by T. D. Jakes
With Jesus being the seed promised to Abraham as an inheritance, we must ask ourselves what the promise was inside of Jesus that was to be fulfilled. The promise carried by Christ is a bountiful harvest of fruit. Since Jesus is both seed and vine, we are the promised fruit-bearing branches that spring forth from Him. During the Last Supper, we see the Seed of Abraham speaking with his spiritual offspring, who would soon take up the task of not only bearing fruit but also pointing other dormant seeds of promise back to the life-giving Savior, Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the seed that grew into a vine that produced us as fruit-bearing branches, the fruit we produce and the lives we live are seeds that God intends for a greater purpose.
The Process of Making Wine
Think about the winemaking process. The winemaking process is an analogy that permeates the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. Addressing an agrarian culture, many of the images, metaphors, and parables of Scripture focus on planting, tending, gardening, and harvesting. The journey from seed to sapling, from grape to greatness, consistently reminds us of the process. These symbols lend themselves to our spiritual growth and development as well.
When we first step into an area where we are able to grow, is that not analogous to us being planted? Later, when we encounter a blessing in our lives, can it not be seen as fruit to be enjoyed? When our family and friends revel in our success, is that not akin to those farmers of old relishing the harvest? When our harvest doesn’t go as planned, however, and our fruitful blessing is stripped from us and carelessly trampled, does that not strongly resemble the winepress, the device used to crush grapes and drain their juice for winemaking?
Of course, all of this depends on your point of view. If you were a winemaker, or vintner, as they’re often called, you would be all too familiar with each step in the process of making wine. However, if you were the grapevine, the removal of your fruit and its destruction under the feet of those who seem not to care would give you a completely different perspective.
In the midst of our painful crushing, we realize that the blessing found in the production of fruit in our lives was never God’s end goal. Our latest crop of fruit was merely part of an ongoing, greater process. The Master Vintner knows there’s something much more worthwhile beyond the production of fruit—the potency of its juice fermented into wine. To the vine, however, the fruit seems to be everything, season after season, storm after storm, sun and rain, spring and fall. But what if you shifted your paradigm to winemaking instead of fruit growing? Could it be possible that your current predicament is the winepress God uses to transform your grapes into His wine? Could being crushed be a necessary part of the process to fulfill God’s plan for your life? Could you be on the verge of victory despite walking through the valley of broken vines?
We were created to be more than temporary fruit—We are His eternal wine in the making!
But, as you already know, this beautiful winemaking process is not easy and not without work. In fact, I believe the process of fermentation into eternal wine happens over time and in dirty places.
What we see in the natural realm is a reflection of what we see spiritually because both are intertwined with one another. As a result, we encounter another version of natural child-into-adult development in our spiritual nature. In the spiritual realm, there is a process we enter into in which God cultivates and develops us into a healthy vine in His vineyard, and God has made Jesus to be the type of vine we are to exemplify in each stage of life. Jesus is our perfect example, our model of this intended maturation.
For instance, we already know Christ to be the Seed of Abraham. He came in our likeness so that He would be familiar with each of our trials, difficulties, and temptations (Heb. 4:15–16). In essence, He experienced all of the growth pains we would experience. As Jesus grew in stature, we know that He grew in favor with God and with men and began bearing fruit (Luke 2:52). Though He was an adult producing a wonderful harvest during His three years of ministry, Jesus was not meant to simply work miracle after miracle. His life on earth was intended to move from something temporary to something eternal.
Though Christ became a physical adult, His spirit carried the even greater promise of an eternal harvest—and not just one made up of miracles that would be temporarily praised. In order for that spiritual promise to be birthed, the supernatural seed had to enter into its own version of development. Like any seed that would sprout, it had to be planted. In essence, everything the seed knows about itself has to end. The seed, then, must die just as Christ died so that He could give birth to us as God’s spiritual children, His divine offspring.
If we are called to be like Christ, to become like Him as we are called by God (1 Cor. 11:1), we must accept the fact that we will experience a similar growth process. As we undergo maturation, we come to understand that our temporary fruit was never the endgame of an everlasting Master, but rather just a single step in the process of making eternal wine. As a result, our spiritual development from seeds to mature fruit-bearing branches demands that we confront a step that many of us grapple with understanding: growing in dirty places.
When everything falls apart in our lives, we are broken but not destroyed. The exterior husk we’ve all relied on for so long begins to fail us as the waters of life soften our protective coating. The tender inner life and identity of who we are is naked and helpless in front of those things that threaten the only existence we know. When we are placed in perilous circumstances, we rush to secure ourselves and hold everything in place. We shoot roots into the soil beneath us in hope of anchoring ourselves against life’s storms. We yearn for someone or something to hold us, lift us, and sustain us, but too often we droop and wilt in the winds of our isolation and loneliness.
