WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.760 Music. 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:13.009 The Rooted Life Change podcast, where we believe that lasting life change can 00:00:13.009 --> 00:00:18.949 happen for your good and for God's glory. Today we're gonna kind of continue and 00:00:18.949 --> 00:00:23.609 pick up the conversation from where we left off, and we're gonna talk a little 00:00:23.609 --> 00:00:29.769 bit about trees today, about fruit, and just exactly this kind of imagery that 00:00:29.769 --> 00:00:33.289 is kind of embedded in some of the stuff that I'm talking about, and it's very 00:00:33.289 --> 00:00:38.509 embedded throughout the Bible. If you were to open up your Bible and read 00:00:38.509 --> 00:00:44.729 through it and highlight every time that there was mention of a tree or mention 00:00:44.729 --> 00:00:50.349 of a fruit or some sort of plant, you'd be surprised how much things of how much 00:00:50.349 --> 00:00:55.729 of your Bible you end up highlighting by the end of it. Trees and plants happen to 00:00:55.729 --> 00:01:00.809 be one of the primary images that are used throughout the Bible. We've talked 00:01:00.809 --> 00:01:09.038 about in one of our past episodes about the Garden of Eden and its two trees and what those two trees 00:01:09.191 --> 00:01:15.420 represented. When we think about that very familiar story, right, Adam and Eve have these 00:01:15.510 --> 00:01:23.225 two trees. One, God encourages them to eat from one tree, the tree of life, which has this fruit 00:01:23.369 --> 00:01:30.391 and symbolizes being connected to God in His way of life, of making the right choice and following. 00:01:30.729 --> 00:01:37.440 After him of saying, I will submit my understanding of how to live my life to. 00:01:37.969 --> 00:01:42.129 God. And then there was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that tree 00:01:42.129 --> 00:01:48.449 represented the exact opposite. It represented taking knowledge of how to 00:01:48.449 --> 00:01:58.802 live our life into our own hands. If maybe that has never really sunk in before exactly that there were two trees and that they represented opposites. It's 00:01:58.969 --> 00:02:03.925 And it's not just that that tree of knowledge of good and evil all of a sudden gave the 00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:05.609 Adam and Eve knowledge. 00:02:05.609 --> 00:02:07.238 That wasn't necessarily it. 00:02:07.409 --> 00:02:14.049 It was that they chose to say, we will be the determiners of what is good and what is 00:02:14.331 --> 00:02:16.168 evil, of right and wrong. 00:02:16.809 --> 00:02:24.169 And that is the knowledge that they were taking on. They decided, we're no longer going to live life according to the way God has called us 00:02:24.169 --> 00:02:30.787 to live, but we're choosing to write our own story to say, we know what is best. 00:02:31.089 --> 00:02:35.249 And eating from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil was that choice. 00:02:35.249 --> 00:02:42.169 And with that came shame, came sin, came all of the problems that we now face as humanity, 00:02:42.169 --> 00:02:44.867 because we don't know how best to live. 00:02:45.169 --> 00:02:54.129 Left to our own devices, we do not make wise decisions. Today we're going to talk a little bit more about some of this imagery, pick up some of 00:02:54.129 --> 00:03:00.929 imagery that Jesus talks about when he mentions trees and plants in New Testament. Jesus has 00:03:00.929 --> 00:03:06.049 many parables where he talks about fruit, and he talks about trees, and we'll talk about. 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:09.074 A couple of them but I want to 00:03:08.120 --> 00:03:14.570 start off with this one particular Bible verse that I think is very important for us to understand, 00:03:14.570 --> 00:03:20.651 and that is this short two verses in Luke chapter 6. 00:03:20.930 --> 00:03:24.117 Jesus says these following words here. He says, 00:03:24.410 --> 00:03:31.930 No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 00:03:31.930 --> 00:03:35.046 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. 00:03:35.370 --> 00:03:42.166 Do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briars. A good man brings good things 00:03:42.310 --> 00:03:47.343 out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the 00:03:47.424 --> 00:03:53.905 evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what is the heart full of.". 