In Numbers 13 God sends twelve spies into the promised land to check out its fruits. Numbers 13:20 says, “Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the season of the first grapes.” Joshua and Caleb had God’s heart and were looking for good fruit (the positive), the other ten spies were looking for bad fruit (the negative).

It is interesting that the spies were sent to spy out the promised land when the first grapes of the season were ripe. I sense the Lord wanted all twelve spies to focus on the fruit of the land and not the giants. I am sure Joshua and Caleb kept hearing how big the giants and walled up cities were from these ten spies while they were taking their tour. believe Joshua and Caleb got to thinking, “If the giants are really that big, can you imagine how big the fruit must be?” Joshua and Caleb were obsessed, looking for the fruit of the land of promise.

What we look for is what we will find. They came back with a cluster of grapes so big it took two men to carry one cluster on a pole out of the valley of Eschol. God called the land that was full of heathen giants and ungodly cities, a good land that flows with milk and honey. “I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” Psalm 27:13. If we are ever going to enter our promised land, we must see the good in our nation, our government officials, our cities, and the good in every person we meet. We may have to use script

ure

Romans 4:17b) to see the good and call those things that are not as though they already were.

Romans 2:4, “It’s the goodness of the Lord that leads men to repentance.” Did you know that God chooses to see the good in you, and not the evil? Ask the father of the prodigal son what he saw when his son came wandering up the road to home and said, even when he was still in the pigpen of sin, “That’s my son.” Be careful of what comes out of your mouth when you see sin in peoples’ lives increasing. It was what came out of the mouths of the ten spies that kept the whole of Israel from entering in to their inheritance. It is the same for us today. If our mouths can keep us out of our inheritance, then our mouths can take us in! Let’s look for the good, and speak of what is good in the land of the living!

The cluster of

rapes was the key to getting back into the promised land. I noticed that Joshua and Caleb still stuck it out with the unbelieving bunch of sour grapes that eventually dried up in the wilderness and became raisins. God separated Joshua and Caleb from them, later in His timing, they finally got to enter into their promised inheritance. They hung in there, for they knew the key to getting back into the promised land was to stay together and let the process prepare them for what was ahead.

Isaiah 65:8, “As the new wine is found in the cluster, destroy it not; for a blessing is in it.” God has a corporate vision right now for His kingdom in the earth, so we must be in a cluster of believers, and we must connect with churches, tribes, tongues and nations, for God is too big for just our ministry, church, or home group. I sense that what God has in mind is beyond us. This new wine cannot be made from just one grape, one ministry, one church. Without connecting to the cluster your life and ministry is bound to dry up.

I believe God’s hand is on those grapes who would cluster, because God wants to pour out a blessing beyond measure. I believe that when we are in our clusters, God is going to apply pressure so that the new wine can be released. You can always tell when God is about to make new wine from the cluster where you are placed: Some grapes will begin to whine. When God puts His hand of pressure on the cluster of grapes we first think the pressure is coming from the enemy or other grapes from the cluster. When God puts pressure on the cluster, some grapes begin to cry out,”Oh God, I can’t handle this bunch you’ve put me with. Please get me out of here,” I believe the Lord responds, “I will, my way, just hang in there!”

As more pressure is put on the cluster, some grapes begin to cry out,”Lord, I’m not being appreciated here. These grapes around me seem to be hindering my gifting, calling, and the dreams you have given me. I seem to be losing my identity.” I believe the Lord is saying, “You are right on schedule. You have been too thin skinned, and your brokenness is a must for what I am about to do. If you lose your life, you’ll find it in me!”

Myself and many others are wondering what God can be up to. God seems to be after something more than we can understand. I think it’s time to say to the grape next to us, “God is smarter than you and I.” I think the body of Christ should be working to cluster together so we can truly be the new wine that God wants to pour out on a lost and dying world.