Root System

"Do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to restrain yourself." Proverbs 23:4 NIV

I came across this scripture back in December.

I couldn't sleep one night so I got up and walked to my living room where I spend my quiet time and opened my Bible. And there it was. I just sat there feeling anxious because my business had slowed down. And I realized... that is exactly why this verse came to me. Because I had become so addicted to the cycle of pushing, building, scaling, that God had to slow me down Himself. It was like He was saying, "since you are not going to stop yourself, I am going to have to do it for you." 

I had a vision once. A clear one. But somewhere in all the doing I had lost sight of what I was even building toward... I was just building. Just executing. Just moving. And that scripture stopped me in my tracks. I sat with it for months. And the Lord has been peeling back the layers ever since. And what He has been showing me, more than anything else, is that this is about the MIND. About the root system. About the deeper things tied to the belief that if we do not work, we will not have what we need.

I had a vision one day where a woman's hair was tied to a branch of a tree, and I felt God ask me, "What Root System are you tied to?"

Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (ESV) Paul is saying that the way we walk into the will of God is by having our MINDS renewed. Meaning, we cannot walk in the new thing God is calling us to with the same old mindset we carried before. The thinking has to change first.

Yesterday He took me to Exodus 20:8-10, "Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work..." And a few chapters later in Exodus 31:17 He calls it "a permanent sign of my covenant with the people of Israel. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day he stopped working and was refreshed." And as I was reading I started thinking about WHO God was actually speaking this to. These weren't random people. These were the Israelites. People who had just come out of slavery in Egypt. People whose worth had been tied for generations to what they could produce for Pharaoh. People who had never been allowed to stop.

And God doesn't just lead them out and say "you're free now, figure it out." He commands them to STOP. One full day every week. No working. No striving. No producing. But here is what is so beautiful... before God ever commanded them to rest, He first taught them how to receive. Because when the Israelites were in the wilderness and they had no food, God dropped MANNA from heaven. Every single morning. Fresh. Enough for that day. And He told them in Exodus 16, "Each day the people are to go out and gather enough for that day." (NLT) He told them not to hoard it, not to gather it up for tomorrow, because if they did, it would rot. And the only exception was the day before the Sabbath, when they could gather double so they wouldn't have to work on the day of rest. Do you see what He was doing? He was teaching them, day by day, how to RECEIVE from Him. He was teaching them that He would provide fresh provision every single morning. He was teaching them that they could not store up enough to live independently of Him. He was teaching them dependence. And only after they had learned to receive His daily bread did He command them to rest one day a week. Resting on the seventh day was the natural fruit of trusting Him for the first six. It was them saying, "God, I trust you to provide for me even when I am not working." God wasn't being controlling. He was healing them. He was teaching them how to receive, maybe for the first time in their lives. He was renewing their MINDS.

Because the truth is, a lot of us are out of Egypt physically but we are still living in Egypt in our minds. And "Egypt" for us today isn't a place... it's a mindset. It's the belief that our worth comes from what we produce. It's the pressure to keep going when our bodies are screaming for rest. It's the fear that if we stop, we will be left behind, forgotten, replaced. It's the constant survival mode that doesn't trust anyone, not even God, to come through for us. We have become slaves to our work, slaves to our striving, slaves to the belief that if we stop, everything will fall apart. We are free and still living like we aren't.

And here is what is so wild... thousands of years later, Jesus picks up the same lesson. When He teaches us how to pray in Matthew 6, He says, "Give us this day our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11 ESV) Daily bread. Not yearly bread. Not five-years-from-now bread. Not enough-to-never-need-Him-again bread. Daily. Because the same God who dropped manna in the wilderness is the same God who still provides for us one day at a time. And just a few verses later, Jesus says, "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... So do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." (Matthew 6:26, 34 ESV) Did you catch that? Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Because we were never built to carry tomorrow's weight today. That is exactly where anxious toil is born... in trying to live tomorrow in our minds before tomorrow has even arrived.