00:03:54.824 --> 00:04:00.170 Okay, let's break that down for a second. At first, Jesus kind of is saying something 00:04:00.170 --> 00:04:06.850 that sounds so just no-brainer, right? Of course, if you go up to a thornbush, you wouldn't 00:04:06.850 --> 00:04:12.370 expect to find grapes. If there was an apple tree in your backyard and you walked up to 00:04:12.370 --> 00:04:17.662 that apple tree, you're expecting to find what? Apples. You wouldn't expect to find 00:04:17.932 --> 00:04:25.210 oranges or you wouldn't expect to find bananas, right? Each tree produces fruit depending 00:04:25.210 --> 00:04:37.650 on what kind of tree it is. 00:04:38.728 --> 00:04:44.991 Tree that's sick, tree that's maybe got some infestation of some kind, is not getting the 00:04:44.991 --> 00:04:50.271 right nutrients, is not getting enough water, is going to produce fruit that's less than 00:04:50.271 --> 00:04:55.511 desirable, it's not going to be quite right, not as juicy, it's not going to be good fruit, 00:04:55.511 --> 00:04:57.713 not healthy fruit. 00:04:58.031 --> 00:05:07.544 And then Jesus shifts from talking about agriculture to talking about the internal condition of a person. 00:05:07.711 --> 00:05:15.511 He moves and means to take that image of a tree and apply it directly to our lives, to 00:05:15.511 --> 00:05:18.374 the way we conceive and think about ourselves. 00:05:18.471 --> 00:05:24.351 He says a good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an 00:05:24.351 --> 00:05:28.357 evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. 00:05:29.511 --> 00:05:37.751 Now what is this saying? Well, it's saying that there's something that's coming out of us. 00:05:37.751 --> 00:05:40.240 What is our life producing? 00:05:40.735 --> 00:05:46.351 God, Jesus here is saying, if you look at the fruit, the words that someone speaks, 00:05:46.351 --> 00:05:53.464 the actions that they do, it will tell you about what's going on in the inside. 00:05:53.911 --> 00:06:00.009 And so this gives us a question of what does our fruit look like? 00:06:00.351 --> 00:06:03.551 What is the fruit of our lives producing? 00:06:03.551 --> 00:06:10.047 And what does that say about what's going on in the inside of our own hearts? 00:06:10.271 --> 00:06:17.375 And I think this is a really important thing. When we're talking about last couple episodes, we've been talking about stepping out of denial, 00:06:18.149 --> 00:06:24.135 of admitting that there's a problem, of coming forward and beginning to seek help and stepping 00:06:24.189 --> 00:06:25.522 into the light. 00:06:26.629 --> 00:06:32.552 Now, in order to do that, we have to start naming and owning the fruit that our life 00:06:32.671 --> 00:06:37.831 is producing. And that's a really important thing to do. 00:06:38.872 --> 00:06:43.148 What are some of those maybe sour fruits that we're maybe experiencing? 00:06:43.571 --> 00:06:52.242 I have a handful of here. Fruits, sour fruits, bad fruit, spoiled fruit that we could be introducing or experiencing in our lives here. 00:06:53.202 --> 00:07:02.080 One is addiction. What's going on? There's something wrong if I am consistently drawn 00:07:02.233 --> 00:07:12.657 to dependency, whether that be on chemicals, or on behaviors, or on pornography. We are seeking out 00:07:12.802 --> 00:07:18.882 something. When we are constantly clinging on to the next thing, to a place where we become, 00:07:19.522 --> 00:07:25.279 so needy and so dependent on the thing that we become unhealthy, we're in trouble, right? 00:07:26.098 --> 00:07:35.928 Right? Anxiety, right? Are we just constantly anxious? Any little thing is reason for panic 00:07:36.018 --> 00:07:44.502 and calamity to come. We're constantly wrecked. It is such a large boulder of anxiety that 00:07:44.502 --> 00:07:50.342 we carry on our shoulders. That's a fruit that's bearing out of the position and condition 00:07:50.342 --> 00:08:00.462 of our heart? Are we depressed? Are we stuck? Have we lost a sense of ourself and a sense 00:08:00.462 --> 00:08:09.502 of ourselves inside of our life and inside of the world? Are we depressed? Elsewhere 00:08:09.502 --> 00:08:18.698 is repeating relationship cycles. This is a big one. Are we continually going down this. 00:08:18.986 --> 00:08:27.106 Cycle of finding a new connection, a new relationship, and then it crashing and burning at some point? 