Plants & People
You position yourself where you put your trust.
I am not much of a gardener. I have a hard enough time trying to keep my grass green and the weeds pulled in our flower beds. But here’s what I know is true…
But let’s say I’ve got two trees. One of these trees, I’ve put in some fill dirt and a little sand in the pot for the roots to grow down into. Over the next few weeks, I have zero intention of giving it any sunlight or water.
This other tree, I bought the miracle grow dirt! The good stuff. The expensive stuff. It’s supposed to be rich in nutrients. In other words, it’s supposed to be really good soil. Over the next few weeks I plan to water it regularly and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight.
Now, we will watch and we will see what happens. But I think you already know what’s going to happen, don’t you?
Even if you’re like me and you’re not very good with plants, you know that in order for a plant to grow, flourish, and thrive it needs good soil, water, and sunlight. If these three things are present, more than likely that tree will grow, flourish and thrive. If not, it will likely die.
What’s true with plants is also true with people.
We want to flourish and thrive, we want our kids and our grandkids to flourish and thrive, but if we’re honest we often fail to position ourselves and position them in the right places.
Why is that?
It’s because… We position ourselves where we put our trust.
The problem is our TRUST is at an all time low.
The Location of Our Trust
People trust people LESS than maybe ever before. Because we don’t trust anyone, we have to find a place to put our trust.
So we turn to the only one we can trust, the only one who has never let us down, the only one who, even if they did let us down we would completely understand why, the only one who we have compete confidence in to understand us and help us and do for us exactly what we want them to do for us.
The only one we feel like we can really trust is… OURSELVES!
But if we’re honest, at some point our strength will come to an end. Our ability to fix a problem or solve a situation will come to an end. There are some things money can’t fix and we can’t solve on our own. But who else do we trust? Who else could we trust?
How do we live in a world plagued by a lack of TRUST?
Since the beginning of time, the location of our trust has been our fundamental flaw.
We’ve gotten out of position, we’ve lost our location, we’ve taken matters into our own hands, trusted our own hearts, our own abilities, our own strengths only to wake up one day and realize that the one person we thought we could trust has failed us.
We have failed ourselves. And we live among people who have failed us. And we don’t know who to trust. Or where we should put our trust.
Instead of flourishing and thriving we look more like a tree that’s dried up, withered, and dying.
If you’ve ever felt that way, you are not alone. In fact, that’s exactly how the people of God were described a few thousand years ago.
Trust in Us
Jeremiah was a prophet of God who lived in the 7th & 6th centuries BC. Israel was a divided nation and he served as a prophet in Jerusalem for Judah.
Jeremiah saw Jerusalem fall at the hand of the Babylonians. What he had warned the people of God about was happening. Because they had turned away from God they were carried off into exile and captivity. (that’s how it works!)
The people had turned from God and turned to the worship of idols. They put their trust in themselves and in foreign gods. Not only had they sinned and continued in sin, they had taught their children to sin! To worship idols. They had turned from God, and they stopped putting their trust in God.
Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17.5-8:
5 This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
who rely on human strength
and turn their hearts away from the LORD.
6 They are like stunted shrubs in the desert,
with no hope for the future.
They will live in the barren wilderness,
in an uninhabited salty land.
Desert shrubs don’t have deep roots! They are mostly dried up and withered. You could say they get plenty of sun, but they get little to no water and the soil is void of any nutrients. Because of WHERE they are planted, they will die! There is NO HOPE.
This is the metaphor God chooses to describe His people who have turned from Him, who have stopped TRUSTING Him and have placed their trust in idols made with human hands and in themselves.
God literally says….
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
who rely on human strength
and turn their hearts away from the LORD.”
When you turn away from God you turn away from LIFE!
Time to Uproot?
Maybe you’ve wondered…
Why am I NOT flourishing, thriving, growing, doing and becoming all I hoped I would be able to do and become?
You may want to check and see where you’re planted!
Here’s what is generally true: You are perfectly positioned to get the results you are currently getting.
You are perfectly located to get the life you have.
If you don’t like it, there’s one thing most of you can and should do. Uproot your life… whatever that means and looks like for you… and replant, re-root, your life in a different location!
Maybe it’s time to pull up some roots. To uproot certain parts of your life.
Maybe you need to uproot some friendships. Maybe you need to uproot some unhealthy things in your marriage. Maybe you need to uproot some bad habits in your life.
Maybe you need to uproot what you watch on TV and what you listen to in your air pods. Maybe you need to uproot where you work or the neighborhood you live in.
I don’t know what you need to uproot but I can promise you this… if you are not flourishing and thriving and growing where you are… in your work, with your kids, in your marriage, in your spiritual life… something needs to be uprooted.
BUT… after you pull up those roots MAKE SURE you put down roots in the right place!
Trust in God
Listen to what Jeremiah says next…
7 “But blessed are those who TRUST in the LORD
and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.
