Good day everyone. I understand there's been some issues with uploading and things, so I don't know when you'll get this, but we're going to continue on our journey together.
And we are in day 27, Friendship During Pruning.
Restful One, listen with your spirit to the word of God for you.
Jonathan said to David,
Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying,
The Lord is witness between you and me and between your descendants and my descendants forever.
Then David said, and Jonathan went back to the town.
Then David left and Jonathan went back to the town. 1 Samuel 20, 42.
You will go through seasons of pruning when your father removes from you good things.
Friendships, privilege, ministry platform, money, sustenance, hope, even your reputation.
Pruning is always very painful and very difficult.
Although you may have a clear conscience and know that it comes from God and that there are promises of a better and more fruitful future, it usually results in being very much alone.
Most people will shy away from you when you experience pain.
David was blessed to have one friend who stood solidly with him through God's pruning.
Six hundred friends stood with him and walked with him through the pruning season and into the season of abundance.
I bless you, Restful One, with the pruning of the Lord.
As painful as they are, they are for the best.
They come from your wise father.
I bless you with the right amount of pruning in the right season of your life.
For redemptive, eternal purposes, I bless you with deep, solid, life-giving friendship.
When you are going through a season of God's pruning, of God's pruning you,
I bless you with friendships that are designed, crafted, nurtured, and given to you by your father.
Even at the same time that he has taken away other friendships that he has deemed important and necessary to your life.
Although you may be severely pruned, I bless you with at least one friend who maintains covenant relationship with you in your darkest hour
and is able to encourage you, strengthen you, and focus your attention on your father's promises.
I bless you with additional friendships with people who come alongside you in the desert times.
May they walk with you, encourage you, war with you, seek God's will with you, and wait with you.
I bless you with friends who understand God's ways, who can walk with you even when they don't understand His ways.
I bless you with encouraging love that reminds you of the love that your father has for you.
I bless you with these things in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
Father, I lift these to you.
We are all going through some form of pruning, some transitional time in life.
Lord, I believe I have been seeing glimpses and pictures and have a sense that each and every person here, we are all called to leadership in some way,
but each person that is hearing my voice, that is in this program, is called or being nurtured and groomed for leadership.
And leadership often has times of loneliness.
We all have our desert seasons, but in the time of pruning, for us to be most fruitful, sometimes we have to say goodbye to the things that we have become reliant on,
things that we have looked to, or things that have expired.
Whereas the Jewish people look to a new year, they reflect upon the old, as I've mentioned before,
and they intentionally look at what they did well and what they didn't, and what they're going to leave behind,
and what they're going to take with them into the new year.
But we have to make space oftentimes, Lord, for what you want to bring into our life.
Lord, I know some of this is by your design and is not comfortable,
so my prayer for these, Lord, and for myself, and actually for that matter,
would be that you would give us a certainty and a confidence to help us to recognize via a sense, a smell, a taste, or whatever,
that this is really a season that you have ordained from pruning to make us more fruitful.
And, Lord, I would pray in maybe even my own humanity,
Lord, that you would bring people, life-giving people, covenantal people, into our lives
in these seasons to remind us that you're with us, that you often use people as your
hands and feet to demonstrate, to offer, to be a conduit of what you're doing, what you
feel, and how you're wanting to be for us in that season.
Lord, most of us have made a choice.
We've chosen you over our own comfort.
We've chosen you.
We've said yes without even knowing what lies on the other side or even what we're saying
yes to or what the cost may be.
Lord, I pray also, and I know this is partially just my own humanity for all of those here,
Lord, that there will be a quickening spirit released, that during the times of pruning,
Lord, that much be done in a shorter period of time, that they not last any longer than
it needs to be.
I pray, Lord, that you have patience with us and give us a grace to be able to endure
and walk through these seasons so that we don't try to exit before our time or try to
make our own way.
They said that the Pauls had Timothys and Timothys had Pauls.
There's an unusual relationship that exists between David and Jonathan, Lord, that many
of us have never witnessed, at least between two men.
And David, as a depiction of a leader, is uncommon in the definitions and the observations
of leadership and any leaders that we may know personally in this era.
He was a poet and a warrior and a psalmist and a writer.
He played the harp, but he was a slayer of giants and killing of 10,000 Philistines.
And he was very sensitive and seemingly all over the map with his emotions.
He was altogether human, but he was a man after your own heart.
So I pray, Lord, that there be something transcendent in this season, in this particular season
of pruning, that there be something different and that, Lord, that there be something active
about it that we can choose in some way to participate with you as a training ground
of what lies ahead and what we can expect to do and experience with you and in that
partnering with you, where we choose to walk into that with you, Lord God, that there be
a deeper fellowship with you.
That there be a deeper connection that there has ever been and an understanding of you,
understanding of your ways.
And we choose it even if we don't understand, but that we're choosing you in the process
and that we want to walk with you through it.
And I pray, Lord, that there be flesh and blood people and we'll just say beings, spiritually
speaking, that are assigned to us in this time that we can find fellowship with.
And that, Lord, not only would I say that there be people to walk with us during our
time of pruning, but, Lord, that you would give us a heart, that we would be honored
enough by you to allow us to walk with other people during their times of pruning, that
you would give us the word for the hour, that you would give us your heart and your love
to be able to bestow upon other people, that you would give us hope to be able to deposit
into people that feel like it's being hope-deferred and their hearts are sick, that, Lord, that
we not just bring encouragement and just to be polite or nice, that, Lord, that there
be life-giving words that we can offer up in a time of absolute drought, seemingly,
in the lives of other people that we know and we don't know, those we love and those
we barely know or maybe even don't particularly care for.
Some of the most powerful words you've ever given me to give were to people that weren't
my favorite.
But, Lord, we want to be fruitful and we're really grateful for the fruit after the process
of the pruning, but the pruning isn't a lot of fun.
Lord, I pray.
Pray that you give us eyes and bring people into our lives that have the eyes to see what's
really going on.
Because in the swirl, in the midst of the process itself, it can be bewildering, confusing,
and very difficult to be able to see and understand what's going on.
Is this being something that's being done to us?
Is this the enemy?
Is this us?
Or is this you?
Ideally, Lord, we'd recognize it's you and choose to walk in it with you.
But regardless, Lord, that we would be people to see what you're doing in the lives of others
and that they would bring people into our lives to help us understand what you're doing
and to walk with us through these difficult times.
Lord, we bless you and we love you.
In Jesus' name.