PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

We are thinking about why some Christians’ roots reach down deep into the center of Christ in faith and others’ do not. We suggested it has to do with trust. Those people who respond to life’s trials with confidence that God can eventually turn whatever we face to good, find that as a result their roots go down deeper into God. Thanksgiving, worship and praise during a time of trial has a powerful effect on our spiritual roots and causes them to strengthen and penetrate. I know two Christian women who went through the painful experience of desertion by their husbands. One developed great bitterness towards God for allowing this to happen. Her roots went to the surface for sustenance and she sought relief in the entertainment arts, alcohol and excessive comfort eating. Sadly, life for her became like Jeremiah’s unfruitful ‘bush in the wasteland’ and she was unable to see God’s prosperity when it comes’ as seen in Jeremiah 17:6 saying, “6 For he shall be like a shrub in the desert: and shall not see when prosperity comes, but shall live in the rocky places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.” The other abandoned wife, though deeply hurt, began to focus on God, meditating on the word of God and the things of God and not on her distressing circumstances, actively seeking God’s presence and direction. This resulted in a ministry that has encouraged thousands of other women and drawn them into a closer walk with God. Unless there is an ultimate trust in the goodness of God in our hearts irrespective of our situations, we are most likely to turn to that which is temporary for spiritual sustenance when we encounter troubles and life challenges. When these trials come, it is important to do what James suggest to: ‘consider it pure joy’. George Muller (1805 -1898), a man of great faith who founded the Bristol orphanages and saw many answers to prayer said: ‘The only way to learn great faith is to endure great trials.’ That may be something we don’t want to hear, but it’s what we need to hear.

Today we consider the question: Why is it that some Christians put their roots down deep and others do not? After much thought about this matter, I believe it has to do with trust. Jeremiah, I think, would answer the question in this way: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh’ as seen in Jeremiah 17:5. It is far easier to put our confidence in the things we can see or quantify than in those we cannot see. It’s all too easy to drift into believing that our security and significance depend on things that are tangible, such as money and possessions, academic qualifications, business success, personal skills, or physical attractiveness. However, please do not misunderstand me, these things are not wrong in themselves, but they cannot provide us with the security and significance that deep down our hearts we long for. So it all comes back to this matter of what we depend upon. ‘Maturity’, someone said, ‘is shown by where we place our dependency.’ How true. When things don’t go as we expected in our lives, we can respond either negatively or redemptively ("Redemptively" means in a way that brings about redemption, deliverance, or salvation, often from sin or evil. It implies an act or quality that saves or redeems someone, making things better or leading to a positive outcome, especially in a spiritual or moral sense.) Responding by complaining, showing resentment, and an unwillingness to forgive prevents our roots going down deeper into God: instead they remain close to the surface. When, however, we trust God and believe that all things are working according to His eternal purposes and plans, our roots in God start growing deeper and deeper when we rely implicitly in Him. Sadly, many Christians never gain trust. Those who grumble and complain when things do not go the way they wish lose a God-given opportunity to develop their spiritual rooting system. Under such situation of unbelief with grumbles and complains their roots are restricted rather than extended.

