“Moab has been at ease from his youth; He has settled on his dregs, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, nor has he gone into captivity. Therefore, his taste remained in him, and his scent has not changed.” Jeremiah 48:11
Dregs is the insoluble matter that settles to the bottom of the container that holds a liquid and this is especially applicable to wine. In the art of winemaking, there is a term called “keeping it alive.” After a settling has occurred with dregs accumulating at the bottom of the vessel, the way to prevent it from tasting and smelling bad—the only way to keep it alive—is to pour it into another vessel. This leaves a high percentage of the dregs behind, which is the contributing cause of the undesirable smell and taste. What is left is something more splendid. And what happens more times than not is that another pouring might be needed. This is because another settling of dregs collects at the bottom that was not eliminated in the first pouring. Several pourings might be required.
The same idea is visited by Zephaniah [1:12] but he gives us a spiritual indication of what the presence of dregs in our lives might reveal. It is an attitude that announces, “the Lord will not do good, nor will He do evil.” In other words, we believe that He isn’t doing much of anything at all. We settle in; we snuggle up to passivity, we park in the comfort zone of lethargy. All this results in a stale and stinky Christian life.
The solution is a prayer that asks God to pour you into the next vessel. God answering this prayer means levels of discomfort as He works to establish you as someone qualified to help others taste and see that the Lord is good. The pouring is the discomfort of a free fall. The complacency and indifference left behind, that which, at best, established you as tasteless and rancid in the past, is removed. This is how God keeps you alive.
What you can look forward to in short is an attitude of confident expectation and life-giving hope that replaces the dregs that have settled at the bottom of the bottle of your life, where effectual fervent prayer avails much.
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