Even When The Vines Are Empty
Have you ever believed in someone even after everyone else gave up on them? They’ve blown it more times than anyone can count, but you care about that person enough to not give up on them. Or, maybe it is you that someone believed in, even when others did not. In some cases, you even stopped believing in yourself. It was as if the vines were empty. Nothing left to hope for.
My college football coach was an average master of the game. On game day, the coaches and players did not want him calling any plays. But Coach Carp was a master tactician, master motivator. He knew what pieces to put where in order to get the maximum out of every person in the program, from the team’s manager to the All-American superstar. He believed in all of us, even as we doubted ourselves. Over a 32-year coaching career, his teams won over 70 percent of their games, and Coach is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Until his death in 2009, when I needed encouragement, when I needed guidance, I knew who to call.
Twenty-five years ago, when I applied to become a student in Vineyard’s ministry training school, I was very unsure of myself, and truthfully, wasn’t even sure why I had applied in the first place. I had never seen myself as wanting to be a pastor, let alone have anything that God was looking for. How I got to that place in my life is a story all to itself. As I was interviewing with the school’s director and bumbling my way through telling him my life’s journey, at some point he stopped me, and said these very words – “Dave, there is something in you that I just love and even though you don’t, I believe in you.” The trajectory of my life changed in that very moment.
The Bible is full of stories of God believing in, and using, people who had probably given up on themselves. People who made great messes of their lives. People whose vines were empty. Moses wandered for forty years in the wilderness while tending sheep before God called him to lead the people out of captivity. Rahab was a prostitute, yet God used her to help the Israelites capture the city of Jericho. How about King David, the adulterer and murderer. Abraham, the perpetual liar. Peter, who tripped over his own feet time and time again. God never gives up on His people. In fact, He loves to use His people, as broken and damaged as we are, to do His work.
But my question today is not does God believe in you (He does!), rather, I ask – Do you continue to believe in God, even when things don’t go your way? Sure, it is easy to trust God when the sun is shining, when your vines are full of grapes, but what happens when everything in your life runs dry, when everything seems to be in ruins, when the vines are empty?
In the first thirteen verses of Psalm 31, it is clear that, David, the writer of this psalm, faces unending troubles. He had probably given up trying to make wine from empty vines. He also probably wondered where God was. Yet, in v.14 we read – “But, I trust in you, O LORD, I say, You are my God.”
In a vision of Israel’s soon to be devastated economy, the prophet Habakkuk realizes that his aid, especially in times of trouble, comes not from temporal things, but instead, from Yahweh alone. And as a result of Habakkuk’s faith, God strengthened him not only to endure the hardship, but also to leap joyfully. That same strength is available to you and me today. Here is what we read – “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).
So, today, regardless of how empty your vines seem to be, can you unequivocally say to God… But, I trust in you!
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