Once, near my home, a row of beautiful trees was brought down by a storm. Speaking about this, someone knowledgeable about trees told me that the probable reason why the trees could not withstand the storm was that the water table was too high –too near the surface –so the trees had not needed to put their roots down deep to find water. Later, when thinking about this, I looked again at the article I had read about the vines in the Napa Valley, California, and came across this: ‘Drought stretches the natural vine’s root. As long as there is abundant water on the surface the root feeds there, but drought sends the taproot deep in search of moisture and water. The more frequent and severe the droughts, the deeper the taproot grows.’ This is nature through which our Lord God Almighty often talks to us in things of reality! In a similar way, when the things of this world on which we may have been relying fail us, we are challenged to send our roots down deeper in search of spiritual nourishment but often instead of us to make efforts to send our roots of spiritual and physical intelligence deeper down to the Centre Who is God in His Holy Spirit which is the very form that we gain from God today, we waste all the time doing things that does not profit us anything, too bad! We can either find sustenance in the superficial things of life –those of the world around us –or seek to send our spiritual roots downwards to draw from the abundant waters provided by God, which start to flow when we give our lives to Him in the Holy Spirit. Is there a spiritual drought in your life at this moment? Many of you reading these lines may feel spiritually jaded or worn out because you are drawing from the waters found on the surface of life and there is little moisture left. It is important to remember that no matter what happens in life, you always have a choice: you can attempt to find what you need to sustain you in the things of this world, or seek to send your roots down deeper into God to sustain life in you. What or which will you choose to do today? Remember that it is life that is sustained with roots in God that enjoys cares for the things of this world! The Igbos will tell you that O bu onye di Ndu ga eri aku! Again aku uwa enwegi ihe obu! King Solomon made us to know that everything in this world is vanity upon vanity! So let us put up all efforts in life to keep chasing and seeking the things of the Kingdom of God through His Holy Spirit instead of wasting all our time in the things of this world! Come to think of it the Word of our Lord God said, what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and loose his soul!

We shall reflect on the thought that there can be no full experience of peace and rest unless our spiritual roots go down deep by faith into God. We need to learn to rest, not in the immediate, but in the ultimate understanding that God knows best, and that everything He does is motivated by His loving heart. The faith of the three young men in the passage we are reading has been described as the ‘if not’ faith. This is because they made it clear that if God did not rescue them they would still refuse to worship the image of gold, even though they knew that as a consequence they would certainly burn to death in the blazing furnace. They did not rest their confidence on condition in God’s immediate deliverance, but in His ultimate love. To have the faith that rests in constant goodness and love of God, no matter what we face or whatever happens, is really challenging. However, we read in the Bible many examples of those who trusted in God’s faithfulness regardless of what the situation is, and this is exactly what God wants from His real children. Many years ago I came across these lines, which I then wrote in my Bible: Nothing that happens can harm me, Whether I lose or win. Though life may be changed on the surface, I do my main living within. We may face many difficulties and struggle in life, but God has promised to be an ‘ever-present help in trouble’ as seen in Psalm 46:1. Even when we don’t understand or can’t see very far ahead, we too can learn, like these three young men, to trust in our God’s goodness and faithfulness.

For a further day we meditate on the reason why the divine Word had to become flesh and dwell among us. Suppose God had decided against an incarnation and instead had given us a book similar to the Bible as His highest revelation –what would be the result? We humans in our usual way would attempt to read into those words our own wrong highest interpretation but nevertheless we would be greatly limited; just as we are currently in spite of the fact that we have all both God in His Holy Spirit, and His Word. Take, for example, the word ‘purity’, if I read into that word my highest experience of purity, which, because of sin and human failure, must still be partial and incomplete. I would still emerge with an impoverished understanding of the word. But what if I can see that word exemplified in a divine illustration? Now the word ‘purity’ is elucidated [make (something) clear, explain] by a Person who shares my temptations, minus my failures, and so the word takes on a new and precise meaning. This is exactly what God in our Lord Jesus did for us, God came to show or teach us how life should be lived on earth! That is why He said ‘Follow Me! In other words follow my life examples to live yours. The same would happen with other words. Take the word ‘God’. Were it not for the incarnation I would interpret the word in the light of my imagination, but now, because Christ has come, I look up through Lord Jesus, the Son of God, and I know without any shadow of doubt what God is like. The apostle Paul reminds us that Lord Jesus ‘is the [a]exact likeness of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible]; He is the Firstborn of all creation’ as seen in Col. 1:15. ‘Lord Jesus’, said a little boy, ‘is the best photograph of Himself God ever took,’ He is! A lecturer in the Bible College used to say something which startled me every time I heard it, until I pondered it and came to see that it was true. He said, ‘If God isn’t like Lord Jesus I am not interested in Him.’ But we need not worry –God is like Lord Jesus. Our Savior has confirmed it when He said: ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,’ He assures us in John 14:9.