8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
with ROOTS that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
and they never stop producing fruit.
How do you put down roots in the right place? By placing your trust in the LORD!
Your decision to position yourself in the presence of God directly impacts your growth, your opportunity for growth.
You can live the life you’ve been given to live in a barren wilderness if you choose.
You can live with no hope if you choose.
Your God loves you enough to let you choose where you live. Where you plant your life, where you put down roots. He’s always given people a chance to choose.
Just ask Adam and Eve.
Your God loves you enough to let you choose where you live.
Just ask the people of God to whom Jeremiah was prophesying.
Your God loves you enough to let you choose where you live.
Jesus himself said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart (YOUR TRUST) will be also.” Matthew 6.21
God tells the people of Judah through Jeremiah…
“But blessed are those who TRUST in the LORD
and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.”
TRUST = HOPE + CONFIDENCE
When you put your TRUST in the LORD you make Him the location of your HOPE and CONFIDENCE.
Just like a tree planted by a river has a high degree of hope and confidence that it will have plenty of water and that it doesn’t need to have any fear of heat or drought because it is planted by a river of water, a river of LIFE, when you put your TRUST in God, when you put down your roots into the Living Water, into Jesus Christ, you don’t have to worry, you don’t have to be afraid.
God’s people experience the troubles of this life just like everybody else. We are all living in a broken and fallen world.
The difference for us is that we don’t have to worry when those troubles come. We don’t fear the heat, we don’t fear the drought. Our leaves stay green. Our faith continues to flourish and thrive because our roots are drinking in that Living Water!
Isaiah said the same thing in a different way a century before:
But those who TRUST in the LORD…
Other translations say, Those who WAIT on the LORD…
So if you’re wondering what it looks like to TRUST God, maybe just give yourself this simple test:
Am I willing to WAIT on God?
To TRUST God is to literally be willing to WAIT on God to do in God’s timing what ONLY God can do.
Waiting on God doesn’t mean we become idle or lazy, that we don’t work with the time and talent that God has given us to make a difference. Of course we do.
A farmer that waits on the LORD still cultivates the land, plants the seed, he does everything he can do. And then he waits on the LORD to send the sun and the rain!
The farmer who doesn’t do anything except WAIT on the LORD won’t only be disappointed when it’s time to harvest because he never took time to plant, cultivate, and care for the field. He’ll also be guilty of provoking God!
We work, doing all we can do, and then we wait, expecting God to do what only God can do. And Isaiah says…
But those who TRUST /WAIT on the LORD will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint. – Isaiah 40.31
If you want deep roots and wings ready to fly, it all begins with TRUST.
And if you want your kids, your grandkids, to have deep roots and wings ready to fly, it all begins with TRUST.
Tree Rings
You position yourself where you put your trust.
So where exactly have you positioned your life?
Did you know that you can tell how old a tree is by looking at the tree rings? Not only that… but you can tell what years that tree received a greater amount of water or rainfall and which years it did not!
If the rings are close together, that means that there wasn’t a lot of rainfall that year and consequently, there wasn’t a lot of GROWTH that year!
If the rings are father apart, that tells you that the tree received a lot of water that year and as a result, experienced a lot of growth!
That’s true for trees and I think it’s true for people as well.
As you look back across the years of your life, you can probably see those years that you experienced the most growth were years when your soul was well watered! When you were tapped into the streams of living water!
It might have been a season of adversity that kept you close to God, or it might have been a mountain top year where you felt close to God throughout the year. But staying close to the River of Life led to spiritual growth for you.
And in the same way, those years when you were far from God for whatever reason, the rings of your life are closer together because you experienced little to no growth!
If you’ve experienced anything like that then you know this is true…
Your decision to position yourself in the presence of God directly impacts your growth/opportunity for growth.
How do you put down ROOTS in the right place? By placing your TRUST in the LORD!
Deep roots and ready wings begins with TRUST in God.
Positioned in His Presence
How can you trust God this week? If you have kids in your life, how can you not only teach them to trust God but demonstrate to them how you trust God?
Just like a tree needs certain things in order for it to be healthy, to grow, and to develop deep roots, there are key ingredients we need in our spiritual lives that will help us grow and flourish in our faith.
We have to position ourselves in the presence of Jesus.
For a lot of us, that happens through prayer, through reading the scripture, through quiet times alone with God. It happens through a variety of kinds of spiritual practice.
And the truth is, there are many different ways to position yourself in the presence of Jesus. But when you do, as you do, you find that this is how God waters our souls and gives us the ingredients we need to grow flourish, and thrive.
The Tale of Two Trees
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be watering one tree. I’ll make sure it gets some good sun and nutrients for the soil.
This other tree, I’m going to leave it alone and see what happens.
And I just want you to consider,
Which tree are you more like?
The tree that’s growing, flourishing, and thriving? Or the tree that’s NOT.
Which tree do you want to be like?
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