Beth Moore - Taking Root In The Family Tree - Part 1
Would you turn with me to Ephesians chapter 3, please, Ephesians chapter 3. Our text for our theme this weekend will be found in verses 14 through 21. Ephesians 3, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God".
Somebody, say amen. And then, he just has to have a praise break, and he goes straight into a doxology. "Now to him", somebody, say "now to him". "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever".
And this would've been the point that the congregation would have gotten to say amen, and I want everybody to say it because it is if it brings them to a point where they are so leaned forward, remember with me, they would've been hearing this read to them and leaning forward and leaning forward and leaning forward in this doxology, just looking for the chance to say amen, amen, amen. The name of our event this weekend is "Taking Root in the Family Tree". This portion of scripture describes, as we're gonna lock in on parts of it, this taking root, being rooted and grounded in this family tree over which our God is Father.
Now, I wanna tell you what inspired this theme. I wanna show you a picture of a tree that has fallen in my yard, and I just want you to know, I want you to see it, this was right after it happened, it could only have been a day or two. I had just been out of town, so how in the world, if I had been there, surely we would've heard it a fall if we had been in the house, but this is what we found that could've only happened within about the last 24 to 48 hours, and I just want you to look at it with me, huge, huge tree, bigger than I could wrap my arms around, probably big enough to wrap my arms around twice, and I just want you to stare for a moment at those roots.
Is that an ugly root system or what? What occurred to me is that a beautiful tree has some ugly roots, and here's what I wanna suggest to you because already you're thinking, "Oh, we've gotta talk about ugly roots this weekend". You know what? We're gonna get to some ugly roots, but I'd like to suggest to you that maybe a whole lot of our roots would look pretty ugly, because I'm not sure that really deep roots grow pretty ways. Would that be safe to say to anybody in the room, that by the time we're really rooted down into something, what have we gone through to grow those kinds of roots?
I wanna get that just spinning around in your head for a while while we land on our first point. "The happiest life takes the deepest ROOT in God's family tree". It's not to be cute. It's not to be cliché. I hope we're gonna see that this is a pair of feet with skin on them that can be walked out in the life. Now, I gotta tell you something. I looked up the word "root". I do this every time. Whatever theme God has placed on my heart, I'm gonna do whatever I can to come to, if you'll pardon the expression, the root of it. Whatever that word is, I'm gonna have looked at up in... if it's in the New Testament, I'm gonna look it up in the Greek, and if it's in the Old, I'm gonna look it up in Hebrew.
Then I'm also gonna look it up in English. I'm gonna look it up, I'm gonna look it up, and I'm gonna look it up. Well, you cannot believe how many words are spelled the same way, R-O-O-T, with all sorts of different meanings. Just listen to a few of them. We would find "root" as a noun in Merriam-Websters, the way you think of it, an "underground part of a seed plant". We would find "root" as a verb and it would mean something that you do like a pig would do with its snout: to root something up. We would find a "root" as in "we're going to root for our team". It is a way of cheering. We got "root rot," and we're gonna need to get rid of some root rot this weekend. This was my very favorite one: "rooty".
Now, I'm like that, R-O-O-T-Y. I don't know what, if I've never used that word before like, "That's really rooty," and, you know, I think about Keith's very favorite movie is "Rudy". I don't know. You know, it's like, I mean, it's a throwback. It is a throwback from years ago, and there's this whole part where the... a stands... it's about a college football player, and, I mean, the stands are going crazy 'cause there is this little-bitty guy, he never gets to play, but his father has come to the game and he wants to play for his father, so the stands start yelling, "Rudy, Rudy, Rudy". But this is "rooty" with a T.
What does it mean to be rooty? Because, hopefully, by the time we leave, there's, like, a myriad of angels going, "Rooty, rooty, rooty," because something has happened in the house this weekend to make us decide to take some deep roots in God's family tree. Did you know that Cedar Rapids's nickname is City of Five Seasons and its motto is, "The fifth season is a time to enjoy life, to enjoy the other four seasons," and the symbol for Cedar Rapids is a tree? That's why you see it out in the park. I did not know that. I took it as a confirmation after I'd already set the theme in place, and then my assistant who always does a little bit of forerunning to find out different information about the city itself. She said, "You're not gonna believe this when I tell you this". I'll take that as some confirmation it's about a tree this weekend of a whole different kind.
