The Preparation Is Pruning: Pastor Grace DeCuir on Worship, Surrender, and Spiritual Growth

Pastor Grace DeCuir has a couple of rose bushes. When they bloom, she thinks they look beautiful, and that's exactly when her gardener shows up to cut them back.

"When I think it's pretty, I want to ask, why are you cutting that?"

Most believers have asked God that question at some point. On this episode of Moments with Grace, Pastor Grace and Evangelist David take it seriously. Their answer is that the cutting doesn't mean something has gone wrong. It's how God prepares us for what comes next. "We have exhausted that season, so now we must go to the next level," Pastor Grace says. "And the preparation is pruning."

The conversation begins with John 4:23: God is searching for worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Pastor Grace adds a phrase that becomes the thread for everything else. They must worship him no matter the season.

We Want the More, But Not the Cutting

Worship comes easily in what Pastor Grace calls the due season, when the promise has arrived. The harder question is what happens in between. What about the seasons of affliction, when faith is being tested and the manifestation hasn't come yet?

Evangelist David knows those seasons. He describes standing in the middle of a storm and asking, God, where are you? He points to Ecclesiastes 3: there is a time for everything, and God makes everything beautiful in his time. An uncomfortable season, he suggests, may be one where God is drawing fruit out of you. Grapes, after all, have to be squeezed.

Pastor Grace connects that fruit to John 15, where the Father cuts away the branches that don't produce so the vine can bear more. Her diagnosis is simple: "We want the more. But we don't want the cutting."

Evangelist David says that when we avoid the pruning, all we have left is a formality of worship. Pruning means examining the heart, and God already knows what's in it.

The Closer You Get

That brings the conversation to the heart. Man looks on the outside, but God looks at the heart. Jeremiah warns that the heart is deceitful, and that no one but God can truly know it.

Evangelist David shares something he noticed in the story of the fig tree Jesus approached. From a distance, it appeared to have fruit. Up close, it had none.

"That's how we love Jesus. From a distance," he says. "Because the closer I get to him, the more it reveals my heart."

He ties this to Matthew 15, where Jesus describes people who honor him with their lips while their hearts are far from him. The Word of God, he says, cuts through to the intent of the heart, to its core.

Living Room Worship

Pastor Grace offers a picture from Revelation 3. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" is often read as an invitation to people coming to Christ, but she notes that it was spoken to the church. We call out for him to come in, she says, but "Jesus is saying the knob is on the inside. You have to open the door." That surrender, she says, is the worship.

Evangelist David extends the image with something he and his wife laugh about. "We clean up the living room, but we know the other rooms are jacked up. So we don't let anybody go in there."

He says many of us treat God the same way. He's welcome in the living room, as long as he doesn't go anywhere else. But Jesus doesn't want only the living room. He wants every room.

The model is David in Psalm 51, pleading for mercy, asking to be washed and cleansed, and acknowledging his sin. Evangelist David hears in that prayer a man asking God for full access to his heart. He also notices the wording. David doesn't ask God to create a clean heart in them. He says create in me.

I Acknowledge

That word, acknowledge, is where Pastor Grace gets most personal. She admits that real transparency with God is something we don't really want.

She describes seasons when God told her to get up and pray at 5 a.m. Instead she listened to the voices telling her she already prayed enough. Then she keeps going:

"I acknowledge that I worshiped you confused. I acknowledge I worshiped you angry. I led while bleeding. I acknowledge, God, that I did it because I've been trained to do it."

Consecration, she says, draws her close enough to see herself clearly and to stop making excuses. The old folks had a line for it: It's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

That kind of honesty doesn't push God away. It keeps him speaking. Pastor Grace points to 1 Kings 17, where Elijah moves from one miracle to the next, and each one begins with the Lord speaking to him. Amos warned of a coming famine, not of bread or water, but of hearing the Word of God. So her prayer is urgent:

"Lord, whatever you do, don't stop speaking to me."

Whatever season you're in, whether it's the due season, the in-between, or the pruning, the Lord is with you. The question is how many rooms you'll let him into.