Sermon Central
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Spiritual Redwoods
Contributed by Sermon Central on Apr 18, 2012 (message contributor)
SPIRITUAL REDWOODS
Can you imagine a redwood tree saying, "I’d just rather remain a little bush"? That would seem insane, right?
I want to put up on the screen some pictures of redwood trees. They are truly magnificent. My oldest daughter and her husband were married at the foot of redwood that is over 2000 years old. (It is possible that tree was on earth during the time of Christ!) Some of these trees can stretch 250-300 feet tall. Some of them you can drive a car through. Amazing, isn’t it? The tallest one on record is 379 feet tall. That’s as tall as a forty story building.
Now imagine if a redwood tree started out as a sapling and started to grow and for the first several years it stretched out its branches and deepened its root system -- it grew beyond the height of a little bush. Let’s say it reached it the height of 15 feet -- it has all the right conditions to continue to grow but instead of continuing it just decides, "This is far enough -- I don’t think I will continue to grow to anything beyond this 15 foot height."
Year after year after year it just sits there and chooses not to grow, even though God has provided a place where it can be nourished and fed and it can grow and stretch up and touch the sky. You would look at that and say, "God designed you grow. He’s designed you to reach higher than all the other trees in the world -- why in the world would you choose not to reach to the heights?"
He’s equipped you to be a spiritual redwood. Can’t you just see God looking down at that little tree and saying, "Boy have I got plans for you." Stunted growth is just as great of a loss as no growth. So it is with Christians. Oftentimes what happens in some people’s lives is they attend a couple of classes -- they get a little bit of knowledge and they say -- that’s enough. If you only knew what God actually has planned for you. So I’ve been chewing on this concept a little this week -- and this is one of those of thoughts that kind of stuck in mind.
(From a sermon by Tim Vamosi, Grow, Part Three, 8/18/2011)
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