The Flourishing Tree: Cultivating a Life of Faith

By Hope Squires

This books taps into the powerful imagery of trees to suggest ways that one may sink roots into God’s Word and grow strong branches that bear the fruits of faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483419336

Book preview

the

Flourishing Tree

CULTIVATING

A LIFE OF FAITH

HOPE SQUIRES

Copyright © 2014 Hope Chandler Squires.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

For quotations marked The Message: Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Oswald Chambers’ quote: Taken from My Utmost for His Highest® by Oswald Chambers, edited by James Reimann, © 1992 by Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved worldwide.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s quote: Reprinted with the permission of Scribner Publishing Group, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, translated from the German by R.H. Fuller, with revisions by Irmgard Booth. Copyright © 1959 by SCM Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1932-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1933-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917994

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Graphics/Art Credits: Jim Briggs

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/12/2014

Contents

Section 1: Sending Out Roots

1.   The Flawed Carpenter: How We Fill the God-Shaped Void in Our Hearts

2.   The Little Man Who Climbed Trees: Desperately Seeking Jesus

3.   Prosperous Tree or Useless Chaff? Living a Blessed Life

4.   When a Fig Tree Inspires Faith: How God’s Wooing Amazes Us

5.   Adopted into a New Family Tree: Becoming Firmly Rooted in God

6.   When the Heat Comes: How Roots of Faith Sustain Us in Tough Times

7.   The Cedar Palace and the Tent: When God’s Plan Doesn’t Match Ours

Section 2: Growing Strong and Reaching Up toward God

8.   Two Trees in the Garden: Sinners Reaching for God

9.   The Bush that Didn’t Burn: Obeying God Despite Our Doubts

10.   The King Who Dreamed of a Tree: When Arrogance Blinds Us

11.   The Ark and the Olive Branch: Signs of Hope as God’s Plan Unfolds

12.   When There’s Nothing to Harvest: Praising God in Desperate Days

13.   The Sheltering Juniper Tree: God’s Provision when We Want to Quit

14.   The Day of Waving Palms: Proclaiming Christ No Matter the Crowd

15.   The Tree of Salvation: Learning Forgiveness at the Foot of the Cross

Section 3: Branching Out and Bearing Fruit

16.   The Judge’s Tree: Courage to Answer God’s Call

17.   The Shade of the Vine: When We Question God’s Decisions

18.   The Small Flame that Sets the Forest Ablaze: Taming Our Tongues

19.   The Hospitality of the Shade Tree: How Welcoming Others Blesses Both Guest and Host

20.   Doubly Dead Trees: Avoiding Threats to Our Spiritual Growth

21.   The Flourishing Tree: Chasing What Matters Most

Section 4: Preparing for Harvest

22.   The Tree Jesus Cursed: Faith, Forgiveness, and Bearing Fruit for God

23.   The Fruitless Tree: The Power of God’s Grace

24.   The Tree at the End of Days: An Invitation to Hope and Life

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

For my family, but especially …

for Mom, who planted the seeds of faith in me;

for Dad, who taught me to see the beauty of trees and all of nature;

for Chris, who believed in my dreams and helped me bring them to life.

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SECTION ONE

Sending Out Roots

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I had a professor in grad school who liked to remind his students, All language is metaphor. This book shares with you one of my favorite metaphors for what our faith journeys look like: the flourishing tree.

Just like a tree, our faith journey begins with the first small seed sending down roots. From there, we turn to the tender trunk that increases in strength and thickness as it reaches up toward the light. Next, we unfurl leaves and bear fruit and seeds to produce more trees. The final season for the tree is the harvest season when the tree is judged by the fruit or shade or timber it produces.

In the early pages and chapters ahead, we’ll look at what it means to start taking steps in faith, to allow the first tender roots to dig down into the soil and drink up nourishment that sustains our lives. Without the unseen roots of faith growing first, our lives cannot achieve the fullness God has planned, and we cannot reach out to bless others.

Each chapter focuses on a story in the Bible about trees and the people who eat from them, climb them, shelter under them, dream of them, and are saved by them. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find questions to ask yourself or discuss together with friends. And you’ll find a prayer for growing stronger in your faith.

My hope for this book is that it will lead you to a place in your faith where you can truly grow in God’s love and understand God’s will and purpose for you.

This is a story of God’s unfailing love and grace. If we allow God’s love and grace to change us and cultivate our lives, we can flourish for God.

Chapter 1

The Flawed Carpenter: How We Fill the God-Shaped Void in Our Hearts

Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire. But the rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my god.

No one recalls, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say, I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood! He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?

—Isaiah 44:14–17

I n the book of Isaiah, we meet a flawed carpenter. He possesses several God-given talents. He knows how to grow and tend trees. He cuts the cedar, cypress, oak, and fir for firewood, which means he possesses strength and skill with a saw. He builds a fire to warm himself and to prepare a meal of bread and meat. He’s a skilled carpenter who can carve fine details into a statue.

At first, the carpenter is putting these gifts to good use, but then he goes astray by using the leftover wood to carve an idol to worship. Carving the idol is an abomination to God, a misuse of the carpenter’s talents, and a waste of natural resources that provide the man with warmth, light, and good food. But what led this man—and what leads us—to carve the idol in the first place?

Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician, points us to an answer. He describes a hole in each of us that only God can truly fill:

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God himself.¹

So the carpenter in Isaiah’s story inherently knows that he’s missing something. Something exists that can make him truly happy, something worthy of worship, but he does not reach out in the right way.

How many times do we try to fill the God-shaped hole in our own lives with something other than God? We may not be sitting around after dinner carving wooden idols to worship, but idols can sneak into our lives in other ways and turn us away from our search for a healing relationship with God. Drugs, sex, careers, money, lifestyle, academic degrees, even our family and friends can become our idols in an attempt to find happiness and fulfillment.

Recognizing the God-shaped void can be a difficult first step of faith, but knowing that it’s there to be filled can start us on the right path toward finding God.

Nourishing the Tender Roots of Faith

The carpenter has the first tender roots of faith: a desire to find spiritual nourishment. Let’s take a look, though, at what he lacks that could help lead him in the direction of the one true God.

• No apparent community of faith—he is isolated.

• No mentor—he is unguided.

• Misused skills and talents—he is misdirected.

• No knowledge of God—he is ignorant.

• Physical satisfaction, but no spiritual satisfaction—he is fragmented.

There’s no mention in this story of a friend or family member or community of any sort for the carpenter. His isolation may mean he has never had anyone else who could share the good news of God’s love with him and teach him about God’s laws and what it looks like to be faithful. His isolation also means that he has no mentor who can correct him when he mistakenly thinks that an idol he has carved can fulfill him spiritually. He knows he’s not whole, and he doesn’t look in the right direction.

Do you recognize any of these lacks in your own life? When we first begin exploring a relationship with God, it’s easy to make mistakes—just as the carpenter did—by not understanding what God hopes for us and the love God wants to share with us.

When we are new to Christianity or just considering it for the first time, it’s possible that we haven’t thought about how important it is to connect with a church. We may think we can worship God just fine all by ourselves. We may be scared of walking into a church before we have our act together. We may have been hurt at a previous church we attended and decided that church isn’t for us.

We can worship God by ourselves, but a church community will help us grow strong roots more quickly, and a mentor can help us learn what God wants for our lives. A mentor can also pray with us in times of difficulty and gently correct us when we’re going down a dangerous path. And from my experience, if we all had our acts together, and if we didn’t all sometimes head in the wrong direction, we wouldn’t need church at all.

I have also found that I learn more about God by studying the Bible with others than by trying to read it by myself. I can tell you from trying to read and understand the Bible on my own: it contains some tough passages. And no matter how earnestly we begin our Bible reading, the more times we encounter difficult or confusing passages, the easier it is to walk away from the whole idea of Christianity.

I’ve learned those lessons the hard way. I gave my life to Christ as a child but began drifting away from church in my twenties. I thought that as long as I prayed, it didn’t really matter if I partied on Saturday night and missed church on Sunday because, after all, I needed my sleep to make it through the week. I didn’t think I especially needed to seek out Christian friends or mentors then, because I was doing fine on my own. Except that I wasn’t.

I was trying to fill a spiritual void in my life and was making choices about friends, relationships, and a pursuit of worldly things that left me feeling emptier and emptier. When I eventually turned back to reading the Bible, I had tons of questions but didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone for help. On the rare occasions when I went to church—the church where I grew up or other churches nearby—it seemed like a place full of strangers who thought they knew me. They were nice enough, but I felt no connection.

God kept whispering to me, though, and I eventually found my way to a small-group Bible study at my church. And for the first time in many years, I found a place where I fit perfectly. I was with other people who were trying to figure out this whole faith thing and what it meant to be a Christian.

Suddenly, I found myself wanting to go to church on Sundays, too. At Bible study, those who had heard the preacher’s sermon would talk about his insights and the aha! moments they experienced listening to him. I wanted that, too. Plus, these people were becoming my dear friends. We prayed with each other and for each other. I wanted to see them as much as possible, and Sunday morning was an easy time to get together.

In the years since that first Bible study, I’ve made more Christian friends in other studies and kept in touch with those first friends, too. We lean on each other when times are difficult, we pray for each other, and we celebrate with each other when one of us has experienced a blessing in our life: a new career, a marriage, the birth of a long-hoped-for child.

I’ve learned it’s okay to knock on my preacher’s door and let him know that I am confused or struggling and could use some godly advice. I’ve even learned people at church can be unkind and hurt my feelings if I let them. But I’ll still keep going because church is about more than me nursing hurt feelings. It’s about becoming part of a community that worships and learns about God together. And being part of a God-loving, God-seeking group is a root that I need to keep nourishing.

Blessings or Idols?

The flawed carpenter also was unable to see he was wasting his talents and was falling into temptation by using a strength God had given him. God had blessed him with abilities that gave him a livelihood and enabled him to feed and warm himself. But ironically, he used those abilities to create a small g god, too. He overlooked the real beauty and value in the cedars, cypresses, oaks, and firs, and he missed an important point about our relationship with God: we cannot out-create our Creator. Nor can we create anything worthy of worship.

Human-made objects can never be more valuable than the God-given life of the person who made them. Therefore, the idol—regardless of how beautiful or perfectly carved—is not a thing to be worshiped as a god. What the flawed carpenter did not understand was that God is outside of the confines of humans and cannot be contained, hemmed in, or minimized into being a mere object that humans create.

There is an order, value, and hierarchy in creation that cannot be broken: The Creator, followed by the creation (humans, animals, trees, etc.) and then the created (things humans