Thank you all for the love, encouragement, sympathy and cards! We love you all! We have great shalom and Christ is our strength! Amen! After I will be using up my vacation and bereavement time mourning and celebrating my mom and her new life in heaven. We will see her again soon and Terry is at the doorway to join her soon. What joy awaits us all and remember, we do not mourn like those without hope!
Good Morning Deep-Rooted, Fruitful Trees of the Lord! Amen! Sinking roots deep into Christ and His Word produces much good fruit, even as we endure droughts of faith from this dry and weary land. We are called to be fruitful and to bring living water to refresh those around us. We can only do that when our roots are sunk deep into the life-giving Lord and His Word. Check out Our Daily Bread devotional below speaking into this. We've looked in the past at our fellowship being like a stump and a green shoot. Our roots as a stump still sink deep into the Lord and draw up life giving nutrients and water that are pushing up some green new shoots. Our fellowship continues to grow and thrive because of this and we are beginning to multiply disciples that make disciples and new expressions of worship. we have built on the foundation of Christ and we are rebuilders of walls. We are the Living Water. We are God's remnant gathered, refreshed and watered and new fruit is budding as we continue to stand firm, sink roots deep and draw up His life-giving living water and water those around us in this dry and weary land. Keep it up! New life and revival are at hand and we need you and each other to continue to go and continue to live and love like Jesus. Many around us are being drawn to the Giver of Life in us! Amen!
ODB:
Deep Roots
Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord. Jeremiah 17:7
As Douglas Kent, a landscape architect, toured a charred Los Angeles neighborhood after the city’s raging 2025 wildfires, he encountered a shocking surprise—trees, alive and green, right next to melted cars and burned buildings. Many of them bore lush palms and leaves, abundant fruit, and strong trunks and branches. How?
After two consecutive rainy winters, the trees’ roots had reached deep into the soil to draw moisture, carrying it to branches and leaves. In a fire, they proved resistant. “What I saw,” said Kent, “was that if you were deep-rooted, you survived.”
Our faith during the fiery trials of life can be like that. As we set our spiritual roots deep in Christ and His love, we become “like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8).
Jeremiah, who never minced words, warned that those who trust in “mere flesh” are “cursed” (v. 5). “That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes.” Instead, “they will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives” (vv. 5-6). How much better to trust in God! Well-watered by His sustaining love, we thrive even in raging times, bearing spiritual fruit in Him.
By Patricia Raybon
REFLECT & PRAY
How deep are your roots in Christ? How can you trust Him during fiery trials?
Dear God, as the world seems to burn around me, please remind me to trust in You.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Jeremiah warned the unrepentant, idolatrous people of Judah that God would exile them to Babylon for their unfaithfulness (Jeremiah 25:8-11). God persistently and patiently urged them to repent before it was too late (35:15) and promised restoration and blessing once discipline was complete (31:23-28). In chapter 17, Jeremiah contrasts the curses on the ungodly with the blessings on the godly (vv. 5-8). In language reminiscent of Psalm 1:1-3, the prophet proclaims: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord. . . . They will be like a tree planted by the water” (Jeremiah 17:7-8). In contrast, cursed are those who “turn their hearts away from the Lord . . . with no hope for the future” (vv. 5-6 nlt ). The curse and blessing motifs are also in line with the covenantal consequences laid out in Deuteronomy 28. In times of adversity, Jeremiah reminds us that our security, stability, faithfulness, and fruitfulness are rooted in our trust in God, not in men.
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