The Grind's Greatest Lie
Updated: 7 days ago
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a local leadership event hosted by Citizen 7 event addressing "The Grind." Sitting at a table with other Indianapolis-area leaders, the discussion question was posed: what's the biggest lie the world tells us about the grind?
The answers were good. Real good, actually. Heads nodded around the table. Mine included.
But I drove home still turning it over, not because those answers were wrong, but because there's a phrase nobody said out loud, one usually meant as encouragement rather than a lie at all: "you are enough." Believe that hard enough, on your own terms, and here's what it tends to look like in practice: grind harder, work longer hours, perfect the strategy, chase one more thing. Do all of that well enough, for long enough, and the breakthrough is yours to produce, entirely on your own steam.
Here's the thing: it's not a flat out lie. In fact it is true, you are enough. Say it out loud, "I am enough." Like the best lies of the world though, it's only a part of the truth. You are enough to be loved and enough to be valuable, exactly as you are, right now. God isn't waiting for you to grind your way to an accomplishment before He'll want a relationship with you. So what's missing? What's missing is the context. The lie of the grind that often gets us is that we're enough alone. That's not a contradiction. It's a design, and there's an image in Scripture related to wine that makes the design almost impossible to miss.
The goal of the grind is to accomplish something: to produce, to build, to bear a result worth the effort. Scripture has a word for that kind of result: fruit. For those wine lovers out there, let's take a stroll into the vineyard and see what it actually takes to grow some.
What the Vine Teaches
Grapevines, like human bodies, are made of many parts. Each part has a particular function to help the vine as a whole. The roots pull up water and nutrients from the soil. The trunk holds everything together and carries it upward. The branches grow the leaves and bear the fruit.
Now suppose you took a branch and broke it off the vine? What do you suppose would happen? Well, you probably didn't need experience growing grapes to know it wouldn't produce fruit. That's exactly why it's worth noticing that Jesus reached for this picture, of all the pictures available to Him, when He wanted to describe what it means to actually live:
"I 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." (John 15:5)
Jesus didn't say "apart from Me, you'll struggle" or "apart from Me, it'll be harder." He said apart from Him, you can do nothing at all. You can still be busy, disconnected from the vine. You just can't produce the fruit. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus doesn't mix words or use a vine analogy to get this same point across: "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
You, grinding alone: nothing. You, staying connected with God: much fruit. That's the tension worth sitting with before we go further.
You Are Enough”,”
Somewhere along the way, "you are enough" quietly lost its second half and became "you are enough, period," full stop, no addition needed, no one else required. That second version isn't encouragement anymore. It's a branch convinced it doesn't need the trunk.
This was never meant to be you alone, or God alone while you watch from the sidelines. It's you plus God, and that little word "plus" might be the whole ballgame. That's the biggest lie the world tells us about the grind: not that you don't matter, but that you're supposed to do this part alone.
Made to Work
None of this is an argument against hard work. Before anything went wrong, God gave Adam work, not as a punishment but as a gift: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). A chapter earlier, the assignment was even bigger: "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), not just tend what's there, but help it grow into more of itself. Work isn't a consequence of anything broken; it's a gift, an invitation to join God in cultivating something already good. Cultivate Life isn't a slogan we invented so much as the assignment handed out in the first two chapters of the Bible. Done right, work is supposed to refine us rather than define us, reminding us of our dependence on the vine instead of tempting us toward independence from it.
Sometimes abiding looks like Mary, sitting at Jesus's feet, doing nothing but listening (Luke 10:39). Other times it looks like an ox in a yoke, working hard, pulling real weight, just no longer pulling alone: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me... my burden is light" (Matthew 11:29–30). Same load, same effort, different power source.
But what about Martha? Glad you asked. Her serving wasn't the issue. Look no further than John 12:2, where at a later dinner in Bethany, she's serving again, same role, same task, and this time John records it without a hint of correction. Same woman, same task. What changed wasn't the work so much as her focus and who she was doing the work for. In Luke 10, Martha had let the grind take the yoke.
Where the Grind Actually Came From
So if work is a gift, where did the grind come from? Look at what the serpent actually offers Eve: not more, not better, but independence: "you will be like God" (Genesis 3:5). That's the original version of the lie this whole post has been circling.
