on in our society between individuals.
We can see hate crimes people being persecuted Sometimes we see the effects of war and what it causes on a larger scale What is that or how does that make you feel? Does it make you feel like God isn't there Does it make you feel like maybe these people these individuals who You're having an issue with or what you're seeing going on or are you assuming that God is involved or not involved in their life? How do you how do you feel about it when we see children suffer or our partners or our friends that we do life with we see them in pain We can sometimes wonder why What about things happen to those who we love now? I know this might sound a little weird or morbid, but does a gardener care about the weeds that he plucks or The necessary conditioning and care for the trees and the plants I remember when I was young and I saw my mother cutting the branches to her favorite favorite plants and She did this pretty much every Saturday of my life Growing up and I saw that she had a lot Flowers and plants throughout our whole house and she watered them She cared for them But this was something that she would often be doing plucking branches or wilted leaves and I would question her like why do you do this in some cases it didn't look like the leaf was dead to me or What looked like needed to be it didn't look like you know the stem needed to be broken off or cut off or clipped All of it was a mystery.
It looked like it was healthy And I think that's something for us to examine our understanding of what pruning actually means our understanding of what pain Actually doesn't actually helps us and guides us. Let's go into the verse we're going to be reading in chapter 15 of the gospel of john We're going to be reading from verses one to eight and it says I am the true vine and my father is the gardener He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you remain in me as I also remain in you now No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine either. Can you bear fruit unless you remain in me I am the vine you are the branches If you remain in me and I and you you will bear much fruit Apart from me.
You can do nothing if you do not remain in me You are like a branch that is thrown away in withers such branches are picked up thrown into the fire and burned If you remain in me and my words remain in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you This is my father's glory that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples So what is pruning? what does being put through testing possible suffering In your life situations look like to you Do you see it? Do you understand what's going on? Because we often are able to see it in other people's lives.
We're often we're obviously able to see it in other people's lives in their seasons In their moments. We can point that out rather easily can't we? But are we able to see that in our lives When the same thing is happening So sometimes when like the trees and flowers need to be pruned So that we can bear more so that they can bear more fruit the same thing happens to us So that we can bear more fruit in our lives And some people don't really want to stay where they are I mean some people do actually want to stay where they are not go through any stress or pain or suffering They wouldn't actually consider that growth in their lives But how come when we see athletes or people using their creativity or testing themselves like the guy on that TV show i'm not sure if it's still on bear grills We don't stress but we appreciate the breaking and the pruning and the personal Skill or craft that they possess in their development when we think of some of the Athletes or people of old where we're talking about Arnold pomber greg normen or cal ripkon jr Michael jorden or wing gretzky And then on the less physical side of things are on the more spiritual route We can see other people Based on their internal fortitude the things that they had to endure the spiritual sufferings that they had to go through like mother Teresa or mother Martin Luther st. Francis of a cc john edwards or the great missionary to bermah Adoniram jutson Who suffered greatly and was imprisoned still?
Completed a full translation of the complete bible from english to bermese in early 1800s So the real question is What things are the father the gardener in our lives attempting to prune back in your and my life That we're mistaking for pain That we're mistaking for suffering Maybe we're mistaking it for a roadblock something that's in our way something that's preventing us Whatever it is that you're facing do we are we looking at it in the correct perspective because god is not the author of confusion We often do that very successfully ourselves So my prayer for all of us today is Let's turn into ourselves and let's ask jesus that question That we're all wanting to know what is the father Wanting to do with me Lord jesus show me what the father desires to do with me in my life Just like when jeremaia was a child and he heard the voice of god calling out to him or he heard something and he was confused And he was told to just respond Here i am lord What do you want to do with me? I think that's a message for all of us. It's a picture for all of us to Absorb and realize that this is part of our life too There's a point in our lives that may be coming that maybe has arrived Or we're living in it right now where god is calling out to us In the middle of the garden in the time of our pruning Desiring us to respond to say here i am lord What do you want to do with me? What does god want to do with you?
What is he trying to change? Through you inspire create Birth These are all the things that the father does to his children some of them can cause pain But for good Take care friends Thanks for listening to the daily disciple podcast we truly hope that you were encouraged by it today Now if you would like to support or if you have any questions about the daily disciple podcast feel free to contact us through our inland vinyard church app It will give you information on our ministries and our sunday services and you can find us in the apple and google play app Scores and we also have our social media pages which you can find with the tag at inland vinyard to see what's going on with our community Our church events and our other ministries as well as our revival youth group and our children's ministry Or you can just check us out on our website at inlandvinyard.org