There may be some seasons of pain, when you will be so confused that it will be fine for you just to say, “I have no idea why this happened; I don’t understand what God is doing; But the bottom line is that I know Jesus loves me. Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him (Job 13:15).” And in those moments, what you need most of all is just rest in the gospel assurance of God’s love…Suffering and afflictions by themselves do not sanctify…But the way God uses suffering in the life of a Christian is by humbling us and making us more ready to hear and receive God’s promises.

By the summer of 1856,

Charles H. Spurgeon’s ministry was bearing so much fruit. Church membership was growing. People were being converted under his preaching. Young men were being trained for the ministry. Sermons were being sold by the thousands. And yet all would seemingly come to an end in the Surrey Gardens Music Hall Disaster. On the night of October 19, 1856, with the hall filled to capacity with 10,000 people, shouts of “Fire!” resulted in a stampede, and in the end, seven people died and many more were injured. As a result, Spurgeon fell into a deep depression. No one knew if he would ever preach again.

His ministry was going so well! He was being so fruitful! Why would God let something like this happen? We don’t know all the answers. But we have Jesus’s words from John 15:1–2 to explain the idea of what God may be up to in some of our most painful seasons:

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 does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Approximately two years after facing that horrific disaster, Spurgeon preached on this passage. In that sermon, he gives four reasons why God the Vinedresser prunes his branches.

1. We Are Not Yet Perfect

Spurgeon says this,

If they were perfect, they would not need pruning; but the fact is there is much of original inbred sin remaining in the best of God’s people, so that whenever the sap within them is strong for the production of fruit, there is a tendency for that strength to turn into evil, and instead of good fruit evil is produced. . . . The fact is, it is very difficult to keep ourselves, when we are in a flourishing state, from producing wood instead of grapes. God grant us grace to keep us from this evil; and I do not know how the grace can come except by his judicious pruning. I say the fruit-bearing branches are not perfect because they bear a great deal that is not fruit, and, moreover, not one of them bears as much fruit as it ought to do.[1]

God has blessed you. He has gifted you. He has given you resources. And insofar as you are sanctified, you will take those talents and use them for good. But there is also still indwelling sin in you. So often, you can also take those talents and resources and produce what is not fruit. And it’s those wooden shoots, those fruitless stems that need to be pruned.

We have to be careful here. We can’t always read God’s providence, and we should not always try to connect a particular affliction with a particular sin. And yet, there can be a place for self-examination.

The idea here is not so much that we are connecting specific sins to specific suffering, but that if you encounter hardship, use that time for reflection, for self-examination. This could very well be God’s pruning. We are not yet perfect, so there is always room for us to humble ourselves and consider how we can grow before God.

God is a skillful Vinedresser. We are so easily impressed by our own fruitfulness. But He does not measure our fruitfulness according to our abilities but according to his power. He is conforming us to the image of Christ. And so, there is still much to prune.

2. God Loves Us

How easy it is to see our suffering as the result of God’s wrath! But Spurgeon writes,

You have no right to say, when a man is afflicted, that it is because he has done wrong; on the contrary, “every branch that bears fruit he prunes.” Only the branch that is good for something gets the pruning knife. Do not say of yourselves, or of other people, “That man must have been a great offender, or he would not have met with such a judgment.” Nonsense, who was a holier man than Job; but who was brought lower than he? Why, the fact is, it is because the Lord loves his people that he chastens them, not because of any anger that he hath towards them. But learn, beloved, especially you under trial, not to see an angry God in your pains or your losses, or your crosses; but instead thereof, see a husbandman, who thinks you a branch whom he estimates at so great a rate, that he will take the trouble to prune you, which he would not do if he had not a kind consideration towards you.[2]

If we are going to bear up under afflictions, we have to believe that God is in control and that God loves us. This trial we’re going through is not an accident. As painful as it is, God has loving purposes for us in this suffering.

It’s so easy to forget this when we’re suffering. Pain has this way of condemning us, reminding us of all that we’ve done wrong.

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