The Christians Hour

Host: This is TCH. Welcome almost to a new year of The Christians Hour. TCH is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission and GBM's mission is to broadcast the message of Jesus in their own language to unreached people groups and tribes worldwide.

We hope you had a joyous Christmas and we hope this new year brings you and your family more blessings in Christ than you can count. Have a happy new year.

This Christmas season, Ben Cachiaras, Lead Minister with Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, has been helping us look past the riff-raff of the world's version of the holidays and the Christmas tree to see the really big picture of the hope Christmas represents. In a series Ben calls Don't Miss the Forest for the Tree.

As we prepare for a new year, what better way than to begin with a new perspective, new hopes, new resolutions, kind of like a do-over. So, what's more fitting than talking about planting anew, kind of like planting a new tree.

In today's message, Planting Trees, Ben continues to look at the forest from the perspective of planting something new, a new start, so to speak. Here's Ben.

Ben Cachiaras: Merry Christmas. It's still Christmas season, so we can say that, right? So, we're doing a series called Don't Miss the Forest for the Tree. And this is the last installment. And the idea is just, you know, the Christmas tree and all the stuff that goes with that. Let's not forget the bigger picture, the forest of God's meaning, what God's really up to.

We've been looking at a tree every single week and kind of playing with it that way and having some fun with it. Did you know trees are always growing? I wonder what about you? I wonder if like a tree, you're always growing, if you're growing right now. If you're growing in the right ways, if you're growing in the ways that God is calling you to grow. We're going to think about that today.

In the Bible, trees are so often like an object lesson for us. They're used as like a metaphor for what our lives could be like in terms of growing our life with God. As you think about your life, maybe you could think about some trees. Let me, can I share some scriptures with you that make us maybe think a little better about trees? Would that be all right? Let's look at Psalm chapter 1, the first Psalm. The first few verses, one of my favorite passages. It says this.

Blessed, or happy, joy-filled, having a good life is the person who does not follow the advice of wicked people or stand around with sinners, hang out with the wrong crowd, or join in with mockers, people who defile and deny God. How many of you know from personal experience that you can really make a mess of your life when you make a bunch of stupid decisions? You hang out with the wrong crowd and you just kind of, you know, this this is saying, boy, the person who's figured that out is is is on the right track and they're blessed and they're happy who instead rather delights in the teachings of the Lord.

Like instead of like, oh, I hope God doesn't mess my fun, I begin to realize that the way that God has for my life to go is the best life. That person is truly blessed because they'll reflect on God's teachings day and night. That person's like a tree along the riverbank, a tree that bears fruit in each season. Their leaves never wither and they succeed in everything they do.

It's a flashback kind of picture of the Garden of Eden, the tree of life, remember, at the beginning. That tree didn't just sort of have fruit once a year, it was like always in bloom and always blossom. It's saying, when you get God in your life and you're like one of those trees, not up in the mountains, not out in the in the desert, where your roots are just kind of trying to grope for any little drop of water, but you're like planted by the riverbed.

And the roots go down into the ground and you can draw up the nutrients and the sustenance that you need. Boy, when you are that way, you're connected to God. How much is that like your life right now, I wonder? Always in fruitful season, always growing.

Colossians 2, verses 6 and 7, comes over the New Testament and it kind of builds on this idea of how healthy your life is in God. It says, so then just as you received Christ, Jesus as Lord, like you made a start, you you declared him as Lord, you got started, said, I'm a Christian, you're moving up. He says, but the the word here is continue. Not now, keep going to live your whole life in him. Rooted and built up in him.

You know, the most roots in a in a tree actually are about 6 to 18 inches beneath the surface, that's all. And the tree can be 80 or 90, 100 feet tall, but they just spread laterally and go every direction. Or some taproots can go several hundred feet down into the ground. There's a lot more happening beneath the surface that you can't see that makes a tree's life and health.

