"But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
    and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
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.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8

 

It's time to check our root system

 

I get so sad when one of my potted plants dies… That poor plant has depended on me, and no matter how faithful I’ve tried to be to it, somehow I’ve failed and it has paid the price.

 

In the verses preceding these two (Jeremiah17:5-6), Jeremiah relates that the person who puts his trust in man will surely be miserable. Matthew Henry, the commentator, puts it this way: “He that puts a confidence in man puts a cheat upon himself; he shall be like… a sorry shrub, the product of barren ground, sapless, useless, and worthless.” I think we can agree that that’s not a description we’d like to fit us! 

 

In contrast, the person who puts his trust in the Lord, who has “made the Lord [his] hope and confidence” will be a much different person—no sorry shrub here! When we put our trust in God, not each other, we are connected to a source that never runs dry, a source that never fails. We become like a tree—unmovable and unshakeable. 

 

The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that when we rely exclusively on God, we will not be moved by disappointments and failings of people. Sadly we see people move away from God and His church because they’ve been “hurt.” Their “root system” was tapped into the wrong source. When our eyes are fixed on God, people will still disappoint and fail us, but we won’t move away from God because of it; in fact, our root system will probably become more established.

 

When we anchor our lives in Him, there is nothing that can come against us that will topple us. Our deep root system will allow us to remain a witness to God’s faithfulness in our lives. We won’t shrivel up and become a “sorry shrub” as opposed to the majestic fruit-bearing tree that God intends us to be, because we’ve been drawing from God’s abundant supply of goodness and have stored up a reservoir so that even in the toughest of times, we still bear fruit. 

 

A Sunday School chorus relays this exact message so well: “I wanna be like a tree planted by the water, trusting in the Father to help me grow. I wanna be like a tree planted by the water, trusting in the name of the Lord. The deeper the roots go the better the fruits grow. The blessings bloom out for all to see. The deeper the roots go, the more my life shows that Jesus is the Lord of me…”

 

Are we rooted in the right soil? Do our roots run so deep that we cannot be moved or shaken? Do we bear fruit at all times witnessing to God’s faithfulness in our lives? Jeremiah’s words assure us that if we will wholly put our hope and confidence in God, the answer to all 3 of these questions will be a resounding YES!