00:08:27.302 --> 00:08:34.602 Are we continually burning bridges with people? Do we just have a long list of people who we don't talk to anymore and not very many 00:08:34.602 --> 00:08:38.062 people who we keep in good relationship with? 00:08:38.342 --> 00:08:45.093 Is that an ongoing relationship cycle that we're stuck in? Ongoing pain from the past? 00:08:45.342 --> 00:08:53.742 Is there something from your past that you cannot name without it being as hurtful and 00:08:53.742 --> 00:08:57.435 painful as it was the day it happened? 00:08:58.062 --> 00:09:03.662 Not that we should never feel sorrow over things that have happened long ago or a while 00:09:03.662 --> 00:09:05.888 ago. That's very normal. 00:09:06.062 --> 00:09:09.993 But when things continue to stay sore. 00:09:11.136 --> 00:09:18.186 Continue to stay unhealed. It's the difference between having an open wound and having a scar. 00:09:18.186 --> 00:09:23.466 When I look at the scar, I can remember the pain, I can see the mark it's left on me. 00:09:23.676 --> 00:09:29.946 But an open wound, anytime you move it or touch it, you are in searing pain. 00:09:31.508 --> 00:09:39.706 Have we, do we have a wound in our past that we have not dealt with? That is still an open wound 00:09:39.706 --> 00:09:42.566 And we haven't gotten any level of healing on yet, 00:09:43.106 --> 00:09:49.396 Are we stuck in a cycle of anger? We're constantly in this place of, 00:09:50.881 --> 00:09:56.466 Trying to control our anger and then losing control of our anger where we are constantly 00:09:56.850 --> 00:10:00.786 Angry at those who are closest to us who want to love us the most. 00:10:02.377 --> 00:10:03.863 Are we stuck in a cycle? 00:10:04.727 --> 00:10:12.726 Now there's So much wrapped up in each of those things that I mentioned and that's only a small list of things 00:10:12.726 --> 00:10:17.286 I'm sure that someone else you who are listening could come up with maybe a couple other, 00:10:17.888 --> 00:10:25.046 Sour fruits to add to that list and it's not just a simple fix-it type of mentality 00:10:25.046 --> 00:10:30.206 I'm not saying well, these are sour fruits. These are bad things. These are bad fruits 00:10:30.206 --> 00:10:34.326 And you just need to get over it or pray over it. That's not what I'm saying 00:10:34.326 --> 00:10:41.951 What I'm saying is that these fruits, the things that are coming out of our life, are, 00:10:42.486 --> 00:10:49.072 an indication of something much deeper and much more systemic inside of our life. 00:10:50.126 --> 00:10:57.406 Out of the root of our heart, out of the root of our history, of our past, of the systems 00:10:57.406 --> 00:11:05.942 and cycles out of the environment that we live in, are coming all of these sour fruits. 00:11:06.126 --> 00:11:06.554 And so. 00:11:07.473 --> 00:11:13.963 We're called here to kind of examine these fruits. And this is kind of a strange shift, 00:11:13.963 --> 00:11:20.443 and you might not be there quite yet, but I want to give you a glimpse. If you identified with one 00:11:20.443 --> 00:11:27.083 of those sour fruits, one of the things that I said there, and you're like, that's one of the 00:11:27.083 --> 00:11:33.803 sour fruits of my life. Definitely. It's a reoccurring, ongoing sour fruit. Now, you might 00:11:33.803 --> 00:11:42.043 say, oh, what do I need to do to get rid of that sour fruit? And what you might be tempted and what 00:11:42.043 --> 00:11:49.883 a lot of change and a lot of things that we kind of books and other programs that we might look at, 00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:58.596 often tackle is ways to kind of just pick off the sour fruit and throw it away, right? Okay, 00:11:58.763 --> 00:12:03.296 what do I need to do to just like get all the sour fruit off the tree and throw it away? 00:12:03.494 --> 00:12:06.500 Get it out of my view, get it out of my life, be done with it. 00:12:07.959 --> 00:12:12.523 But if you do that, and then you don't do anything to take care of the roots, 00:12:13.378 --> 00:12:21.323 to take care of the health of the tree or the plant, it's going to keep producing sour fruit. 00:12:22.777 --> 00:12:27.163 See, when we took a look at these sour fruits, a lot of times we get fixated and we say, 00:12:27.163 --> 00:12:33.083 I have got an addiction problem. I've got an alcohol problem. I've got a pornography problem. 00:12:33.083 --> 00:12:42.744 I've got a relationship problem. I've got an anger problem. I've got a hurt or a pain from the past 00:12:42.789 --> 00:12:49.003 problem. Right? And we say, that's the problem. And it's not an insignificant piece. It's not 00:12:49.003 --> 00:12:52.763 that that isn't a problem. 