Andy Ripley

“My grace is enough for you, because My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Meaning – “I will enable you to endure this thorn, because the thorn is truly helping you.  If I remove the thorn, pride will take you.  But don’t worry, I will help you to endure it.  My grace is enough.”
― Andy Ripley, HUNGERING FOR GOD

“PRUNING John 15:2     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. The Lord has solution for us when our fruitfulness is too low.  When we are not quite producing the kind of fruit we ought to be producing, God has a remedy.  He calls His solution to this, “pruning.”  This is actually a great promise from the Lord.  If we are struggling with the amount of fruit we are producing, He promises to intervene in our lives through pruning in order to increase our fruitfulness. What is pruning?  It is cutting away unhealthy unproductive parts of a plant, so that the nutrients will be more focused on the productive parts. This might involve some discomfort which the Lord brings to us with the purpose of helping us to realize that whatever we are doing is not spiritually productive.  It could involve some painful moment which has the effect of turning you around or refocusing you. We may sometimes find ourselves asking “Why, Lord?  Why am I suffering like this?  What is going on here?”  Maybe He is pruning us in order to make us more fruitful, so that He can later reward us for our fruitfulness which He alone caused.  I would include in the concept of pruning in almost any discipline from the Lord to our lives. Hebrews 12:11     For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (5)”
― Andy Ripley, The Fruit of the Spirit: The Measure of Christian Maturity