Rooted and Grounded

by Rick Combs

January 10, 2022

We have turned the calendar again… 2022. Happy New Year everyone!

As we look ahead, I want to focus on the bigger picture. The Bible presents a GRAND DRAMA of a Holy God who is very relational because He is Love. His intention is to dwell with His creation in harmony forever. Then, tragedy. All hell breaks loose.

We find God estranged from His creation while a rebellious Lucifer turned Satan usurps God’s authority and spoils everything.

But God has a plan for reconciliation. Because of His great love He works through human history to bring things full circle. He redeems mankind and destroys the old heaven and earth with fire. He then creates a New Heaven and a New Earth where God once again dwells with His creation unhindered and in full harmony.

It’s the stuff of grand and great epic drama!

This series will help ground us and establish in the faith.

Colossians 2:6-7: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”

I have been praying this verse for several weeks for myself and others. The Apostle Paul urges us to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way we received Him, by faith. Paul wants us to be rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith. I think it’s interesting that his hearers were taught to do so. To cap it off, abounding in thanksgiving is the result of being rooted and built up in the faith.

Colossians 3:10 tells us that the path to rootedness and being built up is through knowledge. It’s the knowledge gained from the Word of God that enables us to put on the new man in our everyday life as we walk in the faith. This allows Christ Jesus to express His Life through us to others.

“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”

Ephesians 3: 16-19 furthers our instruction, “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷ that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— ¹⁹ to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”.

Specifically, how do we gain this knowledge so we can be rooted and grounded? Day by day we follow Paul’s instruction in 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”.

We study. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t like it either sometimes. It’s wearying to the flesh (Eccl. 12:12). But it is necessary if we want to grow, be mature, built up, rooted and grounded deep in the faith.

In our next post, we will consider the holiness of God. We may understand that we are sinners, but without a sufficient understanding that God is holy and righteous our view of mankind and ourselves will be lacking.

Without the knowledge of the character of God our faith is shallow.

We will begin our series here – who God is.

Until next time, may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Amen