Then I sat with Psalm 127:2, "It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep." (ESV) And that phrase "the bread of anxious toil" stopped me. I felt God was exposing my inner being. That for years I have been working from a place of anxiety, believing that if I do not work I will lack. But the truth is God says we lack no good thing. He provides for the birds of the air. He dresses the lilies of the field in more splendor than Solomon. He tells us not to worry. And yet here I was, freaking out because for almost 5 months I was making half of what I had been used to making. And this time it wasn't just me I had to worry about. I had a company. I had people depending on me. I had bills that didn't pause just because the income did. And still, God carried me through it. He is still carrying me. He is still teaching me. And what He is teaching me, more than anything, is how to RECEIVE.

Because receiving is so uncomfortable. It is hard. It pushes against every scarcity mindset that has lived in us for years. Receiving means we have to believe that as long as we do our part and show up, God will do His part too. Receiving means trusting that He is not going to drop us. Receiving means we cannot earn our way out of every hard thing. For a lot of us receiving has come with strings. Receiving has come with guilt. Receiving has come with disappointment or instability or the unspoken pressure that now we owe someone something. So somewhere along the way our hearts learned, "I'll just do it myself. It's safer that way." But God is not like the people who have hurt us. He is not handing us something only to hold it over our heads later. He gives because He loves. He gives because we are His. And He gives DAILY... fresh manna for the day we are actually living in.

And there is another layer to receiving that we have to wrestle with too. Because when you have spent your whole life earning, the moment God starts to give you something freely, you get scared of what people will think. You worry about how it looks. You wonder if people are judging you for being blessed without visibly working for it. You feel the need to defend it, explain it, justify it. You catch yourself making sure people know you got a good deal. You catch yourself explaining how someone else covered this part. You catch yourself adding the footnotes so no one will think you were reckless or wasteful or greedy. And right there, God exposes another root... the fear of people. Because here is the thing... when God provides for us, yes it is a blessing, but we have to learn to see it as PROVISION. Blessings can sound like luck. Provision is covenant. It is God being faithful to who He is, not because we earned it, but because He promised it. Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." (NLT) Notice how that verse starts... "Glory to Him." Because when God provides for us, it is not just for our comfort. It is for HIS glory. Our lives are living testimonies of what He does. So when we hide His provision, when we downplay it, when we add the footnotes so people will not judge us, we are not just protecting ourselves. We are hiding HIS glory. Galatians 1:10 says, "Obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant." (NLT) That verse is a knife. Because how often do we say we are serving God while still secretly bowing to the opinions of people who never paid our price? Receiving fully means letting God provide for us out loud, in front of people who might not understand it, without needing to explain or defend it. Because His provision is His testimony in our lives. And testimonies are meant to be SEEN.

And then today He took me even deeper in Philippians 4. Paul says, "I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little." Then he goes on, "You Philippians were the only ones who gave me financial help when I first brought you the Good News... At the moment I have all I need and more! I am generously supplied with the gifts you sent me... And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:12, 15, 18-19 NLT) And right in the middle of that he says, "Do not worry about anything; instead, pray about everything... fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right, and pure and lovely and admirable." (Philippians 4:6, 8 NLT) Did you catch that? Fix your THOUGHTS. He is talking about the mind again.

And here is what hit me about Paul... here was a man out there spreading the gospel, doing the work, giving his life to it, and yet God was providing for him THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE. He was receiving. From the Philippians. From believers along the way. And put yourself in Paul's shoes for a moment... if we were the ones out there preaching and someone came up and offered to fund us, what would our first reaction be? For a lot of us it would be to reject it. To say no thank you, we've got it. To not want to feel like we owed anyone anything. And that is exactly the part of the mind God is putting His finger on. Because if Paul, the APOSTLE Paul, knew how to receive from the body of Christ, then who are we to think we are too strong, too independent, too capable to receive what God is sending our way? Receiving is not weakness. Receiving is faith. It is letting God provide through whatever vessel He chooses, whether that is through our own hands, through someone else, or through a miracle we did not see coming. But it requires a renewed MIND.

