“Thankfulness is a flower which will never bloom well excepting upon a root of deep humility.”
J. C. Ryle
Last Sunday’s sermon was an exploration of the idea of thankfulness. Jay Higgins began with Colossians 2:6-7, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” (NIV) Jay captured the ideas of “rooted and built up” and then issued his own call to action to our church family:
The apostle Paul here calls the Church to action in three ways. He tells us to continue to walk in Jesus, to be, and to stay, rooted and built up in Him, and to be strengthened or established in the faith. The language he uses should immediately bring pictures of these metaphors to mind. To walk in Christ means that we are living our daily lives as He calls us. I think a fair metaphor of that would be walking down the dirt road of life in step with Jesus. We are following his lead and doing our very best to even get in the same cadence as Him. “Left, left, left right left.” Roots make us think of trees usually. We want our roots to run deep, to be ever growing and spreading deeper and deeper and wider and wider in the good soil of Christ. The deeper our roots go, the stronger and taller our tree grows and ultimately the size of our branches and the shade and fruit that they provide for others will be in direct correlation to our roots. The idea of being built up points to a mighty oak with deep roots, but our minds also quickly go to the picture of a building. We don’t want to build our house upon the sand. We want to pour our foundation deep on the Rock that is Jesus. And continue to frame and finish that house bigger and bigger, and taller and taller. It’s the picture of the original farmhouse style. Farmhouse has become a modern architectural style, but it’s based on the original idea of the farmhouse and the pragmatic way it was built. You would build and finish the house. And then when you had the money and time, you would add on a room or a couple rooms off of the existing house. And then maybe later do another addition. So you would end up with many later additions that were not originally planned jutting out from the main first build. Maybe some of those additions in our farmhouse, (and if I lost you in my illustration we are the farmhouse and the additions are our growth), maybe some of those additions come from extreme trials or loss in our lives. And God uses those things to make us more like Jesus. And suddenly we have this addition we never expected that is part of us, the purpose of which is to edify and provide shelter for others.
Today, are you a recruit striving to keep in step with the Lord? Are you a tree with deep roots? Are you a house with several additions? May you overflow with thankfulness this week and throughout the rest of 2025. Have a blessed Thanksgiving and we will see many of you on Sunday.
Love in Christ,
Pastor Dale
