It’s incredible to watch a tall tree in a fierce storm. The wind pounds on its trunk and, even though it may stand a hundred feet tall, it stays firmly in the ground because it has deeps roots in a sturdy foundation.
Our lives are filled with as we prepare when a tornado siren starts ringing, we can ready ourselves to weather our storms in life.
In Colossians 2, Paul warns his Christian family that there might be some who try to “take you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
Paul is sounding the alarm. There is a specific storm from which he warns us to seek shelter, the misleading words of people relying on their own wisdom rather than God’s, and to prepare for it Paul wrote very simply, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7).
First, we need to confess that Jesus is the Christ and the Lord of our lives, and then we need to root ourselves in that faith, giving thanks for that tremendous foundation! When your roots are sturdy, you’ll be able to endure anything that is thrown at you in life. You might get shaken or hurt, but you’ll survive because your roots are deep.
Jesus said that everyone who hears His words and puts them into practice is “like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” No matter how hard the storm beats against our walls, if God’s Word is our foundation, we will not fall.
In fact, James tells us these storms give us a way to grow in our faith. He writes, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3). The storms ahead can make us perfect and complete if we can survive them, and the way we do that is by having sturdy roots in the right foundation.
Do not forget that the storm is coming — storms of pain, storms of loss, storms of temptation, and someday even the storm of death. We won’t be able to survive the storms alone, but when we root ourselves in the Bible, confess that Jesus is the Christ, act on that belief by turning from our past and being cleansed in baptism, and start living our lives on this new foundation, then no matter how dark the clouds become, we’ll be prepared.
Brandon Lavy is pulpit minister at Greenfield Church of Christ. This weekly column is written by local clergy members.
