What Are You Rooted In?

What Are You Rooted In?

By M.T. Clark — P-2057 | 09/01/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast

Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of a bare earthy bank on the shore of a wide-open lake, with green tree-covered hills curving around the far shoreline under a bright blue sky scattered with white puffy clouds, comes to us from an anonymous FB friend, who shared this peaceful late-summer lake view on social media back on September 4, 2023.

Well, it’s Tuesday, and I share this photo of a wide-open lake surrounded by tree-covered green hills to remind us that even in the middle of the ordinary work week, the Lord surrounds our lives with pockets of quiet beauty that are meant to lift our eyes and to settle our souls.

There is something about a wide-open water scene that pulls the shoulders down and slows the breath. Most of us don’t get to stand at the edge of a lake on a Tuesday morning, but the Lord has a way of giving us these little glimpses of His handiwork through a shared photo, a passing sky, or the trees along our own street, so that we don’t forget that God’s world is much bigger than the week’s to-do list.

So, take a minute to receive the beauty God has put in front of you today, and let the One who made it all settle you before the day gets going.

Speaking of drawing our life and our peace from a Source that stays steady no matter what the week brings,

Our series, “Rooted in Him,” continues today with the question of what our lives are actually rooted in.

What Are You Rooted In?

Every life is rooted in something. The question is never whether we are drawing our security from a source, but which source we’re drawing it from, and the prophet Jeremiah presents the two options as clearly as anywhere in Scripture. He writes in Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NKJV): “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit.”

The blessed person here is defined by one thing: where they have sunk their roots. Their trust and their hope are in the Lord, and everything that follows flows from that single choice.

Let’s look at what the deep roots actually do. Jeremiah doesn’t promise the tree a life with no heat and no drought. He promises that when the heat comes, the tree won’t fear, and in the year of drought, its leaves stay green and it keeps bearing fruit.

The hard seasons still come. The difference is that a tree rooted by the river has its roots reaching water that the drought can’t touch. Its life isn’t drawing on the weather. It’s drawing on the river. That is the whole point.

When our roots are in the Lord, our stability stops depending on our circumstances, because we are feeding on a Source that our circumstances can’t dry up.

Now let’s read the verses just before this, because Jeremiah sets the contrast on purpose. He describes the other kind of person as one who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, and he says that person is “like a shrub in the desert,” living in a parched place and not seeing when good comes. It’s the same weather, but a completely different outcome, and the only thing that is different is what they are rooted in. The desert shrub and the riverside tree face the same drought. One withers and one stays green, and the only difference between the two is where they decide to sink their roots.

For most of my life, in my walk before Christ, I was the desert shrub, and I didn’t even know there was another option. I had my roots in all the usual dry ground: in what people thought of me, in my own performance, in substances, and in whatever I could grab to feel steady for a moment. And every time the heat came, I withered, because none of those things had any water in them. None of them had life. They couldn’t hold and sustain me because they were never connected to a living source.

When the Lord replanted me by the River of Life back in 2010, the change wasn’t that the droughts stopped coming. The change was that, by God’s grace, I finally had roots reaching something that doesn’t run dry, and I stopped withering every time life got hard.

So it’s worth asking yourself the plain question that this passage presents to us: what are you actually rooted in right now?

Let’s not just answer that with what you’d say in church, but honestly consider where you actually reach for when the heat comes. When you are anxious, where do your roots run for water? If the honest answer is your circumstances, your reputation, your bank account, or your own strength, then you are a tree planted in a place that will fail you in the drought, and it isn’t your fault the leaves keep browning. The problem is the soil.

The good news is that trees can be replanted, and the Lord is in the replanting business. He invites you today to sink your trust and your hope into Him, to move your roots off the dry ground and down to the river.

So, come to the Lord, sink your roots into Him, and let His grace hold you steady through whatever heat and drought this week brings. The dry years will still arrive, but you will meet them green, unafraid, and still bearing fruit, because your life will finally be drawing on a Source that nothing on earth can take away.

Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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