But what if God is doing something amazing in the midst of those dirty places? What if we are being presented with an opportunity to grow, to become what we are purposed and designed to become?
Knowing that your dirty places could be the very place you will gain what is needed for your next phase of life, how will you respond to them differently?
CHAPTER 3
The Burial
While we are in the midst of our crushing periods, we don’t often stop and think about the process. Most of us just want it to end; we want to find the solution and move forward. We enjoy knowing we are gifted and have the ability to do something great, yet we don’t smile brightly when we are placed in the refining process. But I challenge you—even in the midst of your crushing—to fully consider the seed and the process used to grow it from a small kernel to a plant.
What happens to a seed if it’s not planted? Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24).
We cannot rightfully ask our Vinedresser to skip out on the development of our lives simply because we are uncomfortable with being alone in dark places. To keep a seed from being planted is to condemn that seed to never realizing its full potential. It is a fact that seeds are meant to be covered and die.
No matter who we are, where we are in life, or where we’ve come from, we must begin to appreciate the ugly stages of our inception. When we allow the Lord to shift our mindset, we begin to see that everything that has ever happened to us has happened for a reason. If we look back at the sprout that pushed itself through the ceiling of dirt above it, we discover reasons behind our adversity that were previously invisible and unimaginable. Now they are suddenly apparent and miraculous when we arrive at the fruit-bearing stage.
Looking back at different periods of my life, I remember how fearful I was. Now, standing upon just over forty years of ministry, I look at those places and realize they were integral to where God has taken me and where He will continue to take me. I see that each growth interval of my life was preceded by a planting phase where I was buried in a dirty place. I began to understand that the stages in my life where, at the time, I was certain I was about to meet my end were
seed stages for the next season. I could not have produced the fruit without the frustration. And God could not ferment my fruit into His wine for maximum potency without my willingness to relinquish it to His winepress.
Though I have not liked the process, my faith has grown deeper as I discovered this new viewpoint. I have been changed by this shift in perspective as I accept that God never intended to lead me to a dead place and leave me there. The seeming death through which He escorted me was merely the precipice of a new beginning, and a new beginning is what the planting and death of each seed is all about. Through those stages, I arrived at the truth: God wasn’t burying me—He was planting me.
Transformation requires sacrifice, and I wonder if you have misinterpreted the Vinedresser’s intention. Instead of condemning you to a graveyard, which is what you may feel, God is planting you in richer soil for greater fruit.
Remember, God is at work, and there’s no place too dirty for Him to use as the rich soil of your maturation and spiritual fruition. Wherever you are, or whatever your dirty place might be, look around you and allow the Master to adjust your thinking. After all, God is not done with you yet. Quality takes time, and you are God’s masterpiece.
God’s Strategy
Have you noticed our human propensity to brood over the disastrous at the expense of the prosperous? We do anything and everything to avoid the hideous experiences of life, never grasping the fact that the sprouted seedling could never understand the process of cultivation from its own limited point of view. Similarly, it is a striking blow to our limited comprehension of God to accept that He would use the most unorthodox procedures and inhospitable environments to develop us into something more, something teeming with the potential for dynamic growth. But what’s better than being undone and marred in the hands of the Master if a new way of living and abundance are the promised results? What if all you’ve suffered in your life without was necessary to cultivate your greatness within?
We fight against God’s sovereignty because we dislike where His process has placed us. Where the Lord found you, however, and where He decides to plant you can be quite different. We’re all being grafted into a supernaturally cultivated vine, and this merging takes time and costs us the comfort of everything we consider comfortable and familiar. Having your life upended and every recognizable detail removed from your environment produces trauma.
But the Master is intentional in how He relocates the wild shoots of our lives and moves them into the unrecognizable fields of promise. This is the secret to accepting the visible violence of turbulent times: we must remember that soil must be upturned or else it will go fallow, depleted of its nutrients and minerals and unable to accommodate new growth.
The act of cultivation is married to our purposeful displacement, because anything grown in the wild does so without the careful hand and watchful eye of an intentional vinedresser. Cultivation speaks order into chaos, orchestrates harmony from disharmony, draws care from carelessness, and provides direction to aimlessness. Cultivation wants to grow and create where growth and creation seem to be impossible.
Any farmer or agriculturist understands this, but many of us miss the point within our own lives. We choose our own way of seeing, believing, and acting because we think we know better. As a result, we miss our true identity and the blessings we could have had if we would have simply submitted to the process.
God is adamantly invested in developing us into something we would never be without His direct intervention. When we find ourselves broken, battered, beaten, and bruised by our circumstances, it’s possible that the Master who we’re praying will remove and solve the problem is the very One who sanctioned it and is using it to accomplish some greater effect.
