There are great and meaningful lessons about the successful living of your own life all around you everyday,…if,…you will just slow down your pace of living, become cognizant of your surroundings, and then stop, look, and listen to the sights, sounds, and examples that are bombarding you from every conceivable direction each and every day.

God is desperately trying to get your full and undivided attention as to what He wants you to learn and do.

God works even on the hard-heads, the difficult people, who either think that they already know everything or that sadly believe they are above the requirement of growing oneself daily to a higher level of living.

Events, circumstances, people, places, and things that come into one’s life seemingly unplanned, and even some unwanted, are all allowed to happen for a greater spiritual reason or purpose to get us all to change our thinking, which in turn will change our speaking, which in turn will change our actions and efforts, which in turn will change the results we achieve.  

Most folks simply do not know or understand that God gave all of His Creation the ability to change everything in their lives through the ability He gave them to change the way they think and speak.

You see, dear ones, God loves you and has a great and glorious plan for the living of your own life.  He created you inside your own mother’s womb, and He knows you better and more intimately than does anyone else in, on, and under heavenly places.

The spiritual always precedes the physical.  The unseen always precedes the seen.  The spiritual always demands the exercise of “faith” in order to make it visible and understandable.  “Faith” is the substance of things hoped for,….the belief in things yet unseen. “Faith” is the strength, knowledge, and understanding that is required to embolden a “Believer” to act even when he or she lacks sufficient strength and courage to begin a required task.

God made the whole world totally symmetrical, totally balanced, and completely synchronized so that all of the predesigned moving parts could and would fit and work together to produce that which was and is necessary to complete the great and glorious plan that He (God Almighty) designed as the real purpose and plan for your own life.

Your part of that plan must be established first.  The first step in His progression of getting you to perform in the establishment and continued operation of His Will for your life…is you.

There is an old saying I learned over 40 years ago.  It was appropriate then and remains so today.  The saying goes like this: “God cannot steer a parked car.”

As a factual side-note I might add, that unless and until a person surrenders himself or herself to full submission to God Almighty and His laws of the Universe, then nothing of any real, lasting, and significant benefit is going to be created or unleashed within the confines of heaven and earth.  God makes man great,….not the other way around!

As part of the overall balance of the system of our created universe, you would be wise to understand that:

   1.  Everything on earth is either growing or it is dying.
   2.  Everything in life is either becoming greater and more
        powerful or it is become lesser and weaker.

All of life as we know it is dynamic.  It never just stands still.  Therefore Change is always inevitable.  Everything that exists, that is alive, always is and always will be changing.  It is just the way that God designed life, as we know it, to operate.

Anchors, as used by men throughout the living of their lives, were a necessary thing to insure stability and connection between the spiritual and the physical perspectives of all life.  

God gave all of His Creation many great and glorious examples to see the “connecting links” between the two major aspects of life as we know them.

In my personal opinion, the best example of this predesigned connection is the root system of a tree.

A story please…………..

Growing Roots

He was an elderly gentleman living just across the street from us when I was growing up in Boise, Idaho, known as the City of Trees, immediately after World War II ended.  His name was Doctor White.  He was a kind and loving old man who always had time for everyone and was well loved throughout the neighborhood….especially by his adoring wife.  He really didn’t look like any other doctor I’d ever known.  Every time I saw him, he was out working in his picture perfect white picket-fenced yard.  Whenever he was doing yard-work, doing manicured lawn and flower bed maintenance, he was always dressed the same.  He always wore faded denim overalls and a straw hat which was made with a front brim made of blue-green plastic.  The good doctor always smiled a lot—with a smile that matched his hat—old and crinkly, and well-worn.  Dr. White never once yelled or fussed at any of us kids who lived near and around his house.  He was always kind and gentle towards all human beings.  He was always a lot nicer to all people than most circumstances warranted.

When Dr. White was not at the hospital, in his office, or actively involved in saving other people’s lives through random acts of kindness, he was planting trees.  He owned a house on a corner lot about twice the size of a regular home lot.  His home and lot were always perfectly presented to all passers-by.  His home was always a pristine example of love and care for all of nature,…all of God’s beauty and bounty.  It certainly seemed to me that it was indeed Dr. White’s personal goal in life to plant and establish a real “forest” that would surround his own home.  The good doctor had some most interesting and wise theories concerning plant life and its associated husbandry.  He was always relating and comparing the growing of trees to the growing of human beings.