So that when if you have no root system, something happens and the whole thing blows over very easily. But if you've got deep roots, boy, nothing phases you. So, yeah, you got started in the faith. Awesome, you made a start. Now, continue, time to keep growing. Get the root system down and and keep going in your faith so you can be strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing even with thankfulness.

For some of us, it's time to grow. That way, you can stay more deeply rooted and connected to Christ. How you doing with all of this? Are you continuing what you started? Getting some roots down deep into the faith so that your faith doesn't kind of waver, come and go or live or die based on whatever's happening to you?

This is what Jesus seems to be getting at in John chapter 15. John 15 verse 1, Jesus says, I'm the true vine, meaning like the true stock, like the trunk of the main tree. I'm the true vine and the and the father is this gardener and all of us are in his orchard and he's working on all of us in trying to to nurture us in just the way that a master gardener would do.

And Jesus says, one of the keys is this, you remain in me and I'll remain in you. Like the picture is of a botanical or agricultural feature of a branch grafted into another branch or a branch growing out of the vine. You see that? And when you grow out of it, you're you're connected. The word they're remain in me is the word abide or to deeply connect with Christ.

To draw your nutrients, your sustenance from him, to be so deeply connected. If you break yourself off as a branch and go your own way, you'll never make it. You won't have a connected life with Christ. So, ask yourself, just where are you now? Like, are you deeply connected to Jesus? He says, I'm the I'm the vine and you're the branch and that's how you're going to bear fruit in life.

That's how you're going to have the life you really want and the life that I want for you. Verse 4 and 8 says this, no branch can bear fruit by itself. If you break the branch off, it's not going to keep bearing fruit, then work that way. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain connected to me. This is what brings God glory. This is what brings the Father glory, that you would bear fruit.

You're not here just to exist, you're here to bear fruit. Okay? And so, you're going to bear fruit when Jesus Jesus says, when you start to look like me, when you react like I would react, when you begin to act like I would. Like you love like I would. And you don't have to think about it, it just naturally comes out of you. Like you have the same DNA as the vine.

And so the stuff coming out of your life is going to look like the fruit of Jesus. In fact, Paul says, there is the fruit of the Spirit of Jesus Christ in your life. And when you see it, it's obvious. You know what it looks like? Galatians 5:22 says, when you're grafted into the vine and Jesus is like the sap that comes up out of your life and bears fruit in your life, it looks like this: love and joy and peace.

Anybody need more of that in their life? Anybody's household? Anybody's marriage? Anybody's work environment need a little more patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? The Bible never commands you to do these things. It says, if you stay connected to Jesus, this fruit just happens.

So, let's look at our lives and let's look at that list, let's think about the fruit and ask where we are today. John 15:5, Jesus says, I'm the vine, you're the branches. If you remain in me and I'm in you, you're going to be connected together and you will. You'll bear much fruit. And apart from me, he says, you can do nothing.

He says in verse 1, I'm the true vine, meaning there is such a thing as a counterfeit vine. You can take the branch of your life and try to connect it to something else to draw your nutrients and your strength, your support and all of that. And guess what, you'll always be disappointed because he's the true vine. So, when you lack meaning and purpose in life.

When you feel like you don't have any real joy, when you feel like, you know, the peace that passes understanding is absent in your life, I can tell you it's because you're a branch disconnected from the vine. In those moments, I'm not abiding in Christ. I'm looking to something else to sustain me. And you can find some false vines that you're trying to connect to and use for your sustenance and your source of strength as well.

Are you closely connected to Christ? So, these are the images that the Bible uses and many more I could share. As you think about the tree of your life. Okay? So, here's a happy thought. You're closer right now to the end of your life than you ever have been. All right, so we're at the end of the year, we're starting a new one. We're closer to the return of Jesus than we've ever been.

And so, this is a good opportunity for us to just think today. Jesus says, my father's the gardener. He's he wants to work with your life and he wants to bring out the good stuff. He wants you to stay planted, get rooted and bear fruit. That's what God wants. Well, how does that happen? I believe that God always wants us to grow and that that he's always doing two things in my life.