And here is where I am wrestling right now, in real time. There are things God has been calling me to step into that require me to trust Him for provision in ways I have never had to before. And in my spirit, deep down, I KNOW He will provide. I know He will not let me fall. I know He has never once dropped me in all my years of walking with Him. But my MIND? My mind freaks out. My mind starts running the numbers. My mind starts saying "what if you run out, what if you cannot work enough, what if everything falls apart while you trusted Him." And that is the very root system He is exposing. Because if we really believed He provides, why do we freak out? Why is there still a part of us that wants to grip and control and figure it out on our own? That is the mindset shift He is asking us to make. To trust Him for daily bread. To not gather tomorrow's manna today. And it is so uncomfortable. Because comfort to us has always looked like control. And He is teaching us that real comfort is surrender.

And here is what really got me about the Sabbath... God didn't just give it to individuals. He gave it to the WHOLE community. Everyone rested. Parents, children, workers, servants, even the animals. Because God was not just delivering individuals out of Egypt. He was renewing the mind of a whole people. He was building an entirely different kind of society. One that said, "You are more than what you produce." And He took it so seriously that anyone who refused to honor the Sabbath was put out of the camp. Not because God was harsh, but because one person clinging to the OLD mindset could pull the whole community back. One person normalizing the old mindset could undo the renewing God was trying to do in everyone else.

Which made me think of Proverbs 13:20, "Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble." (NLT) Because the people we surround ourselves with shape our minds. They shape our peace. They shape our rest. They shape what we believe is possible. And there is something else too. The people around us have the power to speak life or death over the dream God placed in us. If someone cannot see what God showed us, they will discourage us from it. They will tell us to be realistic. They will speak fear into the very place God was trying to grow faith. And words have weight. Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue can bring death or life..." (NLT) Whose words are we letting take root in our minds?

That is also why, throughout the entire Bible, you see God moving people. Abraham had to leave his country and his family to walk into what God promised him. Moses had to leave Egypt twice, once to wander in the wilderness and again to lead a whole people out. Ruth had to leave her home and her people to follow Naomi into the land of Israel where God was setting up her redemption. The disciples had to leave their nets, their families, their entire lives, to follow Jesus. There is barely a story in scripture where God's people are not on the move. Because sometimes we cannot step into the new thing while we are still planted in the old place, around the old people, with the old voices speaking the old patterns over our lives.

And speaking of looking back... God says in Isaiah 43:18-19, "But forget all that... it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?" (NLT) Do you see what He is saying? Forget the former things. He is doing a new thing. But how often do we miss it because our minds are still living in the former things? Think about Lot's wife. God was pulling her family out of Sodom into something completely new, and one look back turned her into a pillar of salt. One look back at the OLD locked her in place. She could not move forward because her mind was still behind her. Think about 1 Samuel 16:1, when God says to Samuel, "You have mourned long enough for Saul... fill your horn with oil and be on your way." Samuel was grieving the old. God interrupted that grief and pointed him toward David, toward the new. Because mourning the old kingdom too long would have kept Samuel from anointing the new king.

That is the same thing God is doing with us. He is calling us forward, but we have to be willing to renew our minds. We have to stop looking back. We have to stop carrying Egypt with us. We have to stop performing for the audience we left behind. We have to learn to trust Him for daily bread. And we have to let Him pull us into the new thing even when the new thing requires us to trust, to rest, to receive, to surround ourselves with different people, to think differently than we have ever thought before.

I'm a work in progress. There are still days I have to fight the urge to prove I am worth something by what I produce. There are still moments when receiving feels harder than working. There are still days I catch myself looking back. But I am learning that rest isn't laziness. Rest is trust. Rest is me saying with my body what my mouth keeps saying about God, that He is faithful, that He provides, that He is in control. Rest is where I remember what He actually called me to build. He is worth it. Don't give up. Plug into God. And let Him renew your mind so He can lead you out of the Egypt that is still living inside of you.

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9

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