00:12:52.313 --> 00:13:05.339 Chances are is that there's something else going on inside of the roots and in the life of your tree and of your heart in the way in which you've been living that is producing that fruit. 00:13:06.699 --> 00:13:11.632 And so rooted is all about trying to get down to that heart level. 00:13:12.217 --> 00:13:17.323 We want to talk about the fruit. Yes, we want to work on tools to kind of help manage that. 00:13:17.323 --> 00:13:24.181 Figure out how to have that, mitigate that, have that have a less significant impact in our lives. 00:13:24.343 --> 00:13:27.485 But really, we wanna get down into the roots. 00:13:28.083 --> 00:13:33.883 And the first step of doing that is just looking at the fruit and then asking some questions 00:13:33.883 --> 00:13:41.783 and wondering aloud and in conversation saying, what does this fruit say about what's going inside at down in my roots? 00:13:41.783 --> 00:13:51.215 I'm starting to rhyme and sound like Dr. Seuss. Anyways, we want to begin to think about what's going on inside of my heart. 00:13:51.403 --> 00:13:58.323 And we know that the Bible tells that story, that Adam and Eve chose the tree of the knowledge 00:13:58.323 --> 00:14:04.250 of good and evil to live life according to their own definitions of right and wrong. 00:14:05.033 --> 00:14:11.299 And each and every single one of us past them has continued to do that very same thing. 00:14:11.929 --> 00:14:17.323 The Bible elsewhere says that all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. 00:14:17.573 --> 00:14:22.163 Psalmists continually ask in the book of Psalms, like, what's going on inside of my heart, 00:14:22.163 --> 00:14:26.063 Lord? Lord, discern my heart, reveal to me what is going on inside of it. 00:14:26.963 --> 00:14:33.203 And so this is going to require some deep work, but God is here for it. 00:14:33.203 --> 00:14:38.081 Jesus said that he came not to heal the healthy, but to heal the sick. 00:14:38.243 --> 00:14:42.763 He came to be a physician for the soul, for those who need it. 00:14:42.763 --> 00:14:47.839 And if you find yourself in a place of needing a physician for the soul, 00:14:48.363 --> 00:14:51.386 then you're in a really good place. 00:14:51.483 --> 00:14:58.147 So I'd encourage you as you kind of listen and think on this topic and this idea over this coming week, 00:14:58.243 --> 00:15:05.123 I'd say, sit down, kind of think through what are the fruits, small and big? 00:15:05.123 --> 00:15:10.323 What are the big ones that you see? Maybe you have an addiction that is really keenly 00:15:10.323 --> 00:15:14.324 on your mind and you're like, this is a big sour fruit in my life, 00:15:14.936 --> 00:15:17.898 that keeps coming back and keeps being reproduced. 00:15:18.546 --> 00:15:24.388 But what are some of those other smaller ones? Sometimes we get so fixated perhaps on an addiction, 00:15:24.963 --> 00:15:29.520 and we maybe miss the fact that, oh, I'm also burning relationships. 00:15:30.043 --> 00:15:35.686 Or perhaps I also have an anger problem. Maybe they're somehow connected. 00:15:35.884 --> 00:15:37.748 Take an inventory of your fruit. 00:15:37.946 --> 00:15:42.823 Don't beat yourself up about it, right? We're coming to get healing. 00:15:42.823 --> 00:15:48.037 We're coming to talk about the problem, right? just like we were talking about earlier, right? 00:15:49.325 --> 00:15:58.295 A wound, right? We need to diagnose the wound so we can treat it. So don't be angry at the 00:15:58.295 --> 00:16:05.415 wound. Don't be angry at the fruit. Just simply notice it. Maybe take a list of it and write 00:16:05.415 --> 00:16:12.235 it down. Maybe spend some time in prayer over it. Ask the Lord to begin to do some work 00:16:12.235 --> 00:16:19.395 of revealing in your heart of, what does this fruit say perhaps about me and my heart? 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:27.835 What's perhaps going on in there? And I would wager that if you prayed over those sour fruits in your life, and you asked 00:16:27.835 --> 00:16:34.035 the Lord to give you wisdom over the internal workings of your heart, I bet you would be 00:16:34.035 --> 00:16:39.535 surprised over how much insight the Lord grants you into that. 00:16:39.535 --> 00:16:45.031 Next week we're going to talk about some of the consequences of not addressing our fruit. 00:16:45.040 --> 00:17:02.228 Music.