Chasing Vines: Finding Your Way to an Immensely Fruitful Life

by Beth Moore

The grape plant reproduces when she gets concerned that her survival is at risk. She responds to the threat by doing her best to ensure that her kind makes it even if she doesn’t.

The ability to produce immense fruit comes solely from the life force of the Vine.

Every life that’s attached to Him possesses the supernatural capacity to be stupendously productive. Like the natural grape plant, however, we might be inclined to wonder sometimes whether the ground where we’re planted is trying to cultivate us or kill us.

If the grape plant’s sunshiny field isn’t rocky enough, she’ll be all showy, with lush green leaves, but bear little fruit. If the grape plant’s field is too rocky, she’ll lack enough earth for hearty roots and mournfully shrivel up. Thus, the landowner looking for the perfect place to plant a choice vine does precisely what the Beloved did in Isaiah 5. He looked for a great spot in a decent climate with generous access to sun, an aspect that could soak in water but also drain it, and the right amount of rocks to make things just challenging enough for his vines to be a little uncomfortable.

This is a pretty impressive list of perks—necessities, even—that come out of the same stubborn rocks we assume are out to get us. In the hands of an able Vinedresser, rocks aren’t just something to stub our toe on. They’re catalysts for our growth.

Still, from where we sit, even on this side of the Cross, where death gives way to life, sometimes what God has done for us can feel, instead, like something He has done to us.

I’d do the same for my loved ones. To be perfectly honest, it’s embarrassing how long this rocky soil has lasted.

For the life of me, I cannot get my life to fix. Oh, I’ve tried, all right. If effort could ease the way, I’d be walking on a carpet of marshmallows. Still, challenges in my life never cease to loom large. Sometimes they loom so large they nearly eclipse the sun. With a sketchy background like mine, the simplest explanation is that I sinned so grievously and made so many foolish choices, I sabotaged the rest of my life beyond recovery. But that doesn’t sound much like the gospel of Jesus, does it? “You’re completely forgiven, slate wiped clean, but, wow, there’s nothing I can do about this mess you made.”

Sixty years in, I have a feeling the rocky soil in the life of the Jesus follower is not so much about failure as it is about fruitfulness.

“Remember all those hard things I grew you through? I did you a favor. You can thank Me now.” And I bet we will, and on that side of things, I bet we’ll mean it.

Oh, He knows, all right. Some rocks we should not hesitate to ask Him to move on our behalf. They aren’t remotely native to God’s soil. They come from the hands of the devil. When they’re thrown at us, we don’t sit back and just take it. We seek safety and tell about it. We seek counsel and healthy community to help us clear them out. Those rocks are too big and too dangerous to be lifted alone.

Whether you find yourself in a tumultuous season or a season of relative calm, the vineyard has much to teach us about dealing with rocky soil. The Beloved is faithful to clear out many stones, but there are others He may put to use.

I did you a favor. You can thank Me now. The favor is dependency. We who have never stopped wanting Jesus have likely never stopped needing Jesus. And if our passion waned for a brief while, we were always only one crisis from the next revival.

We are, after all, His treasures. He knows His aim with each of our lives. We are arrows in His hand, and He knows where to land us. He knows precisely what He desires to accomplish in us. With Him, nothing has a haphazard end, no matter how chaotic the means may seem. I’m no mind reader, but I have a hunch about the answer to one of your biggest questions. What the heck? The Gardener is setting you up for a bushel of fruit.

Oppressors don’t let go of the powerless without a fight. Too much profit is at stake.

I think many of us believe Jesus spends time in our company primarily out of obligation, as if we’re an annoying, misfit appendage He’s stuck with. After all, He promised to be with us always.

God alone knows how often I miss the new thing He’s doing because I think I know how life should go.

I forget that as the Author, He has the right to take the script on any twists and turns He desires. He alone knows how the story line has to go to reach its appointed objective. He alone knows what chapter He’s on and how close He is to the finish.

am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

This is what my Father is, this is what I am, and this is what you are.

The grapevine was so widely renowned as a symbol for Israel that it was even inscribed on coins.[4] Jesus wasn’t just telling an everyday parable. He was daring to supplant Israel. I am the true vine. JOHN 15:1

His response? Now I am your homeland. Abide in Me.

He has given us our spiritual disciplines, our dreams, our visions, our vocations, our callings, and our communities of faith. So when He starts messing with those things, the earth beneath our feet starts quaking. There comes a point when the rules we’ve sworn by—our time-proven strategies, our five keys to victory,

our twelve steps, our great habits—are no longer enough. While they’re all good things, they can get entangled with Jesus Himself and start cutting off the circulation between the Vine and the branch.

