Where Do You Have Your Roots?

Where Do You Have Your Roots?

Jesus was “as a root out of dry ground.” Mankind was that dry ground for Him. He found no nourishment in this dry ground, no supports. Nevertheless, Jesus lived. How did He live? He had His life from the Father; He had put His roots deep into God. He did not come to find life in His surroundings—in the ground of mankind—He came to lay His life down in it. He expected nothing from this ground; therefore He did not complain about it, for He knew what dwelt in man. He did not draw any nourishment from His surroundings, but from God. Therefore His nourishment was pure, and His mind was content. The person who has his roots in his surroundings draws and demands nourishment from them. Since they can never gratify or satisfy a soul, he complains of how bad they are. He has only himself to blame for his complaints, and not his surroundings. His roots are in a corrupt place, receiving poisonous nourishment and reaping a corrupt mind. When believers whine and complain, it is because they extract something from their surroundings that is in their own interests, something that can never satisfy them. By His grace God has made it so that nothing can satisfy our self-interests. God never satisfies them. Therefore the self-life turns away from God to the creation, but that cannot satisfy “self” either. Self-life’s hunger is its punishment and agony that fosters its greed—a never-ending, restless emptiness. The nourishment a person absorbs from his surroundings is poison to a life in God, but the nourishment he absorbs from God is poison to the self-life.

All complaining will disappear if we understand this, because then we will not demand that our environment is there for us, but that we are there for our environment. Then we will no longer speak about disadvantageous circumstances. All the circumstances in which God has put us are just as advantageous if only we have our roots in Him. Do not pull up your roots in order to plant them in other circumstances because you are dissatisfied. Let them go down deep into God so they can draw their nourishment from Him and not from the circumstances. Then your dissatisfaction will vanish, and you will be satisfied; for you have found the source of living water where you are. Lilies are just as beautiful and just as content on a heap of garbage as they are in a beautiful garden. Are you willing to blossom to God’s glory in any place? On a heap of garbage? You have been put here to prove that it is not your environment that creates your beauty, but that you have your roots in God. In Him you will find what your surroundings are lacking. Then you possess something that they do not possess. Therefore you have only one task: to lay your life down as a sacrifice by serving in your environment. Then you will become a gift from God to dry ground! Does a gift demand anything from the one to whom it is given? You are light in the darkness! Does light demand anything from the darkness? You are the salt of the earth. Does salt demand or give? Do you see your mission now?