And look at what happens immediately after, as the direct consequence: "cursed is the ground because of you... thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you... by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:17–19). The grind (the sweat, the resistance, the thorns) was never the punishment for working. It's the cost of independence.
You've probably heard another version of this same lie, maybe from someone trying to comfort you: "God will never give you more than you can handle." It's not actually in the Bible. It's an expansion of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which is about resisting temptation, not carrying burdens. Paul confirms that God can and will give you more than you can handle alone sometimes in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9: he and his companions were "so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself... that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God" (2 Corinthians 1:8–9). God let the grind exceed Paul's own strength on purpose, specifically to move the reliance off Paul and onto God.
Pruning: The Part Nobody Puts on a Coffee Mug
That reliance doesn't stay settled once and for all, though. This is where it gets less comfortable and more honest.
In a vineyard, only wood from the previous season's growth bears fruit. Growth older than 2 years doesn't bear fruit, not because it's bad, but because it already did its job. If you want next year's grapes, you have to cut back what's already grown, again and again, season after season. Real pruning discipline is aggressive: grapevines are typically cut back to about 90–95% of the previous year's growth every winter, a level of cutting that would look reckless to anyone unfamiliar with viticulture. Rather than careful trimming, it's a near-total return to the source, on purpose, every single year.
Spiritually, that's an uncomfortable mirror. The places in our lives where we've gotten the most "experienced," the most self-sufficient, the most able to handle things ourselves, are often exactly the places we quietly stop including God, not out of rebellion, but out of habit. We got good at something, and somewhere along the way we forgot we didn't get there alone.
If this idea of God working below the surface, in places you can't see yet, resonates with you, it's worth reading Cultivated Ground, the fuller story of how He was breaking up rocky ground in our own lives years before we ever planted a vine.
This is where grinding and abiding actually meet. Pruning doesn't mean stop working; it means the effort has to keep getting cut back to its root, checked, re-anchored, and kept honest about where it's really coming from. The goal isn't to punish that area but to keep it connected and bearing fruit.
This isn't a one-time fix so much as a returning practice: you don't solve "us plus God" once and coast from there. You keep getting pruned back to it, season after season, especially in the exact spots where you've started to feel like you've got this handled on your own.
Our Own Pruning Season
When Frances and I decided to focus this winery on sparkling wine, we weren't chasing a smart business move. If anything, the market and the numbers argued against us. Sparkling wine is harder to make, slower to produce, and a tougher sell.
We didn't do it because we had the experience or the résumé to pull it off. We did it because we believed it was what God was calling us toward, and we knew that to bear fruit we had to stay connected to the vine.
And if we're honest, that's not a decision we made once and get to file away. There are still seasons where it's tempting to quietly start crediting ourselves. That's old wood creeping in. We're still learning to let it get pruned back.
We've told a version of this story before, how it felt to step into something as notoriously difficult as sparkling wine with no industry experience, in The Peony Experiment, alongside David's own story of being called before he looked ready. Same lesson, different glass.
Wherever You're Standing, You're Enough to Start
If you're carrying around the feeling that you're not qualified enough, experienced enough, talented enough, put-together enough for whatever it is you sense you're being called toward, we'd gently push back on the whole premise. You were never supposed to be enough for that on your own. Nobody in Scripture was. Moses stuttered his way in front of Pharaoh. David was the kid still out with the sheep when Samuel came looking for a king. None of them got there by being enough on their own. All of them were loved and used anyway.
So if you feel called, then grind: build the thing, put in the hours, chase where you sense the yoke pulling you. Work was never the trap, and it isn't now. Just don't lose your connection or let the grind become the focus; stay planted where the life already is, and let whatever fruit comes, come from there.
And keep reading. If this is the first time you've noticed how much is packed into a single Greek word, or how the same task, done twice at two different dinners, can tell two completely different stories, that's exactly why we keep coming back to these passages ourselves. Scripture holds up under a second and third look, so don't stop at one.
