Planted with a Purpose Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  Make Some Wine

  During our toughest and most challenging times, it can be hard to comprehend what God is up to. We may curse the pain and even doubt when we are in the midst of crushing, but as we grow and gain new insights, we can use the crushings of our past to remind us of God’s faithfulness. It’s the reminder that we have survived in the past and we will survive again.

  Little did I know when I stood sweating in the Mississippi heat as a sixteen-year-old boy beside my father’s grave that not only would I survive the devastating crushing of my soul, but I would also make new wine. Little could I imagine as I watched my car being repossessed that I would have more than enough wine for myself, my family, and others I’m allowed to bless. Little could I see how those sleepless nights would be more than worth the wine of meeting kings and presidents, ministering to millions of people around the world, and pastoring my flock.

  My story is no different from what God is doing in your life. For everything you’ve lost, for all that’s been trampled, let’s make wine.

  For every scar on your body and every fracture in your heart, let’s make wine.

  For every lost relationship and broken promise, let’s make wine.

  For every stolen dollar and wasted opportunity, let’s make wine.

  For every tear shed and every pain suffered, God is at work in your life.

  Let’s make wine!

  Making wine requires more than changing the way you see your life. Spiritually speaking, making wine requires bloodshed. The importance of blood throughout Scripture cannot be overestimated because through it we see that our position with God is changed. As a result, it makes sense that our identities would change, as well. We see this transformative process illustrated in numerous ways throughout the Bible.

  Look at Abram, who became Abraham. In establishing a new covenant with Abram, God’s first order of business was changing Abram’s identity. In Genesis 17:5, God moved Abram from one position to another by calling Abram to a different walk. Instead of pursuing his own path, Abram was to follow the path laid out for him by God, and that is precisely where many of us falter. We seek our own way, not understanding that our pride and arrogance lead us into destruction. We hate having to receive instructions from anyone because we think we have a handle on everything in our lives. As a result, we don’t like relinquishing control and walking with God by faith.

  We often make the mistake of labeling people based on what they’ve done. However, in labeling someone by what they’ve done, wouldn’t we always be forced to call someone by what they did last? God doesn’t do the same thing with us. The Master always calls us by what He has placed in us and what we will do for Him. I submit to you that God calls us what we will be while we’re wrestling with what we were and what we did. When God changed Abram’s name, He increased the distance between who the man once was and who God told him he would be in the future. To better understand that distance, all we must do is compare the names.

  According to the text, Abram means “high/exalted father,” while Abraham means “father of many nations.” The covenant God initiated in Abram becoming Abraham points to something God has been doing with humanity for thousands of years. The Master continuously speaks the truth to mankind about who and what we are, and he confirms this new identity that we have through the shedding of blood. The sign of Abraham’s new persona was that he was required to cut away the foreskin from his penis.

  Other than the pain involved, this might seem insignificant until we take into account that the surrounding people in the land of Canaan didn’t call for males to undergo the cutting until puberty or their entrance into marriage. Standing starkly in contrast to the people around him, Abraham was to not only circumcise every male in his house, but also to perform the rite on the eighth day of life. Eight being the number of new beginnings, each male entered into a new relationship with God on that day, being marked as someone else and part of something exclusive to everyone in his lineage.

  Not only did Abraham receive a new name that signified who he was in God’s eyes, but he and every man and boy in his house—indentured servants included—bore the physical proof that they were not like the men of the surrounding countries and societies. So exhaustive and complete was God’s promise to Abraham that it not only extended to every man and boy associated with Abraham, but also to his wife, Sarai, who God renamed Sarah.

  Through this point, you can see that God is not interested in just changing you and your life. He is complete, all-encompassing, consuming and filling everything and everyone that belongs to Him. God seeks not only your mind, or your heart, or your body. The Master wants the totality of who and what you are, because you will receive nothing less from Him. As a result, Abraham could not be the only person that this new covenant would affect. Sarah had to be part of it because Sarah was one flesh with Abraham. God’s blessings become reality in our lives when we rejoin the Master’s plan by lining up with it in faith, like Abraham. In essence, when we reconnect with God, we step into what He has for us.

  The Wait

  A big part of becoming who God has called us to be looks like waiting to our human eyes. Yet, in the midst of our waiting, we are often being developed into the people God needs us to be for the next stage of our lives.

  When I accepted my call into ministry, I remember pleading with God to allow me to preach. It was tough and often confusing. To be called and to sit in the background and listen to people speak from books of the Bible they couldn’t even properly pronounce was the most aggravating experience of my life. It was during my inner court period that the Lord was developing my gift. I would be in the shower, preaching to bars of soap and washrags. I would be walking through the woods of West Virginia, laying hands on trees. All of this might sound comical to you, but I now see these moments as part of a season of fermentation, a critical part of the winemaking process. I spent years cleaning out the baptismal pool and leading devotional services before worship began, wondering when it would be my time to stand and proclaim the infallible Word of God. My heart would ache because I knew I had something to offer. Like the disciples, my heart was rent because the process didn’t happen like I wanted.

