Are You Really Rooted in Christ for Better or Worse? (Hosea 10 - Joel 2)
Strike up a conversation with a gardener and you won’t be able to walk away. They are passionate about the beauty, the weeds, the seeds, roots, water, dirt, propagation, etc. A well-established garden is one that is rooted well.
Our Christian walks mimic the life of plants in many ways and provides a visual for us to understand the value of being firmly rooted.
It’s never too late to start!
Download your first two weeks free by signing up below (or buy Book One of the Family Bible Plan)!
Strike up a conversation with a gardener and you won’t be able to walk away. They are passionate about the beauty, the weeds, the seeds, roots, water, dirt, propagation, etc. A well-established garden is one that is rooted well.
Our Christian walks mimic the life of plants in many ways and provides a visual for us to understand the value of being firmly rooted.
It’s never too late to start!
Download your first two weeks free by signing up below (or buy Book One of the Family Bible Plan)!
From a seed...
Israel itself is often characterized in the Bible as an olive tree. As Christians, the metaphor rings true for us as well.
We were planted with a seed. Seeds are tiny and can seem insignificant until they grow.
Seeds are designed that the root emerges first from the seed and anchors the plant where it begins to absorb water. After this, the shoot starts to grow.
A seed is rooted and anchored before growing. Much the same as our Christian walk. It starts with a seed planted in our life, that gets rooted in Christ, and then we start to grow.
The plant...
The seed grows into a plant much like we grow into our faith. It is not automatically a full-grown plant with leaves and fruit. Rather, it becomes one through daily care.
When it grows and stretches up the branches and leaves begin forming, and so also does fruit. An example to emulate, our faith is not ours to hide away under a bush. No! It is to grow and expand, share with those around us!
When the Israelites started they were a seed. God rooted them first in Him by establishing the expectations and commitments He offered them and what they were to offer in return. It was then that they grew up and expanded.
Their children were essentially the branches; grandchildren like the leaves.
Growing up...
They were brought to a point of expected maturity in which they were to honor their commitment, dedicate their lives to Him, and continuously remind their children of what only God could do and had done. What a wonderful world that was supposed to be!
Yet, the books of the prophets relay a different story. Over the generations, the seed that grew to a plant failed to share the goodness of God, the fruit never produced, and the plant withered away.
The fickleness of plants...
There are times in gardening when a plant starts strong but it takes a sharp turn toward destruction: may it be a weed choking out it’s stem, it hiding behind another with no source of the sun, or even it can be that the lack of water causes it to shrivel up. And that’s not nearly all the reasons a plant does not survive.
There are similar mainstream activities in our lives that have not changed over the years but have the same effect.
Confidence in self...
Pride rears it’s head in many ways. One such way is when someone is doing well financially.
It travels back to the natural order of trials.
Our trials are not empty journeys. We go through them to grow our faith and to learn how to become reliable on God. They have deep purposes and value.
Whether your financial status is at trial level or just careful budgeting, that time is best used to recognize that all monies are from God. It is through Him that your business does well, that you just got a random bonus, your car sold for what it did, or that you just got a raise.
The Old Testament teaches this throughout, that the very care for provisions has and always will stem from God. It is when we are rooted in this truth that we begin to really deepen our faith as it takes the pride out and adds in a sovereign picture of God.
When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot Me.
Israelites' confidence...
The Israelites had gotten to a point where they no longer gave God credit for providing for them. Their thoughts turned self-congratulatory for their work being the sole reason for their success.
They were no longer rooted in a way that upheld God as their provider and sustainer. In essence, it was as though they put a covering over themselves and thought they could provide their own sunlight and their own water to grow their plants.
You have plowed wickedness; You have reaped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, Because you trusted in your own way, In the multitude of your mighty men.
They turned from a faith rooted in God to a faith in themselves.
Natural Consequences...
The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up. How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.
Upon becoming a nation, God taught the Israelites that even the altar that was to host the sacrifices had to be cleansed. So also, even the land that they were to live on was to be cleansed from the sins that were committed upon it.
Israel had strayed so far from dependence upon God that He was going to turn His face away and let them experience their earned consequences.
In Joel, it talks about the locusts coming through and destroying the land and all that grew on it. Again, a cleansing of the land from the sins committed on it. The land needed to start over; when the remnant of Israel were to return, they essentially could be classified as the rooted seeds all set to expand into the world.
The difference for the remnant...
The Israelite remnant was blessed with a promise that no other nation had. It had the promise of the Israelites not being completely destroyed; they would always be rooted and come back to Him.
The Amorites and the nations around them would be destroyed… there would be no rooted seed to stay.
The Israelite remnant had a future guarantee. The promise was that God would remain their God, their people would not die away, and that all had the option of adoption into His family.
And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Shittim.
Egypt shall become a desolation and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the people of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land.
But Judah shall be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations. I will avenge their blood, blood I have not avenged, for the Lord dwells in Zion.
For better or worse...
The trials will come, but it is your response to them and your ability to learn from them that matters.
The Bible continuously warns us to watch ourselves.
- Watch our humility to bend the knee to Christ, accepting that He knows what’s best when we are at our worst.
- Watch our pride when we come out of a trial, that we don’t turn from acknowledging God’s sovereignty over every area of our life into patting ourselves on the back for what we did.
- Watch ourselves grow in Him, be nourished by the sun (Son) and living water only He can provide, bring up the next generation with a true understanding to remember Him always, and to grow fruit and expand the family of God by planting those seeds!
Last Week
Anchored Truth Tuesdays
~I do ask that you use the Anchored Truth Tuesdays logo image on your site somewhere or on the post itself; if you click on the picture a new window will open with html instructions
~We have a Pinterest group board, ” Anchored Truth Tuesdays, where all who link up are welcome to also upload their content–you’ll just need to like Anchored Abode first, and then request to join
I am always so encouraged by God’s use of images of organic growth in Scripture. It’s all and steady and it comes.from.within.