Being Still | Rooted and Built in Him

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.”

-Colossians 2: 6-10

I have some weeks where I feel REALLY great… like I’ve been really getting a lot from reading the bible and being “in the Word” and I really feel like I’m learning and growing. …and then there are weeks where I get totally caught up in the world and start to forget the Word and I feel awful and cranky and like “God isn’t speaking to me.” And I realize that those are the weeks that I’m kinda lapsing in my bible reading and I’m not being as diligent as I’d like to be.

When I sat down to write this week’s devotional I actually almost had a whole other topic sort of in mind, but this particular verse happened to pop up and it just struck me and I knew that I needed to focus on it. 

How often do we get so caught up in everything else that we forget Who we are supposed to be rooted in? How often do you find yourself living for the world and living for yourself and living for everyone else? And when you find yourself living for all those other things, don’t you start to feel totally dissatisfied? Because nothing in this world truly, ultimately satisfies you? You keep finding yourself wanting more INSERT SOMETHING HERE. It doesn’t matter what “more” you want, but you just want “more” of it. Whether it’s money, pageviews, clothes, shoes, recognition, food, power, respect.

Nothing satisfies you.

And it can become really, really draining.

Yeah, I answered “Oh yeah, that’s me” to all of the above questions. It happens to me way more often than I’d like to admit.

So what do I do about it? What do we do about it? If it happens so much, how do we work to try to keep it from happening? 

Well, we have to first acknowledge that it happens and that without Jesus, it’s going to KEEP happening. And we’ve got to acknowledge that our foundation and our roots are IN HIM. The more we acknowledge it, the more we continue to live our lives for Him. And the more we continue to live our lives for Him, the more we will continue to deepen our roots.

Think of a tree. A tree has roots from the time it is deemed a tree. The roots just might be really small. So, if you plant a tree, there are roots in the ground, but they aren’t very deep… they’re just sort of sitting there at the surface because, well, you just planted it.

Now, if you don’t water the tree, what happens? Well, the tree’s roots don’t continue to grow and deepen and, well, the tree eventually will whither up and die. Or the tree will begin to wilt. Or the tree could very easily be pushed over.

BUT, if you water the tree, what happens? Well, the tree grows, the roots deepen, and eventually… that tree’s roots are so deep in the ground that that tree isn’t going anywhere. And then one day, it stands high above all the other trees and the other trees look up at that big tree and say, “I wanna be big and strong like THAT tree.”

This has quickly become like a nice children’s story… I promise it’s not. Follow me here. 🙂

So, if we’re the tree and we’re trying to grow in Christ and deepen our roots in Him, how do we keep ourselves watered? The Word. Reading His word. God has already spoken to us through the bible… He speaks to us every day through that book… it’s just our job to simply open it up and listen to Him. Whether it’s taking five minutes in the morning, opening up your bible app on your phone and reading the verse of the day, reading a devotional, or cracking open your actual, physical bible… taking time to read God’s word is one of the most important things we can do if we want to continue to grow as Christians. Or even if you’re not a Christian, if you’re just curious about this whole thing… you could give it a try. Read the gospels. Start with the book of John (probably my favorite gospel).

The deeper our roots are in Him the less likely we’ll be to get caught up in the world. And the more likely we will be to be able to handle it when life happens… when stuff happens… when stress happens.

What about you? How do you stay rooted in built in Him?