Out of all my years of teaching, preaching, mentoring, and living through hellish ordeals, I believe that our maturation requires that we be constricted to His methods and imprisoned by His purpose. You see, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some of the most interesting people in the world—and no one was more surprised than I was! In my wildest dreams, I never imagined sitting across from the CEO of AT&T or getting to see Oprah Winfrey move and operate in the worlds of film, television, and print media, because the seed of who I was could not comprehend the fruit I would bear and the wine I would become.
I didn’t suddenly wake up as the person you see today. I was developed into this, and God is still fostering even more within me. None of what you see in my life today happened because of magic, luck, or happenstance. All of it is the fruit of purpose, cultivation, and time, the culmination of myriad random details coalescing into something beautiful. And I believe God is doing the same in you, through His own purposeful strategies.
To put it simply, the seed doesn’t understand the vine that it’s becoming. Everything that occurs in its life appears to be happenstance because all it can see is the muck and mire that it’s trying to escape. It’s when we are vines that we can look back at what we used to be and notice that what appeared to be accidents, incidents, and coincidence converged to produce what we are and the fruit that hangs from our branches.
Will you let Him work, or will you run from the challenging seasons? I promise you what’s on the other side of your growth is much better than you can imagine.
God doesn’t expect you to wrap your mind around how you should grow. He only expects your trust as you seemingly stumble your way through the process, because growth is riddled with constant change and correction. It’s through the stumbling in our lives that the Master takes us from the seed stages to the fruit-bearing stages. And it’s through our own planning, stubbornness, and need to have our way that we derail ourselves. But God did not arrange every single step of your life to this point to leave the weight of your future solely in your own hands. He has not brought you this far to culminate in a cul-de-sac of constraint. To the human eye, He provides a random blessing or lesson, but it’s all part of your cultivation. With God, nothing is wasted. He redeems even our darkest moments by allowing us to become a prism of His light.
Now that you’ve considered the trials it takes for a seed to become a plant, use your own plant to reflect on the process. As you care for it, water it, and await its growth, remember that your life is a part of this maturation. Wherever you are in the planting process, trust God to develop His purpose in your life. You have been planted with a purpose.
CHAPTER 4
When Trouble Comes
Take heed: if your life is suddenly unstable and you notice an increase in the amount of mess and manure placed upon you, pay close attention. It is a sign from the Lord for you to look carefully for the areas where your growth might have stalled. The vinedresser applies an extra amount of dung to a plant that stubbornly refuses to grow, because the messes of life serve as the vitamins required for healthy fruit. The irony, of course, is that what we abhor is simultaneously what we need the most. It’s the Master’s expert use of trials, tribulations, and trouble to stimulate us that force us to produce the best grapes for making wine.
Most of us underestimate all that the Master has invested in us. The time, the location, the planting, and even the suffering serve His singular purpose. If the Vinedresser would go to such lengths to grow us and help us produce fruit, why do we think we are unable to handle the trouble He allows to come our way? Why do we believe that any instance of hardship and pain in our lives is the end? If He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient—and He is—then we have to accept that He has constructed us with full knowledge of the obstacles in our paths.
Nevertheless, when trouble comes, we so often ignore His perfect plan and entertain the doubting questions of the enemy. We allow our inner critics to become bullhorns of belittling comments and biting critiques of our relationship with God, doubting that He loves us and wants what is best for us. In fact, our spiritual enemy loves to undermine our faith in God by questions such as these:
How could God know what He’s doing if you’re still sick?
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�ve been living check-to-check all your life, trying to get ahead. How could there be divine wisdom in that?
If God knows everything and is all-powerful, then He could have stopped the cancer from spreading. Do you really think He knows what He’s doing?
Why would God let you lose your job after all you’ve done for that place? What good can possibly come from being unemployed?
How could God allow that relationship to end? If He loved you, would He really want you to be by yourself?
If you’ve ever had thoughts like these, you are not alone. I, too, have been lost in the mental maze of such miserable meditations. These questions haunt us all in the midst of the labyrinth of laments. We wallow in doubt and worry and allow ourselves to be consumed by fear and anxiety. Our complaints and doubts, however, come from an individual who has forgotten that God has specifically tailored our struggles so that we would produce succulent fruit.
The thought that we’ve been chosen for the pain confuses us because we believe that God is stumbling into our future just like we are. We assume that He’s unaware of what’s around the corners of life, that His point of view is as limited as our own. We don’t immediately warm up to a God who would say, “Ah! Now, this broken home is the perfect spot for him to become an excellent father!” For what loving God would put the object of His love through such trauma? It’s when we’re planted in pain and pressed by His purpose that we shake our fists and demand that He immediately cease His plan and assist with ours.
We waste valuable time and energy anytime we think we know better than God—even when we can’t make sense of the circumstances in which we feel buried. Especially when we cannot see anything except darkness and can only smell the stench of decay. During such moments, we must trust that something is growing. Something is being birthed in the invisible realities we likely cannot see. How do I know this? Because the Lord has made it clear: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jer. 29:11).