Now, I want you to repeat back number one to me because there's a word I want us to land on. What was number one? It says, "The", what? "The happiest life takes the deepest ROOT in God's family tree". Okay, what kind of life? "The happiest". Now, I've gotta tell you something. I do not use the word "happy" lightly. I'm gonna you a couple of reasons for that. For one thing, I've been around too long to throw around a word like that and to give false promises to somebody after the kinds of destruction and disasters that a lot of people have been through and pain that, just, in life we are yet to go through. I don't just throw around a word like that. I'm not the "don't worry, be happy" type. I'm not.
I don't know about you, I don't know how you feel about life on planet Earth, but I think it's dang hard. I really do. I really do. And if you don't, I bless you, bless you, but you may not be getting out enough, because there's just a lot of people hurting out there, and by the time you're my age, unless you've closed off your heart, you just have too much compassion for people to throw out things like that and then they go, "Wait a second. Wait, that's not real. That's not real. There's suffering here," and, boy, you better believe that there is, so I just, I kept thinking, what word do I wanna use there, what word? I hope I'm gonna be able to prove it to you, but I let the cursor just blink on it, on my Word document, just blink on it.
I thought, girlfriend, you better know before you use that word that you can back it up. You better know you can back it up. I tried to go with "best". "Oh, that'd be good 'cause that's safe, best. We can just say, 'Oh, but this is the best life you can live, yada yada yada.'" I thought, no, no, I'm gonna tell you right now, on this planet, on this flawed, broken earth that will one day be recreated, I want to tell you I believe I can claim, based on the Word of God, that the happiest life that can be lived on this planet is one that is rooted in the way that you and I are going to talk about this very weekend.
Here's what I wanna say to you in advance: What if I said to you tonight you could be substantially happier? I wonder if then maybe we'd put up our phone. I wonder if then maybe we wouldn't be instagramming that we're at the event and might just go, "You know what? I think I might wanna actually pay attention to the event, because are you telling me that what we're studying this weekend will not just give me a more meaningful life? Do you really, honestly mean I could be actually happier than I was when I came"?
I believe I can tell you that, I believe I can tell you that, I believe I can back that up with the scriptures. And so, I wonder, would we embrace it then? Because here's everything we're about this weekend. Listen carefully. Coming to a place we are our most deeply rooted belief, our most deeply rooted conviction, deeper than any other certainty we have in our entire lives is that we, that you, that I, this lands on a personal level. This is not about the corporate work yet. We will get to that. This is about you and Jesus and this is about me and Jesus coming to a place where the deepest belief you have in all of life is that you are loved by Jesus with a love that is so vast it cannot be measured, that it cannot in any way be diminished and it cannot in any way be distorted or dark.
That is what I'm talking about. We are here to talk about something that many of you in this room would be able to say, "I have heard this a thousand times. I wanted a new word". Well, here's a thing, is that if you have a Bible, you're holding in your hand something that was... that the last word that was placed in it happened centuries ago. So, here's what we know: that what makes our Bible different from any other religious text on any shelf on the globe is that our Word is a living Word. It was inspired by the Spirit, and the Spirit is still active through the Word. Comes with fresh breath to us. Every scripture, we're told in 2 Timothy, is inspired by God and is useful. It is useful.
Let me tell you how important this part of scripture is. Chapters 1 and 2 are spent so much on telling us this majestic thing that God has done through Christ and how he's brought together, destroying the dividing wall of hostility between Gentile and Jew, and what God has done that, with so great a love after we were dead in our trespasses, what he has done for us, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. "By grace you have been saved," and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
I mean, how does it get better than that? How does it get better than that? But it doesn't get into the equipping, it doesn't get into the power to walk away from things that are nearly killing us, it doesn't get into any of those things until it stops at this point and says, if you'll allow me to paraphrase it this way, "Are you rooted so deeply down in the measureless love of Christ for you that nothing, nothing is wedged underneath it"? I want you to get a picture of this with me because I want you to understand this. I wanna go back to it. The happiest, and without a doubt the most satisfied, the fullest life on this sin-scarred planet is not simply the one who is saved.
Listen, praise God for that. It's got to begin there. But you can be saved and in complete defeat. Does anybody know that besides me? We can be saved and held captive by the devil. How do I know that? Well, there's a couple of places I know that. One place I know it for absolutely sure is 2 Timothy chapter 2. Read that chapter for yourself. Over and over, we are told that we can live in defeat and still be in the faith. We have to search our hearts and figure out, listen, if we can go on and on and on without any conviction, the Holy Spirit is not living inside of us. We're not in him. But this is our most fulfilled life, and the happiest that we can get on this distorted orb called planet Earth is not because we are saved.
