Week Three Blog for the Rooted Bible Study. Learn more about Rooted here.
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
John 14:26
We are the plant and Jesus is the roots. We grow and flourish because of Him. At some point in life, we will most likely get beaten down by life. The storms of life, lies from satan, and possibly even a lack of intentionality on our part may leave our plant broken and battered. However, since our roots are in Jesus we will grow again. We will be healed and blossom again and again because of God’s perfect plan.
As I dove into this study, I was amazed at the beautiful analogy of the plant and the roots. Back in Isaiah 53 it says Jesus is the root. He springs up in even the driest of places. As I pondered more on plants, I was amazed at the beauty of this picture that is painted for us. We can’t see the roots under plants. We know they are there and we trust that since the plant grows it is because of the roots. Just in the same way, we can’t physically see Jesus, but we can trust Him to sustain us and flourish our garden. There are days where I wonder where He is. These are the days I feel so discouraged and so beaten up I just want to stop trying. I begin to question where His power is in my life. Why am I not the person I want to be? As I look at these days, I can see the truth is that I am not trusting fully in the root system under me. I worry that since I can’t see how Jesus sustains me, maybe He wont. Most often during these days I also see an infiltration of lies and fear tactics from satan. Sometimes I am able to acknowledge this right away and then step back with the intention to push away all those lies by Jesus help. When I acknowledge this I do do better. However, if I am still in the wake of the bad day, month, or even year…I easily mess up over and over. It leaves me questioning where are you Jesus?
He is always right where He should be. He is always our root system sustaining us. Sometimes however, He has us on a learning journey. A journey that can be hard, but crucial for us to draw closer to Him. When we find ourselves in these frustrating times, we can choose to trust our root system is sustaining us even when it doesn’t feel like it. After we establish the trust in our roots, we can step forward in actions of intentionality. We can intentionally:
- Recognize lies in our head and replace them with Biblical truth
- Focus on saying sorry to loved ones and Jesus when we mess up, then ask for forgivness
- Keep going and choosing Jesus even when it “looks” like He isn’t helping
- Believe that His ways are far above ours and there is a plan for this hard time
- Stay in the Word and Prayer even if it doesn’t feel like it is doing anything or fixing our problems
- Analyze the reason for the discouragement (lack of faith, teaching moment, root cause of feelings, selfishness, pride..)
You see, our feelings can’t be trusted. We were given feelings for a reason and they can be very beneficial, so we should never stuff them. However, we need to choose to dig deeper into the root cause of the feelings before we can move forward. Our feelings are fluctuating and they are never constant. But our root system Jesus Christ is always firm. He will NEVER be uprooted because He has authority over everything. He is the maintaining force when we go low then high. He is working to sustain us even when we doubt. He is always there and always has a plan. Our job is to intentionally seek out that plan and then surrender to the fact that it may not make sense.
As we begin to learn more about how we are to take care of our garden, always remember, only God grows us. A plant cannot grow and flourish without roots. We are called to take care of our garden by the choices we make, however, when we see the plant blossom, we need to always remember God did it, not us. The other thing that is important to remember is if God doesn’t plan something, He will uproot it. If we veer off track and start sowing things like negativity, worry, and bitterness, He will uproot them. But the beauty is, because of Jesus, we can repent and be forgiven. We can learn from the wrong things we sowed and move even deeper into the trust that Jesus really is all we need. Since Jesus is our root, we can trust He will remind us the way we are called to live. We will learn how to take care of our garden the right way. We can rest assured that because Jesus is our root system we will never be moved. God will never uproot us if Jesus is sustaining us. When Jesus is our root system, there is NOTHING that can separate us from God!
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