Now, I believe he's doing the same two things in your life. And if these things happen that God wants to happen in my life, I will grow and I'll be like a tree planted by streams of living water. Here are the two things. God is always wanting to be planting something in my life. And God is always wanting to be pruning something in my life.

Planting is the beginning of something new, the start of something, the the seed of something that will grow and flourish into something important. And pruning is the cutting away of something, the removal of something that needs to go. Can I just encourage you to be like David in Psalm 139 and just to open your spirit before the Lord?

David prayed that prayer, search me and know me, God. Just have God have a little look-see. You look and God look together at your life and let's do an audit of our thoughts, our attitudes, our practices, the things we do every day. And let's just see if God would show you two things today. One area where you might need to prune something. And then one thing that you might need to plant.

Prune and plant. Let's begin with prune. Pruning is painful. I suppose for a plant, it is for me. It's when you snip off some of the branches. Why? So that so that you can get better fruit and the tree can be healthier overall. Now, there's a difference between something being painful and being harmful, okay? It doesn't harm you. In fact, it helps you, but it is unpleasant in the moment.

So, you know, for a for a grape tree or vine or whatever you call those things, you can just let it go however it wants to go and it's going to have a whole bunch of mediocre little, you know, not so great tasting grapes. Or you can prune a bunch of those branches and then the remaining branches that are connected to the vine, wow, those are going to produce some awesome grapes.

And the same thing needs to happen in our life. John 15, verse 2. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he still prunes that one. Why? So it will be even more fruitful. So when we come to the Christian life, a lot of us tend to think that it's all about adding things. Like there's some stuff you got to start doing.

There are some things that we need to do, but I'm much more persuaded to believe and agree with Meister Eckhart from like I think the 16th century, a spiritual leader who said that the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. It's the elimination of some things that makes space for the kinds of things that God wants to happen in your life.

And sometimes the things that need to be eliminated are not bad things. It's not necessarily evil that needs to be snipped out of your life. It's the mediocre sort of time-consuming nothingness that can hinder your focus on the better thing, that can distract us and distort us and draw us away from living the kind of highest aspiration, best life that God has called you to live.

Your job is to be the most healthy, fruitful version of you you could possibly be. You're stewarding your one life. This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the real thing. The calendar page, it doesn't mean a thing, but maybe if we used it to figure out where am I supposed to prune a few things so I can be more fruitful in the time and the life and the energy that I have, it would be a good thing. Do you think so?

Pruning is important. The Bible's word sometimes is just the word repent. Repent just means to turn or to change. So, when I come to Christ away from a life of sin and my own dependence, I turn toward God away from sin. But guess what? I don't do that once. I need to repent every single day. And so do you, to turn toward God in maybe microwave or big ways, to have a change of mind and attitude and behavior.

So, pruning is about the power of no. It's about, it's not about just evil things in your life, but just those mediocre things that just fill our time and suck the energy and life out of us so that we don't have our best energy for the most important things. Good is the enemy of what? Great. So, pruning is about the power of no for the greater yes that you want to be true of your life a year from now.

To look at your life and to do an audit of your behaviors, maybe it's your habits, maybe it's your attitudes, maybe it's your relationships and ask, is it helping me grow? Is this thing that I do, maybe unconsciously without thinking every day, does it help me become the person God is calling me to be? And if you know the answer is no, or you're not sure, wow, be ruthless about this, folks.

You got one life and so much time in it. And the decisions you make today determine who you will be tomorrow. Second Corinthians 5 says that sometimes there's some things that need to be snipped, but sometimes, boy, things need to go. Second Corinthians 5:17 says this, that anyone who belongs to Christ has actually become a new person and the old life is what? Gone.

It's speaking in dramatic terms, so that a new life can begin. We want to live our lives according to our highest aspirations. And the way you do that is you make decisions and you you say no to things that aren't going to lead you to fulfill your highest aspirations. And if your highest aspirations include seven hours a day on Facebook and social media, you need higher social aspirations.