That will be our happily ever after when we're done here. It will be whether or not our deepest conviction in all of life is that "I am inconceivably loved by God," because very often it is one of our core beliefs. I'm not asking if it's one of your core beliefs. Is it the deepest root that you have, that nothing, nothing is in under that, that it goes the furthest down of anything else? Okay, so I throw this out, first of all, I threw it out to my staff first, and they kind of look at me blankly, they said, "You know, I think that's it. How would I know for sure"? And I said, "Well, I'm not sure. I'm dealing with it right now. I'm trying to figure it out..."
So, I went home to Keith and Melissa that night. She came out and spent the evening with us and we ate dinner together, and this is what I love about my family: They'll just go there with me. And so, I said, "Okay, y'all, I have a concept to throw out on the table". I said, "What is it at your deepest root you must believe"? I said, "We know what we're supposed to say, but what would you really say"? So, we talked a lot, and you have to understand, I come from a very, very honest family. I love 'em so much. There's no telling what God has done for me by giving me a man that just cannot put up with bull. He can't, he can't, he can't. He hates pretension so much. And so, I know I can look at him, he's gonna tell me the truth.
And I said, "Okay, like, based on what you're living out and what you tend to do, how quickly you panic or how quickly you get angry or what a, like, what's going on out here on the branches? What would you say? Trace what's going on in the branches all the way down to the deepest root. What is there"? 'Cause you and I, we're doing some root evaluation this weekend. And so, Keith and I were talking about it and we talked it through and he said, "Okay, all right," but he said, "I guess if we get down to the furthest thing down in there, even further than my conviction that God loves me, I got this impulse in me that says, 'Run for your life. Something'll kill you.'"
Anybody beginning to understand what we're talking about? I think one of the things that was very deeply rooted in me is I'm almost enough, almost, almost. If I could try a little bit harder, if I could be a little bit better, if I... almost, almost. Anybody just, like, worn out from trying to get those last few inches of "I just, I feel like I'm just almost there. Why is it I can just never be completely enough? I'm just almost, I'm almost..." I need to see if anybody can relate to what I'm saying. Almost. See, because the things that I'm not anywhere near don't bother me. They don't. Like, for instance, a gorgeous young woman does not intimidate me, because you know what? I'm a long shot from young. I don't know if anybody can understand what I'm talking about, but I no longer am in that game.
See, if I'm not in the game, then I'm sort of relaxed about it, I'm chill about it because I'm not almost that, and like, I'm not intimidated by fabulous singers. I love 'em, I appreciate 'em, but I'm not intimidated, why? Because I'm not almost there. Anybody? But what drives you crazy is that you think, "Sometimes I could just smell it. If I could just be better at that. I should've worked a little bit harder". Deeply rooted beliefs. One of my young employees said that she believes very deeply rooted in her belief system is the philosophy, she said, "God is definitely there for all of us". We would've said, "Absolutely, the deepest-rooted thing you would find: that God is right there, God is right there, God is right there".
But see, it's not enough for him to just be there. I'm asking you, is it the love of Christ? Is it the love of Christ, not just, is God your deepest belief? Glory to his name. That's a good way to start. It has to start there. That's not what we're talking about this weekend. Is the deepest conviction you have in all of your life not that "God so loved the world"? That's glorious, but that does not change you. Do you believe he loves you like that? Jesus? Jesus Christ? But she said, "I think that my deeply rooted belief is that what I want will always be contrary to what God wants for me". She said, "In fact", and she talked about, and I finally used the word. I said "jinx," and she said, "Maybe, maybe". She said, "I try not to want what I'm hoping he'll give me, because I'm afraid if I do, it will jinx it".
Come on, somebody. Come on. Nothing like having a game player for a God. Boy, if that's not some fun, I don't know how to have it. We'll be jinxed because he's never, ever, ever going to give us the desires of our heart. His choice for me will always be what I want the least. One of them said, and I thought this was so powerful. She said, "I believe love saves. I believe love saves". So, I had to just push on it. "Whose"? Because see, it's a beautiful thing to believe in love and to believe in romance.
Oh, please do. But there is only one love that absolutely saves, and what I'm gonna tell you is, if that became our deepest root, we would enjoy all the other loves a whole lot more because they are not the loves that are responsible for saving us. When you put saving love on the loves in your life, it will not be enough. They cannot save you. They can bless you, they can enrich you, they can come along and help snatch you out of the fire, but there is one love that absolutely saves absolutely, and that is the love of Jesus Christ, and that is it and it is more than enough. It is more than enough.