John 15:5
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

From time to time I find myself doing some cleaning at one of the local Primary Schools.

Last week I was doing this from Monday to Friday. I have to admit that it had been quite a long time since I had vacuumed for 3 hours straight each day for 5 days. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how saw my hands and my shoulders were as the week went on.

It was only on the Friday that I realised what I had been doing or more accurately, what I had forgotten.

You see the vacuum cleaner I use has what is called a powerhead, this means that there is a motor that specifically drives the cleaning brushes and provides a measure of self propulsion to the vacuum cleaner head.

Having forgotten this fact I had spent 4 days trying to provide propulsion to the vacuum cleaner using my hands and shoulders. The result was pain, disturbed sleep because my hands woke me in the night aching and frustration at my plight.

So, when this realisation came to me on the Friday I allowed the powerhead to do the work rather than over exerting my own muscles.

This incident drew my thoughts back to John 15.

How often I forget that Yeshua the True Vine is the ultimate "POWERHEAD", He has all the resources necessary for me to be an abundantly fruitful branch. Yet, I endure pain and frustration at my own plight rather than simply drawing on the power of His life.

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John 15:1-3

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.

“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

“You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

If I desire to be the revelation of an abundantly fruitful branch in the hands of Yah, the first thing I must embrace is being pruned.

To be pruned is to be cleansed.

The Hebrew understanding of "clean" is expressed extremely well in the Scripture ​Psalm 51:7:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

If we take the three words purge, hyssop and clean and look at their words pictures this is what we see: fence the snakes strength, by taking a decision (to obey), revealing redemption with the strength to cut off (prune) and add to the floor plan (abundant fruit).

There is also another interesting element to the letters of the word clean in Hebrew: Tet, Hey and Reysh. In Hebrew the word mountain is Hey, Reysh which gives us another word picture for clean: surrounds the mountain.

Where do we see this picture in Scripture?

At Mount Sinai when the people of Israel surrounded the mountain and heard the words of God, the Torah was given!!!

Exodus 24:12 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law (torah) and commandments (mitzvah) which I have written, that you may teach them.”

The word torah literally means instruction. Here the word pictures are earth shattering!!! They are: what comes from the man nailed to the cross and what helps point out the target of life.

Mitzvah (commandment) literally means code of wisdom and the word picture is womb of motivation to obey is strong.

When a branch in the natural is pruned it is forced to draw more upon the resources of the vine which results in more abundant fruitfulness.

Likewise, spiritual pruning causes us to draw more deeply on the life of the man nailed to the cross (the True Vine) in order for us to fulfill the target of life, which is to be an abundantly fruitful branch in the right hand of revelation of the nail revealed.