Spiritual Seasons: Season 2: Rooting - Psalm 1

This morning we’re reflecting on the season in our lives of rooting, of growing deeper in our relationship and knowledge of God, shaping our hearts according to who God is calling us to be. The psalms are part of what we call Wisdom Literature in the Bible. Wisdom in scripture is about living in healthy ways with God, each other, ourselves, and creation. Wisdom is practical, about how we live. Psalm 1 sets the foundation for the rest of the psalms, showing us where we find wisdom, we find it in God’s word to us, “Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” The word translated as “law” is “torah” in Hebrew means “instruction, teaching, guidance, law, or rule.” Torah, as used in the psalms, means all of these things. In the psalms, it’s the first 5 books of the Bible, the books of Moses. These are the foundational books of scripture, teaching us our beginnings, emphasizing that our identity’s rooted in God, teaching who we’re called to be as God’s people, how we’re to live for God and with each other, pointing us to the coming of Jesus and the redemption from our sin and restoration of our relationship with God. These themes are all carried forward through the rest of scripture.

Psalm 1 is a psalm of blessing that comes from setting our roots in a nourishing source of water. The seed has to die in order to grow, it’s planted underground and then its shell breaks open so the nourishment can bring life through its developing roots. We need to die to the person we are in order to grow into who God is growing us into. Likewise, this water comes from a stream that’s been intentionally guided into the fields or vineyards so the trees have easy access to this source of life. The Hebrew word for stream describes an irrigation canal deliberately built for a vineyard or garden. It’s a psalm of contrast, the tree whose roots are planted by the streams of water yields its fruit in season, its leaves never wither, even in times of drought and stress. The farmer or vineyard keeper has ensured that the tree’s roots can grow deep because its source of life is always near and accessible.

The farmer can do everything they can to help the plants grow deep roots, yet they cannot force the plant to seek the water; this is something God has created into the seed. The same’s true for us. God’s created us in his own image, given us life through the gift of his breath. We’re created to seek him, yet not everyone does. The contrast in the psalm is those who walk with the wicked, stand with sinners, or sits with mocker won’t grow strong, won’t find nourishment, instead they’ll be worthless chaff that has no substance, that’s blown away by the wind because it is nothing more than dry dust.

This is echoed in Jeremiah 17:5–8, “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.  “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Roots grow slowly, feeding deeply from the nutrients in the soil and water. Deep faith roots come from drinking deeply and consistently from the living water that comes from Jesus who is the water of life. These roots grow from the nutrients that are found in the regular meditation on the Word of God. Growth doesn’t come quickly; going deeper in your relationship with God, Jesus, comes through the working of the Holy Spirit in us. Rooting is about establishing our identity in God, living into our identity as children of God, created in his image to be his representatives in the world. As Mireya C, the person who developed this devotional series observes, even Paul took 3 years after his conversion to Jesus, getting away to learn, unlearn, pray, and being formed. It wasn’t wasted. It was a rooting season. God was growing him downward before using him outward. Before Paul preached or wrote letters, he had to grow in grace instead of law, in truth instead of tradition.

What you drink and eat spiritually shapes the health and the strength of your faith. This is about having a lifelong pattern of feeding your heart, of drinking deeply and regularly from the stream of water that is Jesus. Paul writes in Colossians 2:6–8, “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.” Seeds are created to grow roots when they’re planted, but they need a healthy environment and nutrients in order to grow deep roots: good soil, sunlight, and warmth are important elements that aid growing deep strong healthy roots.

Roots reach out to whatever is available to help them grow, even if the water source is polluted, or the soil is dead or poisoned, making it difficult or even impossible for the seed to grow healthy roots. Pollution and poison look like the values that are foundational to our culture which are rooted in individualism, greed, always focused on more, always looking to divide rather than build. We live in a shallow dry culture. It comes from our drinking from streams of social media and influencers; leading to over-busyness and a lack of time for family devotional times and deep faith conversations. We suffer from wanting to do everything that brings us temporary pleasure without emphasizing growing deeper roots into what’s eternal.

Deep spiritual roots don’t come just because you’re breathing, deep roots come from healthy diets and ways of living. Many people may look healthy on the outside, but inside are rotting. Faith is not passive, faith engages Jesus to grow, even, or especially in difficult times. But to grow in difficult times, we’ll reflect on this in the next spiritual season, we need to grow deep roots that tap into the nourishment, the living water that is Jesus. The goal is, as Paul writes in Ephesians 3, “that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power… to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Understanding Jesus’ love comes from spiritual strength, not just human intellect.

