Planting Your Roots

In the early 2000’s I was working on a construction project with a group of teens living in a drug rehab program. I got to know one of the boys who was working with me. He seemed like a normal teen, but this was his fifth rehab program. As we talked, he told me how this program was different from the others. Every other program he had been in relied on avoidance of drugs. Once he was clean and finished with the program, he’d step back into his old life with his old friends and get hooked again. Then he said, but this program has been different. It’s not about avoidance. It’s about heart and mind change. It’s about changing who I’m around and planting myself in positive places. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’ve never forgotten our conversation.

Psalm 1 has always been my favorite Psalm and one I’ve tried to build my life on since I was a teen. It starts out, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (ESV). Like that teen learned, who we are around matters. However, there’s more to living blessed than mere avoidance of the wrong crowd. We must also take delight in God’s Word and meditate on it. We have to chew on it, think about it and apply it to our life as we hide it in our heart. That creates a heart and mind change.

The next verse tells us the results of a person who does these things. It says, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” This doesn’t describe a wild tree randomly growing somewhere. This is one that is planted where it can get constant nourishment from God’s Word and the people of God. When you are rooted in these things, fruitfulness and success in every season is the natural outcomes. Have you simply been trying to avoid sin or hare you undergoing a heart and mind transformation through taking delight in God’s Word and His people? Where you plant your roots affects your whole life and determines your fruitfulness.

Photo by Rizwan Sohail on Unsplash