Okay? Just maybe a little pruning. I wonder about gaming. Often what I see is that it's very consuming and it's an escape that's not that healthy and it hinders relationships and it eats away at your time. I don't know, maybe some of you need to snip a little bit on the gaming thing. Or maybe the pruning is a relationship. Maybe it's a relationship that you need to prune.

It's someone that you want to be friends with or spend more time with, but in honesty, it's not that good for you. It it makes you feel negative or bad about yourself or takes you places you don't want to be or it's toxic or manipulative or or maybe for some of us, it's it's the way we eat or binging on Netflix or maybe it's a habit of being negative and critical and biting with our tongue.

And some things need to not be just pruned, but completely stopped, like nip it in the bud, like just lop it off. Colossians 3:5 through 8 says, put to death. That's pretty strong language, isn't it? Put some things to death in your life. Like what? Well, he gives us plenty of examples if you need help thinking of them. Like sinful earthly things that lurk inside of you. Have nothing to do with immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed.

These are the old part of you. Get rid of like anger and malicious behavior, slander, dirty language. Some of us have to just get rid of some things. Maybe it's a porn thing in you that just keeps rising up all these shameful and thoughts and dark darkness and you need to move from darkness to light, reach out, get some help so you can move from darkness to light and say the old is gone and the new has come.

I wonder what needs to be pruned out of your life. God is always doing two things in my life and in yours. He's always wanting to prune some things. What else does he want to do? He wants to plant some things. Okay? He wants to plant some things in your life. Do you know when the best time to plant a tree is? 20 years ago. Do you know when the next best time to plant a tree is? Today.

Okay? Today is the best, second best time to plant a tree. When we moved into our house, whatever about 10, 11 years ago now, my neighbor had this annoying habit of going out on his deck. Can you believe he had the nerve to do that? And his deck's right next to my deck and, you know, he had this country music thing going on. I learned, someone said, why don't you plant a few trees?

It'll create a little hedgerow buffer. I thought that's a great idea. So we went and bought them, but the only ones we really wanted to afford were about 4 feet tall. And so we planted them like 6 feet apart. But, do you know what? 10 years later, those things are like 30 feet tall and I have this they're all connected. It's a beautiful 30 foot fence and I don't have to listen to Akeelah breaky heart.

Don't have to see him. But I'm so glad that I planted those trees 10 years ago so I can enjoy it today. See, some of you are benefiting from trees that someone planted for you a long time ago. They took you to church, they planted spiritual seeds and you're reaping the benefit of it today. Great. But you know what, the second best time to plant a tree is if that didn't happen for you?

Right now, today. Like, today would be a great day for that. Because that's the that's the next best time to plant a tree. A tree is simply something that got planted a long time ago and it started maybe as just a seed or a tiny little sapling or just a little cute little button like that one. I wonder what trees God is asking and hoping you will plant in your life now so that at the end of the year you'll look back and say, I'm so glad I did that.

And they start small. You don't have to have some grandiose big major deal. You just you're looking for small little things. As you ask these kinds of questions. What kind of person do I want to become? What's the vision for my life that God really might have? What do I feel my calling really is? The time to plant toward that is now in little ways.

I love I love the question that Gordon McDonald asked. He was about 50 and he started saying this everywhere. He said, the question you ought to ask yourself is this, what kind of old man do I want to be? What kind of old woman do I want to be? So whatever age you are, fast forward 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years and ask, what are actually the characteristics that I want to be true about me?

What character traits? What, you know, what what what things that I can have influence over? What kinds of things do I want to be true about me? And he did that. One of the things he determined was that he wanted to be really in love with his wife and have her feel treasured and honored by him, which he knew was not true at age 50. And so, he just did one little thing.

He wrote out a list of things he was grateful for about his wife and he did it every single day. And then he read one of those to her and he prayed for her every day. That's it. Took him about 10 minutes total, less probably. Buting on how awesome she was, I don't know. But you see, it's just a short little thing. Now he's 80 years old and they have the most beautiful marriage you've ever seen.