The church has recognized over the years the importance of deliberately and systematically developing ways to grow deeper in our faith, to grow our roots deep into Jesus. The church developed spiritual practices aimed at nurturing spiritual growth and deepening our relationship with God. Examples of spiritual practices include things like prayer, Bible study, worship, solitude, acts of service, and various forms of self-reflection and self-examination. Look at Jesus; he regularly spent time with God in prayer, he learned scripture, he spent time in the synagogue to worship, he served others, all part of how he grew in grace and truth. Here in Bethel, our faith formation is being built on scripture reading, prayer, and worship.

Growing strong roots happens by going deep down into our relationships with Jesus, intertwining our roots together with others. Many of the spiritual practices focus on community, think of worship, serving, and even the study of scripture. Aspen trees share a single, massive underground root system, giving them strength, while beech trees frequently grow in dense groves and send up root sprouts, leading to tight networks where touching roots and trunks naturally intertwine creating strength and the ability to survive storms or floods, and can pass water, minerals, and sugars between trees, allowing healthy mature trees to support weaker or younger saplings.

At the root of spiritual practices is love; the spiritual practices help us grow deeper in our love for God and that gets lived out in love for others. They call us to spend time with God in prayer, reflection, and Scripture, but they’re also meant to be practiced with others, think worship and acts of service. Philip Yancy in his book Vanishing Grace writes about a friend of his who realized that he had never been taught how to love, even though the Bible calls us to love God and our neighbours. So he began to ask people to think about one question, “When have I felt loved?” For myself, I realised I felt love when someone shows respect, not for my position, but simply because of who I am as a person and engages with what I’m thinking or feeling at the time, when someone encourages me or challenges me because they want to help me grow, when someone simply cares when I’m hurting. “When have you felt loved?” Your answer can help you to show love to others. The book on love languages by Gary Chapman is a good resource to understand different ways in how we receive love and how we offer love. This grows deeper roots into Jesus and your faith.

Showing love for God seems easier than love for others until we realise that we grow our love for God through loving others. Love often looks like kindness in an unkind graceless world. Kindness sees the other person as someone created in the image of God and is precious and valuable even if we might see and understand life differently. There’s so much casual cruelty in our world; we find it easy to talk others down, it’s easy to speak causal cruelty meant to hurt others.

Our faith is also determined by what we watch, read, and listen to, the people we look up to and admire and imitate, and the types of seeds we allow to be planted in our hearts and souls. Following Jesus is very much a character formation journey, becoming more like him. Jesus challenges us to be aware of what we feed on, on where we turn to for nourishment to grow deep roots, on who we’re being called to become as his people. Paul focuses on this in Galatians 5 when he calls us to grow the Fruit of the Spirit rather than the fruit of our culture’s values and ways.  

As the Psalmist reminds us, “delighting in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night,” is the path to rootedness in Jesus. Rooting happens in the presence of God, leading to flourishing and growth, to strength and resiliency, done individually and in community. God’s responsible for the outcome, trust that he’s working. Stay planted in prayer, the Word, service, and worship even when no one’s watching.

 

Spiritual Seasons: Season 1: Planting - Psalm 126

We’re beginning a new series on Spiritual Seasons. God leads us through these different seasons to help us grow deeper in our faith, to refresh our faith, and to challenge us in our faith, but through it all the Holy Spirit is with us. We’re beginning with image of planting, as what we plant in our hearts shapes how we journey through the other seasons in our lives. Psalm 126 has its roots in Israel’s 70-year exile to Babylon. In 539 BC, the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon and issued a decree allowing captive peoples to return to their homelands and rebuild their cities and temples. You can read this history in 2 Chronicles 36 and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra and Nehemiah see God’s hand at work in this unexpected liberation, Ezra 1, “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: “‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them.”

Psalm 126 is a song written to celebrate Israel’s return to their land, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.” After 70 years, many of them had given up hope on ever returning home, so this is a dream come true. This explains the references to sowing with tears, as many tears over the years had been shed as they confessed how they had drifted away from God, and the painful journey of repentance and punishment for their sin.

This morning, we celebrated our Commissioning service, offering a blessing to our teachers who will be planting biblical seeds in our children and youth, knowing that we need to continually be aware that planting is a regular part of our spiritual lives. The seeds that are planted in our hearts, souls, and minds will determine what kind of harvest our lives will produce. Our culture is constantly at work trying to sow its seeds and values in us, and many of their seeds are just weeds. We need to be deliberate in what type of seeds are planted within us. We’re called to invite the Holy Spirit to plant deep in our souls, knowing that what we allow to be planted in our hearts and souls, we’ll harvest later on; as the psalmist writes, “Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”

We begin with preparing the soil of our hearts. The planting season is a time of faithful obedience, often coming out of a time of repentance and recommitment to Jesus. God calls us to prepare the soil, plant seeds, and trust him for the growth. This is season characterised by patience and perseverance, reminding us that spiritual fruit comes from both God’s power and our daily faithfulness. Seeds are being sown. Planting’s not a solitary thing, we do plant in ourselves, but there are also others who plant into us. We also plant into others; think of parenting, mentoring, our teaching ministries, and even friendships. Paul recognizes this in 1 Corinthians 3:6–7, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” This morning we’re focusing mainly on planting seeds of faith and character in our own hearts, while recognizing that as the seeds planted in our hearts grow, they will be spread to others, like how plants release their seeds and the wind or animals will then spread them.

