I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’
Joshua 24.13

this is working a vineyard. a post series that talks about some things we’ve noticed just by hanging around the stuff that grows at our house.

a few weeks ago i was picking some grapefruit from one of our trees.

this tree:

the thing about this tree is that it produces an incredible amount of fruit. it is healthy and does what it’s supposed to do.

on the particular day that i went out to pick, here’s what i got after my 5 minutes of harvesting:

this tree is a machine. we had already picked some of the fruit off earlier in the week. and, after getting these two bushels, here’s how the tree looked:

tons. of. fruit.

it reminded me of how the Lord desires His people to be.

He wants us to be healthy, fruitful trees. trees that are just overflowing with spiritual fruit. fruit that blesses people all over the place.

but it also reminded me of the vast potential in every believer. Psalm 1 says that when we’re walking with the Lord, when our relationship with Him is in good health, then we will be like trees planted by rivers of water.

and a tree like that has incredible potential.

one believing fisherman taught a Bible study that led to 3,000 people getting saved.

one humble evangelist’s obedience led to a revival in Ethiopia.

as believers in Jesus Christ, we have incredible potential. not of ourselves, but because the Spirit of the Almighty God dwells within us. His plan is to use us to further the Gospel and His work around the world. and He desires that we bear fruit on every bow.

one healthy tree can do remarkable things.

I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’
Joshua 24.13

we have some truly phenomenal grapevines on our property. in fact, in that little banner above you can see one of them in it’s leafy splendor.

they produce.

a lot.

we have a variety of grapes: green, red, some smaller, some larger, but all very plump and well-bearing.

here’s the problem: the vines are 50+ years old, thus none of them produce seedless grapes.

we’re not big fans of seeds.

we’re not that big of fans of grapes either.

those 2 elements mixed together make us rather indifferent about the fruit of these vines.

don’t get me wrong, we love the vines. they are beautiful and stately and fragrant. we just don’t really want the fruit.

so, sadly, this season we left the grapes on the vines without harvesting a single cluster (irresponsible, yes, the point of this post? no).

as winter approached i snapped a couple pictures of the grapes wasting on the vines…

as i was thinking about this wasted fruit i thought about the fruit that grows in our lives.

we all bear fruit.

if we’re in step with God, we bear good fruit.

if we’re not, we bear bad fruit.

but that isn’t the end of fruit…i mean, it doesn’t end with the production. what happens after production is incredibly important.

take these vines for example. they produce good fruit. consistent fruit.

but vines don’t drop their grapes like a fruit tree does. those clusters will hang on until i come out to harvest them.

our vines produced tons of fruit, but it wasn’t used. it just sat on the vine. and, because of that, good fruit was wasted. ruined. rotten. spoiled.

therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.  
2 Timothy 1:6

why do we need to ‘stir up’?

it’s because we all have the tendency to settle.

like italian salad dressing.

in the same sense, we have the tendency to allow the fruit that God is developing in our lives to sit on the vine.

we keep the fruit to ourselves, doing those things which are comfortable. easy. convenient. self-satisfying.

in the end, the fruit that God bore in our lives to bless those around us is wasted as we simply leave it on our vines, sucking the resources and the nutrients back into ourselves.

in-growth. self-service. fruit left on the vine.

as i saw the grapes, withered and shriveled, i remembered that fruit isn’t for the vine. it’s for the people around it. when i’m choosing to ‘serve God’ in ways that are really just serving myself, my own desires, my own comfort, my own pride or ambition, then the fruit isn’t going anywhere. it’s left on the vine.

and fruit left on the vine is valueless.

i want the fruit that God is developing in my life to have value.

perhaps i need to pay greater attention to how i’m using the fruit that Christ is bearing in me.

blessings.

this post is part of the working a vineyard series on JIE

something i learned quickly when we started tending our garden is that when you’re out of daylight, the work is brought to an abrupt halt. we have no artificial lights to guide us in our efforts, only the light of the sun.

again, it’s not that no one gardens at night, it’s that we can’t. and it taught me something about serving the Lord.

the Bible talks about God’s word being a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.

in ministry, God must provide the light for me to continue working. if i don’t have sufficient light, then i’m going to end up making one of my beds crooked…overstep my boundaries…make a hole where i don’t need a hole.

light is key. intentions aren’t enough to work my garden. i have to have a specific resource to continue working effectively.

blessings

last week i learned that i need to start digging.

but there was a second part to what i learned. as we were doing our best to clear away the tough, compacted, dry ground, and as i thought about how that relates to ministry, i realized a fundamental mistake that i am prone to make: blaming my tools for the difficulty of the field.

there is a sense in which i approach ministry with the idea that if the work is difficult, i must need a different tool! a newer tool! a tool no one else has thought of yet!

by ‘newer’ i don’t just mean a re-issue of the tool i already have, but a new implement altogether. somehow we convince ourselves that, in ministry, when the ground is hard or difficult to work in, it is the tool that has failed.

this is why in every generation we see a move away from the Bible as the authority on ministry and daily life. we decide that difficulty equates failure and that it is the Word that has ‘failed’ to reach the field we are working in. it has failed to trench down through the rock. we use phrases like, “no longer relevant,” or, “impractical in a post-modern world,” and we start looking for new tools.

in a sense, it’s as if we turned from a shovel, ancient and pre-modern, to a fountain pen or a lcd screen to attempt our trenching. if those don’t work (and they don’t), then we look to the telephone or the vacuum tube…we look for something new that promises to solve our trenching difficulties.