  But waiting was far more beneficial because the Lord was working on something marvelous in a secret place. He was working on my character. He was working on my heart. He was working on my nervousness. He was working on my motives. He was working on my wisdom. He was working on me, boiling off every single impurity because there was no way God was going to present to the world an unrefined, unfermented, underdeveloped product.

  I was a minister for seven years before I preached my first sermon, and I had hundreds of messages lined up and ready to go. But the Lord had me in a holding pattern, and it felt like it would never end. All of it was for a reason, and I didn’t realize the greater reason—the wine reason—until Bishop Carlton Pearson called me to speak at Azusa. I preached a sermon there that was later seen by Paul Crouch. Paul Crouch saw only a piece of that sermon on television, but it was during a trying, pressing, and crushing time in his own life. It was just by God’s handiwork and timing that Paul saw that one part of my sermon being played and, from there, called me and invited me to be on TBN.

  During the fermentation period—the waiting time—you may be tempted to say there isn’t much taking place, but you fail to realize that there is progress in the waiting. You may find yourself in a holding pattern but you don’t realize that your flight has been moved from fortieth in line to second. This is because transition doesn’t feel like work; it often feels like waiting. It feels like climbing a set of steps in a stairwell and finding yourself stuck as one foot hovers above the next step. You’re in the position of being able to move up and forward but find that there’s something else to be done before you are fully prepared to complete your climb. It’s in that transitory moment of waiting that God is preparing you for the next step.

  Just like in a holding pattern, the tr
ue work is hidden. A plane’s pilot, not fully knowing what is happening on the ground, can only be patient while those in the air traffic control tower work out all the details. Otherwise, the plane might descend before the pilot has been given permission and slam into another jet that is taking off. Destruction comes swiftly on the heels of moving too soon. So, after crushing us, God exercises His grace by allowing us to ferment in the supposed stillness of transition so that we might be ready for the next stage.

  Perhaps it’s human nature, but I fear it only gets worse with each passing generation: we hate to wait. We’ve all been trained to get everything now. We have to buy now, move now, eat now, lead now, talk now, text now, enjoy now. We need the marriage now. We need the family now. We must have our company and business now. We want the fulfillment of our destinies right now, never minding the fact that God’s grace is extended to us by allowing us to ferment in the holding pattern.

  Although it may feel like it will never end, our fermentation is really just a brief time of transition. Life won’t always be like this. Even in the face of the small amount of work that you can accomplish in the inner court after being crushed outside, the only thing the Vintner is requiring you to do is exercise patience. The ingredients are in place. You have been crushed and your juice extracted. Now it’s time to let the divine process of transformation unfold.

  The Simplicity of Winemaking

  Winemaking basically comes down to three steps: crushing the grapes, allowing the juice to ferment, and collecting the wine. In other words, you mash the fruit, allow the juice to sit, and enjoy the results. That’s it. Of course, there are other things that vintners have learned to do throughout history to refine and enhance their wines, but it takes little to no technology to create this beverage that humanity has enjoyed for thousands of years. The procedure is simple, direct, and to the point.

  Particularly when it comes to fermentation, the process is rather straightforward. Fermentation is nothing more than the process in which the sugar in fruit is converted to alcohol because of its interaction with the natural yeast within its skins. After the grapes were crushed, a vintner in Jewish antiquity would allow the grapes and their juices to remain in their vats and ferment in the open air. As the yeast acted upon the sugar, it would produce a faint hissing sound similar to boiling. This resulted from the reaction in which carbon dioxide was released in the process. Apparently, some people who remained too close to the vats would be rendered unconscious. There are even reports of people being knocked out by the gases, then falling and drowning in fermenting wine.

  Though fermentation is simple, the process is not to be disrespected. It still requires the vintner to keep a careful watch on the vats so that the wine does not turn to vinegar. You see, if too much time passes, the juice becomes bitter. Though some would allow the grapes to remain in the vats, other vintners would opt to place the fermenting juice in jars. Either way, the forthcoming wine was watched closely.

  Carbon dioxide is a waste product expelled from organisms after a chemical reaction occurs. For instance, each time you exhale, you are releasing carbon dioxide. If you hold your breath for too long, you can pass out or suffocate because of the carbon dioxide buildup in your body, putting an abrupt end to something that should have continued to exist in another form. I suggest, then, that the fermentation process God takes us through acts as a spiritual broom He uses to sweep away what we no longer need. After all, in the midst of transformation, there must be a casting off of the old and an adherence to all that is new. One must give way to the other, for they cannot coexist.

  Whatever it is the Master has placed on your heart to do for Him, I would suggest that He has taken, or will take, you through a season of hiding you. It’s there that He gets you ready for your assignment. And you wouldn’t be the first. Joseph was hidden in the pit and in prisons. Moses was hidden in the desert for forty years. David was hidden in the pastures while tending sheep. Jesus was hidden in Egypt as a child long before He endured His time in the tomb. Each of them was locked away and tended only by the Master Vintner, lest someone come along and disrupt their maturation process on the way to becoming wine.