What kind of seeds are you allowing to be planted in your heart, what seeds are you cultivating in yourselves. Some seeds are weeds like bitterness, pride, gracelessness, non-forgiveness, and others like these. When they’re planted, they quickly overwhelm the healthy seeds. The kind of seeds we plant in ourselves shape who we are and who we’re becoming. What we watch and see is seed planting. We are a visual culture and so the shows we watch, the websites we visit, the reels we watch, the books we read is seed planting, so we need to be very conscious of what we allow into our hearts through our eyes. As Paul writes in Galatians 6:7–9, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Scripture guides us in what kinds of seeds to plant, and what seeds not to plant.

Bitterness is a seed that gets planted when we allow the actions and attitudes of others towards us hurt and there’s a sense of being wronged. Sometimes bitterness finds healthy soil because we’re unsettled in our own spirits; hurt or self doubt allows critical words or actions find soil to begin to grow. Bitterness can come when our work and effort is unappreciated, when we feel unseen, misunderstood, or disrespected. Sometimes this is the case, but sometimes Satan’s influence and lies find a home in our self doubt, creating bitterness. Often bitterness leads to wanting to hurt and shame others.

The seed to plant to counter bitterness is trust in God, training ourselves to recognise who we are in his eyes, how we are his precious children, and that what is often overlooked, unseen, or misunderstood is seen by our heavenly father. Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Prayer’s important to uprooting bitterness, being honest with God in prayer in a way that’s often hard to do because it reveals things we don’t want to see. It’s important to have a safe person you can share with who will hold your hurt and bitterness with gentleness, someone who sees you through the eyes of God, who sees who you are and loves you for you.

Pride is a seed that gets easily planted today because our culture keeps telling us that we’re special, that we deserve the best, that our truth is reality, that we have no need to serve others because we should be the ones being served. Satan usually doesn’t have to work hard to plant this one.

The seed to plant to counter pride is humility. As Jesus said in Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus calls us to be servants, and even slaves rather than kings and bosses. We need to train our eyes to recognise the gifts that others have and the humility and love to help them flourish. We also need someone who is brave enough to call out our pride, to help us see who we really are; not talking down to us, but helping us to recognise not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses.

Gracelessness is a seed that causes us to look down on others, to see the worse, and attribute the worse motives to them, especially should they make a mistake. Gracelessness is rooted in self-centeredness, making everything all about you. It’s about reading motives into a strangers look; it’s about labeling entire groups of people in negative ways simply because they’re different from you. It’s about with holding forgiveness or mercy to others.

Grace is the seed to be planted here, to offer grace, which is undeserved, simply because we have been saved by God’s grace. Grace often looks like kindness, like gentleness, and in our world today, these things are all to often in short supply. Our culture is filled with lots of anger and judgement and condemnation. Kindness and gentleness are sorely needed more today than perhaps any time in history. We all need someone to show us grace when we mess up, and walk with us to encourage and build us up in grace. Paul hi-lights the wonder of grace in Ephesians 2:8, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” God’s grace leads to faith in him.

Unforgiveness is a seed that gets planted when we hang onto our anger or fear after we’ve been hurt by someone. Unforgiveness is a strong seed because it feels like it’s giving us strength in our pain, it feels justified and right, especially when the one who hurt us doesn’t confess their part in your hurt, doesn’t acknowledge the pain created.

Forgiveness is the seed to plant in our hearts, beginning with accepting that Jesus has forgiven us for our sins. Planting this seed guides us to confess our sin, but also to remember that we are precious to God as his children. Forgiving others flows out of remembering that the other person is also loved by God and is our neighbour. This doesn’t mean it’s easy, it also doesn’t mean that the consequences for their actions are forgotten. Love often looks like consequences so that wisdom is learned and responsibility accepted. It doesn’t mean that the relationship needs to be the same, making sure you’re safe is important. Then there’s self-forgiveness. Sometimes we can hate ourselves and hang onto our sin, living as if God can’t forgive our sins, as if we’re unworthy of forgiveness. We make God less, cheapen his unconditional love for us, and we lessen the power of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin.

You may not see growth right away; this is a time for patience, for perseverance, but it’s happening below the surface. Just as God was working in his people during the time of exile, growing their faith and commitment deeper towards him even though they didn’t always recognize it, so God’s working in us to grow us deeper in our faith in Jesus, doing his work deep quietly, establishing our roots in Jesus. This is a time of quiet continual obedience and trust as the Holy Spirit nourishes your souls and faith.