[ pause ]

ok, you know i’m not talking about the actual inventions right? i’m not saying that using technology in church is wrong. it’s just an analogy of how we sometimes abandon God’s Word for newer ideas/methods/practices because we feel these new ideas/methods/practices are more ‘modern’ and thus more ‘relevant’ to our generation.

[ play ]

that’s really not what i need at all. for the work of trenching in our garden what i need is not a ‘new’ tool, but a sharp tool. i need a shovel in hand that is sharp and sturdy. for this job i need the same tool i’ve always needed, the same tool i’ve had since we started our garden: a shovel. a shovel with the strength to break hard ground and the precision to protect the roots of our tomatos. no tractor will suffice for this job. no laser-leveler will aid. they are wonderful devices that are neither available to me nor preferred for the field i am in. the shovel is what i need and it is what has been given to me.

for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of the soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
[ Hebrews 4:12 ]

like every Biblical analogy, this one falls short. but, it was something that caused me to pause and think and remember that my God is a God of sufficiency and clarity and empowering. He is a God who is already found and who has already equipped His people with all that they need to trench the earth, exposing it to His living water.

blessings

remember the flood i caused? well, as expected, all the ground where the water sat eventually dried, compacted, cracked and filled our watering trenches, especially around our tomato plants.

last night kelly and i spent some time in the yard. i edged and mowed while she started re-digging the trenches that our plants needed to get water down to their roots.

once the yard was finished i relieved my wife (who is tough as nails by the way) and helped to finish some of the trenching.

while i was realizing why adidas knock-offs aren’t made for heavy gardening, i also thought about the stoney ground from the parable of the sower.

the sower went out to sow and some of the seed fell on stony ground (i’ve decided to drop the ‘e’ from ‘stoney’, since the word i want to use is ‘stony‘, not ‘stoney‘).

when it comes to ministry, most times when i come across a stony heart i just give up and think, ‘well, that person has made up their mind…there’s nothing i can do.’

but last night i realized that Jesus doesn’t quit working when He gets to a stony heart.

true, the harder a heart becomes, the more difficult it is to get the water down to where it needs to go, but quitting isn’t an option.

i can’t just give up on our tomatos because the ground is difficult to work with, but i also can’t expect them to grow and produce fruit by pouring water on flat, cracked, compacted earth.

the answer: get a shovel and start digging.

the work was difficult.

really difficult. it takes the whole body to cut a new trench, but we could do it. sometimes we could be more broad in our shoveling…sometimes we had to be careful not to upset roots, which might damage the plant further.

the bottom line is that the answer is to start digging.

the same thought applies for those people in my life who may have hardened themselves to me or to the Church or to the Gospel in general. the answer isn’t to give up, but to continue working to clear away the stones and the earth through prayer and through outreach and through the Water of the Word.

i need to start digging. and i need to keep digging till the work is done.

i learned something new about working a vineyard this week; and that’s the fact that good intentions don’t keep me from making mistakes.

monday morning. woke up. got ready for work. and, as always, i thought to myself:

time to go water.

at about 7:30am kelly and i had headed out to hydrate our thirsty garden (it’s a two-person job these days) and, against my better judgment, i decided that, instead of turning the hose off between watering-can-fillings, i would simply lay it at the base of one of our grape vines.

don’t forget the water.

don’t forget the water.

we finished the watering and i surveyed a few of the plants in front and back, then we packed up the car and headed off to church.

i’m so glad we got to water together.

fast forward 8 hours or so.

and…

this picture symbolizes my watering aspirations spinning out of control

luckily, the cost of learning this lesson wasn’t too high (this time). the tomatos were the only plants affected, and they probably loved the soaking.

you might be wondering, “that’s all the water there was after 8 whole hours?”

that’s what i thought too.

then we remembered the extensive gopher tunneling under about half our garden. as we surveyed around we started to see a few sink holes.

in other areas, the ground was just a bit…mushy…

so what’s the point?

the point is this: when i’m working God’s vineyard i need more than good intentions. i had turned the water on because i wanted to help. but my negligence led to damage. when this section of garden finally does dry it’s going to be harder and more craggly than ever before (i learned that from a previous flooding incident).

