Japanese Garden – Fort Worth
This morning I woke up with a view of tree branches swaying gently, directly overhead. The first light of the sun illuminated some branches at the tops of the trees, while the lower ones were still shaded. Morning breaks loudly around here as a flock of crows and a young litter of squirrels compete to be heard above one another. About a month ago I set up our tent in the backyard as a sanity preservation technique. The intense heat of our summer began to break, and my craving for being outdoors won out over my inability to go on a camping trip.
We are so blessed to live in a neighborhood of huge, old pecan trees. Our yard is one of the best camping sites in our whole region, complete with a nature trail out the back gate, and a river to fish in. (Someday, I’m actually going fishing!) But these old trees come with their hazards too. As I looked up this morning, I saw a few more dead branches without leaves, and thought of the folly of sleeping under them.
Recently my youngest daughter and I were enjoying a delightfully breezy afternoon in our lawn chairs when one of these branches came crashing down in front of us. This one however still had all its leaves. We would have never noticed they had dried up and died because they were still green and blended in with the rest of the tree. I assume it must have been damaged in the last windstorm and its connection to the tree compromised. After the shock, we observed it fell from a very high place in the tree and would have caused a substantial injury if we had been standing under it.
While enjoying my backyard paradise this morning, praying for all the tree limbs to stay put, I realized I have been shocked and saddened by the spiritual equivalent of these crashing branches several times. People I have looked up to.. (the higher I esteem them, the harder the shock), and trusted, have let me down. Maybe I wasn’t looking closely enough, but I thought they were really connected to the Tree. The leaves were green! They had an amazing testimony, or a thriving ministry. Then one day – crash! I feel let down, betrayed, angry, and saddened by the ensuing injury caused to those around them. As I observed a few years ago in a post called Ending Well, this is not at all uncommon. Many begin with life, but then move out of His Life and into the flesh, living on yesterday’s revelation and move of God. They sound genuine because they are talking of real things that happened in the past. But they are no longer being moved or directed by the Spirit.
Why am I shocked? Why do I put my faith in a human or an organization? Why do I think I’m immune to the same fate?
Christianity is full of teaching on how to make our life better with Jesus. But the Royal Law…(love God with your whole heart, mind, and soul, and one another as Jesus has loved us)… doesn’t say anything about following Jesus to make ourselves happy. I won’t say He won’t bring us peace, joy, and contentment, but there is a greater purpose to our lives when taking on His name. We are created as branches to beautify the Tree, and to bear fruit. When we crash and fall, we not only mar the image of the Tree that the world sees, but can potentially cause spiritual and emotional injury to those around us.
Some have entered seasons of severe doubt through these downfalls of prominent Christians. People wonder, “If they were false, maybe the Tree isn’t real either?” We can fault their misplaced faith, yet at the same time, Jesus spoke very clearly about religious hypocrisy. The Church loves to make excuses for it, and demand that the world accept them in this state. But I believe our Bridegroom desires us to be real, so we may be healed. (See the message to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3). Hypocrisy comes not when we sin, but when we pretend we don’t. And we have a horrible blind-side when it comes to our own heinous sins, while we point our fingers at how badly our culture has spiraled into depravity.
Are the green leaves on our branch dead – just having the appearance of what we think a Christian is supposed to look like? Or are we rooted and grounded in our Tree, to have His mind and Spirit in us – to be one with Him? In all our self-serving religion, and all our busyness, and all our pride, it is so easy to forget for what purpose we have been redeemed. Except for His grace, I am also a dead branch pretending to be hanging on the Tree of Life. It is all of faith in Him, or it is nothing, and I am nothing.
The Good News is that God can do what we can’t do to a natural tree. He can graft a dead branch back in and bring it to life. He can heal, restore, and bring us all to forgiveness of ourselves and each other. I pray to look only to the Tree for my strength and inspiration!
“‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.” Revelation 3:2,3
8thDay4Life 
So much to say…as soon as I found this site (from Joyfully Growing in Grace) I have been reading all of your posts and past history. Thank you for your online ministry here, and for encouraging others to seek a direct, trusting love relationship with God. I have a very dear friend who is being manipulated and controlled by an HRM leader, and I am praying very hard that his eyes will be opened to what is happening. But I was wondering – what was the “wake up” point for you? What helped you to be able to see and break free?
Hi Christine!
I am so sorry to hear about your friend! It is so hard to see other people being carried off. One of the reasons I felt compelled to write about our experience was that none of our family and friends were any too concerned about our direction. We knew how to spin it right, but yet they didn’t discern anything too off about our beliefs. Even though we knew how to make it sound right, the fruit and practice of it wasn’t right, and this is what did wake me up, a little at a time. My husband and I got more and more frustrated with various attitudes we encountered, and tried so hard to joyfully practice the Torah as a choice, without the burden of obligation or legalism. We lost that battle, and the ensuing spiritual agony resulted. I felt like I was in a dry desert with no water, and I kept looking for the fruit of love and compassion for the lost, or for the persecuted church, and couldn’t find either one. I kept reading stories of spiritual giants like Corrie ten Boom and wondered, “How could she be so close to God and we so far away, for all of our diligent obedience?” Because the goal of all our work was to “draw near” to God. To know Him more fully. As I was starving to study the NT scriptures again, I just began to read through Matthew and I saw Jesus, and our focus didn’t seem to have anything in common with Jesus and where His heart was. I had layer after layer peel off as I read, then shortly after that, my husband had a miraculous “aha” moment in Galatians. (This is a condensed version of our long story! lol.) He had been blinded to the New Covenant until that moment. And I had been blinded to the true nature of our deception (while trying to hold on to the gospel too). Within a couple weeks we had dismantled nearly the entire foundation we thought we had, and put Christ back in that place. When we told our group, I am sure it was to them very much like the dead branch falling in my post. They were shocked and hurt, and I’m sure they couldn’t understand how we could just wake up one day and not be Hebrew Roots anymore. It was 100% the Holy Spirit from start to finish, so I would say PRAY for that for your friend. No one could have reasoned us out. We had all the answers. No answer that lies outside of Jesus will bring lasting peace. I pray your friend will sense that void sooner than later.
How beautiful. My spirit weeps but with joy as I read your response to Christine but also weeps with her in sadness as I too have loved ones also similarly deceived, thank you, it really is God who delivers, from start to finish. We must never cease to pray, and I will in addition now pray for Christine’s friend and ask for your prayers for mine also and all those deceived by this false ‘gospel’ May our awesome loving Lord continue to bless you.
Yes, many prayers. God can shine thru. Light is greater than the darkness, which in essence, is nothing.
Thank you, for your words and prayers. The one silver lining of all of this is that my own personal walk and relationship with God has been renewed and strengthened. I read the Bible daily with a renewed fervor and desire to seek God’s wisdom in my own life, and I can see and feel positive, tangible signs that He is at work within me. I read Galatians yesterday (wow!), and everything else I read every day tells me that you are right – Jesus is the only way. I think you’re so right that we have to open our eyes and see when we’re ready. No amount of convincing from others can work, and his family doesn’t really seem to see how “off” this group is, or how much they manipulate and control their followers. I am praying without ceasing for the Holy Spirit to work in his life and that he seek real truth, real light, a real and personal relationship with God himself. Thank you, too, Gracie, for your prayers.