Anyone can learn a great deal about people from planting and growing trees.  Everything in our own environment teaches us valuable lessons about our own lives.

Dr. White was definitely from the “old school” manner and way of life.  He came directly from the “no pain, no gain” school of horticulture.  One such lesson learned from trees that can be directly related to the human race was that Dr. White never watered his newly planted trees.  A practice that actually flew in the face of all conventional wisdom about and around the growing of new trees.  Once I asked him why he did not water newly planted trees.  He replied, “watering plants spoiled them, and that if you watered them, each successive tree generation will grow weaker and weaker.  So, you have to make things rough for the new plants and weed out the weak “weenie” trees early on in the growth cycle.  Have you ever heard of the “survival of the fittest?”

Dr. White went on to say how watering trees made for shallow root systems, and about how trees that weren’t watered had to grow long and deep roots in search of life sustaining moisture.  I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured and required for longevity of life.

So he never watered his trees.  He would plant an oak or elm tree and, instead of watering it every morning, he’d beat it with a rolled up newspaper.  Smack! Slap! Pow!  I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

Several years later, Dr. White passed away and went to Glory.  To this very day some seven decades later, I can still walk or drive by my family’s old home as well as Dr. and Mrs. White’s old homesite and look at the trees that I had carefully watched the good doctor plant so many years before.

Oh how I hope you all have come to appreciate and love the place, manner and way that you were brought into this world and where you grew and matured into the person that you have become.  History, and particularly family history, is so critically important for you to know and preserve.

Roots add great value to your life.

Those little saplings of years gone by are rock solid “pillars of granite” that stand strong and tall, big and robust today, well anchored into the banks and flood-plain of the Boise River in Southwestern Idaho.  I am totally confident that those very trees, some seventy years older than when they were originally planted by the caring doctor, wake up every morning and beat their chests and drink their coffee strong and black.

Since my childhood youth, I personally have planted several different types and kinds of trees and other type plants.  I distinctly remember planting a couple of trees several years ago.  I carried buckets of water to them for a solid four month period of time, known as summer.  I fertilized and sprayed them and even prayed over them.  I did all that modern plant husbandry dictated I do to raise a robust tree.  After two years of benevolent coddling, these “smarter-than-I-am” trees now expect to be waited on hand and foot.  Whenever a cold north wind blows in, they tremble and chatter their branches, confirming to the world that they are indeed “Sissy” trees.

It is a funny thing about those special trees of Dr. White’s.  Adversity and depravation seemed to benefit them in ways that comfort and ease never could. 

Later on, after I married and began my family, every night before I went to bed, I would go into my children’s bedroom and check on them.  I would stand over them and carefully watch their little bodies, the rising and falling of life within them.  I would always pray for them and ask God to protect and provide for them.  Mostly I prayed that their lives would be easy and comfort-filled.  I would say things like, “Lord, spare them from hardship.”  But later on as I grew and matured and experienced more of this battle-filled life of Christian maturity, I soon changed my prayers for my children.

Today my prayers have more to do with the inevitability of cold winds that strike us hard and fast at our very own core.  You see, I know that My children are going to encounter and come to know personal hardship in almost every area of their lives.  They are going to struggle and battle against the forces and principalities of darkness.  They are going to encounter suffering, misery, pain, and hardship.  It is all just part of a way of life that God designed for believers to face, to experience.  It is just they way that believers grow up to their own maturity.  It is all part of God’s plan for their lives.  Don’t try to prevent it.  Allow it to happen.  The strength and character that they gain from such involvements will become some of their greatest strengths and godly values as time marches on and the years go by.  Listen, don’t be naive.  There is always a cold north wind blowing somewhere.  

Permit me to encourage you to change your evening prayers covering your children…because life is tough,…whether we want it to be or not.  Rather, I would suggest that you begin to pray that your children’s personal “roots” grow strong and deep, so that they can draw strength from the hidden sources of the eternal God, the One who created them.

May I say to you, too many times we pray for ease, but that is a prayer that is seldom answered or met.  What we need to do is pray for strong and lasting roots that reach deep into the Eternal Realm, so that when the rains of life fall and the cold winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder!

To be truly successful, you need to develop a strong “Spiritual Root” to and for your personal life.  This “Spiritual Root” will be the source of nourishment and the support system to the development of your true and real purpose to living.

Peace And Love to All of You…………………..Poppa  Bear