Deep Roots

A living sacrifice, take up your cross, if they persecute Me then they will surely persecute you… those are tough things to swallow, aren’t they?  Tough maybe, but all warnings from God’s word that things are not always promised to be easy on the Christian walk.  God told us there would be days like this, so to speak.  These are the days and the times we must all dig deep.  This is when it would be good to have been planted by that stream of living water the Psalmist and Jeremiah talk about in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17.  Jeremiah even mentions the roots spreading out in verse 8, a firm foundation.  Let’s take a minute to think out what can ground us and give our roots the depth needed to stand the heat of this world and the wiles of the devil.

Let’s take a look at Romans 12:1-2.  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.  Paul is actually begging here.  This is one of those times that he is not speaking a command, but even more strongly, he is begging the brothers and sisters at Rome to present their bodies as a living sacrifice.  Why…Because of the “mercies of God.”  Present your bodies as the sacrifice.  This is literally the word for what is being sacrificed.  This is an all-in affair.  A sacrifice can never go back to being anything else once sacrificed.  It is final and complete.  This is a total surrender.  That my friend is the key… that is what grows deep roots… that is what leads to being a true follower of Jesus, being all-in.  Paul says that is our only reasonable response to god’s mercy, our only logical act of worship to One who gave so much. 

We might ask how in the world can I do that?  Paul explains in the very next verse, “be transformed.”  Be changed.  Don’t let yourself be shaped by what everyone else does, but rather let yourselves be transformed by a whole new way of thinking.  Paul emphasizes the transforming and new life of a Christian in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.  Let’s live our lives deeply rooted in the newness that is the mercy of God’s love each day of our lives, because that is, of course, the only reasonable response to something so amazing as God’s love and mercy.

God Bless!