  I thank God for hiding me and releasing me when He was ready instead of when I was still fermenting. No matter how ready I thought I was to preach and move into the next level of my ministry, the Lord knew the time I needed to ferment and mature. His timing rarely seems to match our own impatience, but we must learn to release our haste in order to experience taste.

  Too many of us rush to get to the end of the process, trying to tell God that we are ready for what He has for us when we’ve not even fully understood the gifts He has placed in us. We could be waiting and rehearsing when our time comes for the spotlight to shine on us as life’s curtain goes up.

  His timing may not reflect our expectations, but during fermentation we must practice patience and trust His perfect knowledge of the time required for us to reach maximum potency and flavor. The Master Vintner knows when your wine is ready. He knows when your fermentation is done.

  Reflect on your fermentation. What have you done during your waiting period? How has it served as a time to prepare you for what is next? How can you use your experience to help you during your next waiting period?

  CHAPTER 7

  Becoming

  As we continue to explore the analogy of winemaking, I think it’s important to remember what happens to the grapes right before they are crushed in the winemaking process. Just before the grapes are crushed, right when they are at their peak, blushed with ripe, juicy, sun-drenched flavor, filled with sweetness and nectar unlike any other, grapes become shells, remnants of their former uncrushed glory. Suddenly, there is no beauty about them at all.

  And in those darkest moments we consider how—not if—we will ever be able to get back up and go on. We know ourselves only as empty husks of the ethereal dreams that once fueled our soul. But as we ferment and become wine, we must never forget that what we once were is nothing compared with what we are becoming.

  I have never known anyone who is incredibly successful who did not have some dark, shameful, horrific place through which they had endured and suffered and agonized, filled with frightful anxiety that they might not survive. And then eventually, slowly and gradually, through tenacity and divine intervention and support from others, they, too, showed themselves to be alive.

  They begin to feel their strength again. They realize they will never be the same, but what if they could go on? What if some diamond could emerge from the crushing weight applied to their soul? What if some priceless pearl could be extracted from the shell of who they once were?

  When Jesus arose from the dead, it was the women who first saw the burial shroud crumpled like a sleeper’s discarded blankets from the One who had awakened from death back into life. These women were the first, not because they were so filled with faith that they expected to find such a sight. No, they had come to their beloved Master’s tomb out of loyalty, to decorate the stench with incense and myrrh.

  But their loyalty and devotion intrigue me. They expressed no disappointment about placement, position, or politics. They refused to complain about their vulnerable investment in this spiritual venture that now seemed to mock them from the cross. No, these women remained loyal to what He used to be, not expecting anything else but to protect His image from passersby, to afford one last act of love and respect to Jesus of Nazareth.

  Imagine their surprise and dismay and confusion when they found that there was no corpse, no body, no sign of Him. The grave had been disrupted. The stone had been rolled away. He was not there. What did this mean?

  They carried the message back to the men. The first carriers of the gospel news were women. And it was not met with rejoicing, because who would believe something so fantastical? People can feel so low that others won’t believe you can come out, so their news was met with disbelief and barely a skeptic’s curiosity. Peter and John ran down to see if it could be true or
just another silly fabrication.

  They entered, and… nothing! They backed up out of the grave, astonished at what they saw. He had risen. Not what they expected and yet, their minds must have gone into overdrive as they attempted to process this shocking, unthinkable turn of events. All the moments with their Master suddenly had to be revisited, reviewed, and recalibrated. Was this what Jesus meant all along?

  Christ rose from the dead not only for each individual’s salvation, but He also returned to bring resurrection power through the Holy Spirit to us collectively, as His body, His bride, the fellowship of believers known as the church. Most theologians and church historians consider Pentecost the turning point for the birth of the church. At Pentecost, believers gathered together for prayer and worship and received the gift of the Holy Spirit infusing their minds, their hearts, and their bodies with divine resurrection power.

  And when we start talking about the glorious power of the Pentecost that birthed the church, we must realize that Pentecost sets its watch from the bloody, desolate place of the Passover. Pentecost was a place where the harvesters gathered to bring in the sheaves and reap the benefits of the toil of their labor. Only fifty days from the bloody tipping point of time and history, Pentecost revealed the gift emerging from God’s most precious sacrifice.

  Our weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Whether we want to or not, all of us must pick up some kind of cross and follow Jesus into suffering. We all have our crosses to bear. A failed marriage, a special needs child, a debilitating injury, a chronic illness, unbearable debt. We all go through crushing, but we must never forget crushing is not the end. We go from the vineyard to the vat to the victory.

  But clinging to that truth can be so hard when everything around you is slipping away. When I married my wife, I had a car, a good job, and a place to stay. But shortly after I said “I do,” my car was totaled, my company had shut down, and I found myself struggling to buy food to feed our family. We used paper towels and duct tape to make diapers for our kids. We returned soda bottles and cans for change so we could buy groceries. I can remember stopping along the side of the road to pick up apples beneath a tree at the edge of the woods. I will never forget the nights I stared up at the sky and wondered if we would ever get beyond our struggles.