Stronger Together

My knowledge is limited in the area of trees, but I did I little bit of reading into the root system of trees. Why the roots? Because I wanted to know how is it that trees grow, how they are fed, and what allows a tree to remain healthy in order to compare it to the Christian life.

The roots of trees really don’t go very deep. As I was reading I came across this study.

“Orjan Stahl, a tree researcher in Stockholm, made an exhaustive study of over 500 trees that had root and utility conflicts. He regularly found roots at depths of 7 to 9 feet (2.1 to 2.7 meters) and the deepest root he encountered was at 23 feet (7 meters)...They found numerous examples of trees reported to be growing roots to over 33 feet (10 meters), and one report of a tree that grew roots to a depth of 174 feet (53 meters).”

Apparently, the trees roots can grow as much as possible as long as the conditions are right. Conditions such as water, oxygen and soil compaction (the soil condition).

Rooted in Christ

Paul’s desire for the Ephesian church is that they understand and experience Christ’s love and be filled with the fullness of God.

The New International Version Chapter 3

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God

Isn’t that something good to wish upon someone else? When have you ever heard anybody tell someone else something like this?

In order to have power, in order to grasp the width and the depth of Christ’s love and in order to know that this is love is beyond our knowledge, we must be rooted and established in love.

Root ????? - botanical term. How trees are strengthened to remain upright

Established ?eµe???? - an architectural term which means foundation upon which something else is built.

We need to be rooted (go deep) and be strong enough to build the structure of our lives.

Paul desires that together with the church members that together we grasp how wide, long, high and deep is Christ’s love.

Spiritual growth is not just a personal relationship with Christ. We are rooted in Christ and established in love, but in order to continue to have true power we need to grow together. In order to grasp the width, length, height and depth of God, we need each other to understand this.

A common question people ask or something that they say is,

“Do I need the church in order to be saved?

What they are really asking if they need to go to church to be saved… or do they need to be part of a community of believers in order to heaven?

The Message of Ephesians c. Knowing Christ’s Love

The isolated Christian can indeed know something of the love of Jesus. But his grasp of it is bound to be limited by his limited experience. It needs the whole people of God to understand the whole love of God, all the saints together, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, young and old, black and white, with all their varied backgrounds and experiences

As we experience life together we are more aware of how much more there is to love. When we share in each other’s burdens and share our lives together we learn more about love.

When you are single you understand love as love to family and friends

When you “fall in love” you understand another dimension of love you didn’t know about

When you have kids you enter into a very different dimension of love that you didn’t know about.

When you are a grandparent you enter into a different level of love and so on.

Likewise for Christians, you can know something of God’s love alone, but you won’t understand and experience God’s love in a deeper sense if you stop there.

Why? You gather people who have agreed that Jesus is Savior and Lord, that He is coming again, that all 10 commandments are important, that we have a mission to make disciples. We come together to worship God as a collective body and sit next to people who are imperfect just like me but have a desire to serve, learn, grow. That’s the ideal reality, but we also grow when we have to deal with difficult situations, when we disagree, when we have to have those difficult conversations. Where else could we learn these life lessons if not in a “safe” environment where we are here to encourage, support, one another? The church is to be the training ground for life.