Devotional for Thursday, November 16, 2017
“Are You Rooted and Grounded?”
by Dona Hake
Our lives speak and reveal what is rooted deep within our hearts. If a child of God is grounded in the love of God, he or she will seek ways to be a blessing at every opportunity. If an individual has any root of bitterness within their heart it will be hard for them to flow in His love and freedom that was bought for them by the blood of Jesus.
The Lord instructs us to be diligent over our hearts, for from our hearts flow the issues of life. As we tend to our hearts as our Lord commands, we will value the fruit of the deeply rooted good things He desires to work and produce in us. It is as we guard our hearts like this that we will immediately discern if any roots of ungodly thinking that would try to creep into our hearts and minds.
Today I want you to think about the love of God in your heart. Are you rooted and grounded in His love? Do you value tending and guarding your heart? Can you see that you are growing in the love of God or are you at a standstill? Quite honestly no matter how old you are in the Lord, this is a question we should ask ourselves on a regular basis.
We have heard the quote “Bloom where you are planted.” It is important to know in our heart that we are staying connected with the Living God, and permitting Him to prune us when He sees fit. I was given a Poinsettia one year as a Christmas gift. It is still flourishing after five years. In order for this particular plant to grow and flourish there is a schedule in which I must prune it back. I recently had to prune it back, and it was so hard for it was so bushy and beautiful. In order for it to remain beautiful I did what I know was best for it’s health and maintaining it’s beauty, and so it is when our Lord prunes us. Part of our strength and flourishing in our Lord is His time of pruning us, and we must welcome it. He knows what needs to go, and He knows exactly the right time to do it.
Today, I encourage you to have vision of being rooted and grounded in Him. May your roots go down deep in the things of His Spirit. Look to Him to grow in His wonderful love, and be filled up with Him! I leave you with this scripture to meditate and pray it over your life.
Ephesians 3:17-20 The Living Bible
“And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living
within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of
God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all
God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his
love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so
great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it.
And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.
Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to
do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely
beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes.”