ministry or service to the Lord is much the same. when i’m negligent, people can get hurt. when i’m careless, portions of my field might be damaged.

good intentions must be followed through with attentive service. my mistake set back our garden a little bit, and i don’t want that to happen in God’s vineyard.

blessings

the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
[ Luke 10:2 ]

i never could have imagined how exciting it is to grow something from the dirt. i mean, kelly and i had been looking forward to starting a garden back when we were apartment living, but we never anticipated how fulfilling it is to plant a seed and watch it grow.

we are dirt farmers, i suppose. a small plot of land, a few built-in crops, no machinery (that is, no machinery yet, other than a hose…). just the basic hand tools to make it happen and very little know-how going in.

the row you see in the picture above is just one of the rows we’ve made. right now it’s housing 4 tomato plants and 12 (dead) garlic plants.

for us, working by hand with a shovel and a rake, that row was hard to make. really hard. but, like i said, the activity is so rewarding as we work together and watch the progress of our labors, that we don’t mind the sweaty clothes and sore muscles.

on one hand we might think we’re at a disadvantage to people who farm with tractors and well-routed irrigation and other conveniences, but on the other hand we realize that we don’t want a large-scale farm, and many of those conveniences would be useless for us.

we want our little plot with our little plants to be fruitful. that’s our home. that’s our plan. that’s what we’re equipped for.

in the mean time we have access to some amazing resources…home depot is about 1 mile away, we’ve been given an assortment of books on gardening, we have the internet at our fingertips to look up centuries of wisdom…at this point, the potential for us to learn about what we’re doing is pretty limitless.

but here’s the thing…if kelly and i don’t work in our garden, no one will. if we don’t work, the garden dies. and, while that wouldn’t be the greatest of tragedies, on some level we can see that if our garden died and lay dormant, that land is just wasted.

i find that our spiritual service to the Lord is much the same. i think we underestimate how important it is for us to work in the plot of land that God desires us to work in. we may see bigger and better across the road, but there is a profound reason for why God puts us where He puts us.

and, sadly, though the fields are many, the workers are few. and when we don’t labor, or when we work somewhere the God didn’t place us, then fruit dies. plants wither. land lays dormant. the fields are wasted.

the work is hard, but it’s wonderful. it’s rewarding and fulfilling and exciting. but, if i’m not content to work in the place God has provided for me, then all the wonder of the work is lost.

blessings

I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’
[ Joshua 24:13 ]

this is a verse that has been on my mind recently, the reason being that it describes kelly’s and my living situation at the moment.

as frequenters of this site know, a few months ago we moved into a rental home, out in what we affectionately call ‘the country.’

now, ‘country’ is a relative term. i mean, our house is 4 miles from church, 1/4 mile from the local freeway, 1/2 mile from target, jamba juice, coldstone and other places of business. head north from our house and after about 5 miles you’ve gone from one side of hanford to the other, and you’re on your way to the big, dirty city of fresno.

but, we also get some of the benefits of ‘country’ life. our house is pretty much on the edge of the city limits, it’s surrounded on 3 sides by large open fields, and we sit on about 2/3 of an acre…which brings us to Joshua 24:13.

see, much to our excitement, kelly and i have inherited some farming land (want to see?). behind our house there is a large plot where we have started our very first garden, something we have wanted to do for some time.

but we’re not starting from scratch. with our rental we inherited:

- 15 grapevines
- 2 adult pomegranate trees
- 1 meyer lemon tree
- 1 orange tree (or two…we can’t tell…)
- 2 grapefruit trees
- 1 pear tree
- 1pecan tree
- 2 apricot trees
- 4(?) raspberry plants (again…i can’t tell how many there are)

on top of that we have been planting or planning to plant:

- lettuce greens
- carrots
- dwarf basil
- corn
- summer squash
- bell peppers
- hot peppers
- garlic
- strawberries
- copious amounts of tomatoes

as we started tending to our garden i realized that something interesting was happening. i started noticing that God was teaching me some very simple things about Himself through the hands-on illustration of farming and gardening with my wife.

i started taking a few notes and then decided i might as well turn them into a series here, that i might highlight the extravagant love of Jesus Christ. they’re not profound, but they are special to me because of their simplicity and direct connection to both my Lord and my backyard.

most bloggers (i’d say), myself included, spend a lot of time pontificating about posts…we try hard to produce something that is appealing to those who might come along and read what we’ve written. whether that’s the best way to blog or not, it is what ends up happening on one level or another.

i’m really excited about this series because it’s not meant to be about philosophizing or pontificating. it’s simply the few thoughts that God has fed my mind as i work in this vineyard that i’ve inherited.

i hope that you enjoy it, i hope you come back to read it, but the bottom line is that i hope that it glorifies the Lord as i share things that He shared with me…not because i’m special or unique, but because He loves sharing Himself with the whole world.

blessings