If you're a man in Indianapolis and this whole idea of grinding without losing your connection to God hits home, the room I was sitting in when this post started is worth your time too. Citizen 7 exists to help men find genuine belonging so they can lead their families, communities, and cities with wholeness and truth, through things like Coffee Connections, Lunch & Learn Circles, and Neighborhood Tours around the city. It's not a business networking group; it's guys figuring out this exact tension together.
If you'd like to experience that invitation in a literal, low-stakes way, no résumé required, nothing to prove, nothing to bring but yourself, join us at The Happiest Hour, our free monthly gathering rooted in Isaiah 55: "Come, all you who are thirsty... without money and without cost." Just come as you are. That's the whole invitation.
🤓 NERD ALERT! ⚠️
The Greek word translated "abide" in John 15 is menō (μένω), used repeatedly throughout the chapter, more than almost anywhere else in the New Testament. It doesn't just mean "visit" or "stop by." It means to remain, to stay put, to take up permanent residence. Jesus isn't describing a quick check-in with the vine before you head off to do your own thing. He's describing a settled, ongoing home address. Going to church on Sunday, or working through a morning devotional, are good and worth doing, but on their own, they're closer to a visit than an address. Paul picks up the same idea in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, telling believers to "pray without ceasing," not a scheduled block of the day, but a posture that runs underneath the whole day.
Here's where it gets even better: menō isn't a standalone word. It's the root of the Greek noun monē, which shows up one chapter earlier: John 14:2, where Jesus tells the disciples, "In My Father's house are many rooms." Same root. And John uses the word again in 14:23, where Jesus says that He and the Father will come and "make Our home" with anyone who loves Him, no longer future language but present-tense indwelling. So the sequence runs: Jesus promises a dwelling place (14:2), promises to make His home in you now (14:23), and then commands you to abide (15:4), all using the same root word. Abiding was never a demand bolted onto the relationship. It's Jesus inviting His followers into the very home He'd already promised to build, and already begun moving into.
One more, for anyone still with us: the yoke image in Matthew 11 wasn't poetic invention. A Roman farmer named Columella, writing around the same era the Gospels were taking shape, described how an untrained ox was traditionally paired with "the strongest and at the same time quietest of the trained oxen, which both keeps it back if it rushes forward and makes it advance if it lags behind." The steady, trained animal absorbed the correction in both directions, just by staying close enough to walk beside. That's a strikingly literal picture of "learn from me," not a metaphor floating free of any real practice, but a description of exactly how yoke training actually worked.
📚 Further Reading
Our previous post: The Best Wine – The Wedding Story That Shaped Our Indiana Winery
Our previous post: The Easter Wine Story: Five Glasses, Four Promises, and One Very Famous Dinner
Our previous post: Cultivated Ground
Our previous post: The Peony Experiment
Frequently Asked Questions
What does John 15:5 mean by "abide in the vine"? John 15:5 is Jesus describing Himself as a vine and His followers as branches, teaching that lasting spiritual fruit only comes from an ongoing, sustained connection to Him, not from isolated effort or a single moment of decision.
Does the Bible say we are enough on our own? Scripture teaches that God loves and accepts people as they are, with nothing to prove first, but it also teaches that bearing lasting fruit requires staying connected to God, not relying on our own sufficiency alone.
Does the Bible say God will never give you more than you can handle? Not exactly. That phrase is a loose paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which is specifically about resisting temptation. Paul describes the opposite happening with hardship in 2 Corinthians 1:8–9, saying he faced a burden beyond his own strength specifically so he would rely on God rather than himself.
What does the story of Mary and Martha teach about faith and busyness? In Luke 10:38–42, Jesus corrects Martha not for serving but for the anxiety underneath it, while her sister Mary sits and listens instead. Later, in John 12:2, Martha serves again at a different meal, and this time the text records it without any correction at all, suggesting the problem was never the work itself, but who she was doing it with.
What does pruning mean spiritually? Just as a vineyard manager cuts back a vine's growth each season so it can bear fruit again, spiritual pruning describes God removing self-sufficiency or reliance on our own experience so we return to dependence on Him.
Where can I learn more about Indiana wine and faith? The Rejoicing Vine is an Indiana winery near Indianapolis exploring the connection between winemaking, land stewardship, and faith. Visit our blog for more from our Wine in the Bible series.
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