“I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert…there I will give her back her vineyards.”

-Hosea 2:14-15

We don’t normally think of finding vineyards in a desert – a place that symbolizes hardship, pain, and loneliness. In Hebrew, there’s a word that means trouble. It’s called “Achor.” It represents a literal place where a man by the name of Achan had disobeyed God. Following the battle with the city of Ai, in which Joshua won the battle, Achan wrongly took some of the spoil from the battle and buried it under his tent. Because of his disobedience, trouble, loss, and pain came upon himself and his nation. In the aftermath, a monument was erected as a reminder of Achan’s disobedience and it’s cost to the people.

We may find ourselves in a modern-day Valley of Achor either by our own sin, a personal failure, a setback, a bad choice, or disobedience, or we come into it due to someone else’s sin. For most of us, it may seem like the last place we’d want to be, but God sees the desert experience differently. If willing, He has something “good” for us to learn and take from there. Whether we’ve lost hope, lost our way, feel totally alone, or we’ve finally surrendered our rebellious will, it is then that the Lord may lead us into the Valley of Achor.

I found myself in the Valley of Achor some years ago. As I pressed into the Lord with a desperation I had never experienced before, I felt detached from the everyday things of life. I felt closed off, as if there was an invisible wall around me, barricading me in with the Lord. It was uncomfortable at first. My heart literally ached. But as time passed, I sensed God did this for my good. That metaphorical wall was God drawing close to me, subduing me with His love and overshadowing me with His comfort. Essentially, He was preparing my heart. Praying intensely for nearly a year, and expelling every last drop of hope, hearts didn’t change, but my faith did. I learned to allow God to fill the void left by those who wounded my soul. While in the Valley of Achor, I turned a corner in my walk with the Lord. His desire was to be my Tower of Trust and Refuge, rather than seeking love and acceptance from those who meant only harm. To do that, God had to remove people from my life. Nightly, I dug deep into His Word. In return, He poured his strength into me and the courage to let go and move on, putting my expectancy and hope in Him for my future. Those months of testing developed new qualities in me to be used for His purposes later.

So why does the Lord allure us into the desert? Because on the other side of the Valley of Achor, is the “door of hope.”  We may see our circumstances as the actual wilderness, but the Valley of Achor is really the struggle going on inside us. His desire is to produce something within us – to take with us into the world for His purposes. If God allures us into Achor, then He has something in store for us that is “good.” We have a loving and merciful God. We never know what hidden streams await us, and if we don’t resist the valley of trouble, and allow Him to draw us deep into His presence, He’ll bring us to the “door of hope.” And He’ll restore our vineyards.