He supplants only for the purpose of giving life, not taking it. He reminds us at strategic times that nothing and no one can sustain us but Him. Jesus wants to shift your securities so that you will abide in Him alone, not in other people, places, and things. He knows that those things are bere...

and we then spend a lifetime relapsing into autonomy and then repenting, relearning what it means to abide.

We reside in Jesus. When He moves, we move. When He stays, we stay.

Even in prison, I was free. This woman had found her abiding place, and it was Jesus. It wasn’t a jail cell. It wasn’t an urban apartment. It wasn’t a home in the country. The withered branch had recognized its true Vine and received His life. Whether she was behind bars on a paper-thin mattress or running through a field of sunflowers, that girl was free. She’d found joy inside and joy outside because Jesus Himself was her joy, and no one could take Him away. The devil had tried to devour her, but he’d lost her forever to the Savior who had captivated her.

Said another way, “Apart from me, you can do nothing only I can do.”

That’s what attracts attention to Jesus. When weaklings become strong and timids become bold and temporal creatures do timeless work through the sheer vitality of Jesus, disproportionate fruit is produced. The fruit bearing that comes from abiding is the vintage example of a whole that is remarkably greater than the sum of its parts.

To do so, he merely appeals to our natural inclination to independence and novelty.

One of the best parts of abiding in Christ is staying close enough to catch a glimpse of what He decides to reveal.

While God desires the relational, however, we humans tend toward the transactional. “Lord, just tell me what to do and give me the power to perform it. Then let me do it.” We say to the Alpha and Omega, “Give me the plan from A to Z, and leave it to me.” We forget that He came to be Immanuel, God with us. Abide in Me. Work with Me.

We want to leap with God; He wants to walk with us. Walking transpires step by step. It demands patience. Pacing. God’s directional leading for our personal lives often unfurls in bits of light between shadows. He says His word is a lamp to our feet, which offers us the assurance of arm’s length direction when He says, “Go.”

Lord, why can’t You just tell me upon departure? Why do I have to wait for You to show me where I’m going? Because showing requires going. It assumes presence. Accompaniment. I can send you somewhere and not go with you, but how can I show you something without being present? This same sense of connection is on display in the revelation received by the exiled apostle John.

So why the emphasis on teaching instead of telling? Because teaching takes two. It requires interaction. Where there’s no interaction, there’s no relationship.

Being a branch to the true Vine means living with Christ, breathing with Christ, doing day-to-day life with Christ. It’s the ongoing awareness of His presence, even when there’s no feeling of His presence. Our lives become witness to His with-ness.

In other words, following Jesus isn’t just about a prescribed set of rules or a certain set of behaviors. It’s about being tethered to Jesus like He’s oxygen—it’s about being in His presence at every moment. When

It leads principally to a life that has features of Jesus’ life running through its veins.”[3]

Then it’s time to bear in mind once again that people are the point. They need our tenderness. They need our flexibility. They may just need us to sit with them, to abide with them.

Of course, the branch could not be more mistaken. The branch is very much alive and never more poised for fruitfulness than in the wake of winter.

You can see the budding. It’s right there before your eyes. You can taste the breakthrough on the tip of your tongue. But just before it comes to fruition—faith made sight—your breakthrough ends up looking suspiciously more like a breakdown.

Pruning, according to Jesus, is a really good sign. It doesn’t just signal future fruit. It’s proof of previous fruit. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit [the vinedresser] takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes. JOHN 15:2

The vinedresser doesn’t bother pruning branches that don’t bear fruit. He prunes those that do.

We weathered ones have learned by now how seasons often go and how what sometimes appears to be a fierce killing ends up being a peculiar healing.

At times we’re in the dark because God is revealing some aspect of His glory that’s more than we can stare straight in the face. The beauty in the darkness is that God is close enough to cover us with His hand. Often at the end of a tremendously intense season, He’ll grace us with a glimpse of His back. He gives us just enough evidence of His presence for us to realize He was there all along—not as a spectator or even just as a protector, but as Lord over all.

Simply put, the way it’s trained is the way it will grow.

Our culture’s tireless training in narcissism has not made us happy; it has made us miserable.

Without a trellis, the vine would fold in on itself, remaining stuck at ground level. Without a trellis, the branches would never reach their heads up to the sun. And so the trellis of the Cross trains us in the way of forgiveness (Luke 23:33-35).

I’ve become increasingly convinced that those we need to forgive most often grasp the least how much they’ve hurt us.