I bet he's glad he planted that tree. Is there a tree like that that you need to plant? He said he wanted to be a man of prayer. Well, he didn't he just confessed, I'm not I'm a minister, but I don't pray at all. But he just started 5 minutes a day. 5 minutes. Says, I'm no spiritual giant, just an acorn in the ground. But it's grown into, he's 80 years old today, he's got an oak tree of prayer and a deep, rich relationship because of one small thing he did 30 years ago.

It became a habit. He didn't have to think about it. Gee, do I feel like praying today? No, he did it enough that it was what he did, it's become who he is. He wanted to be a man of the word, and so he joined a small group and committed to read through the Bible every year as long as he was alive and he's done that for 30 years.

Can you imagine how grateful he is that he made a little decision to spend a few minutes of his day in the word of God so his roots can get down there, planted in? Oh, I bet he's glad. And I can think of so many examples in my own life, but it's dawning on me. I'm the age he was when he started planting those trees and I better get with it and maybe you better too because the trees you plant today determine who you are tomorrow.

Live according to the highest aspirations you have and reverse engineer your life back to today where you pick little small habits that will lead you to be the person that God is calling you to be. Listen to this. Small disciplines, done consistently, over time, lead to big changes and results. Let me say it again. Small disciplines, done consistently, over time, lead to big changes and results.

It's true for every person. You don't have to be miraculous, you don't have to have talent, you don't have to have skill. You just have to be smart enough to understand that if you plant a tree today, you're going to have something tomorrow. But you got to plant the tree. So, I wonder what you're asked to plant. This reminds me so much of the teaching of Keystone Habits. Keystone Habits is a book that came out in 2012, it's a great book, I'd recommend it to you, but it's so applicable in our spiritual life.

You know what a keystone is, if you look at an archway where it's made of block and so forth, that wedge-shaped stone at the top of the arch holds all the other stones in place. That's a keystone. Well, there are keystone habits in life that are sort of key and central and pivotal. They're the lynchpin habits that out of which so many other things in our life either rise or fall.

They lead to to other good things as well. And this suggests also the domino principle, which we all know in life, you know, dominoes, you you stack them up and you knock one over and it knocks the next one, next one, next one, right? That's how dominoes work. Did you also know that dominoes can knock over a domino 50% larger than itself? So, you got one domino, knocks over one 50% larger, over a next one which knocks the 50% larger.

You could start with a little domino right here and right over there, you can knock over a phone pole. The principle being in life and dominoes, keystone habits affect so many things and you start small and they will grow over time. There's a compounding interest. So, just think about the domino effect that would occur when someone goes from eating fast food every day to just eating healthy, natural food.

Think of all the other areas of life that are impacted by that. This is like all this research has been done. You do that, well, you're going to lose some waistline. Okay? You're going to lose some weight. That's going to make you more prone to want to start exercising because you're going to feel better about doing that. That's going to lead to more energy. That's going to probably lead to more productivity at work, maybe a change relationship with your boss and your future career.

It's going to also change your weekly expenditures. You're going to have more money and maybe you could start saving toward things that are important to you. You're going to feel better about that. Maybe your whole vacation is changed because of the money you now have. Maybe your skin starts looking better because your diet changes and you start treating your skin better. Maybe you get a date for a change. You see what I'm saying?

One decision to to say I'm going to pick up an apple instead of a piece of pizza, just that one decision has a cascading domino effect in life. And these are what keystone habits really are about. Exercising regularly is a keystone habit. We all are called to this recognition that keystone habits affect everything about us. So, as we close, I want to I want to just share this idea of keystone habits with you.

Because I want to encourage you to think about what it might mean in your life. So, if you read the literature, go Google keystone habits, you'll find some great articles, and there's all this stuff, and they'll say, here here are the keystone habits like exercising in the morning has all these benefits that add up to all this other great stuff in your life. Or you know what, you know a big one that might surprise you, making your bed.

Making your bed every day is a keystone habit. Things like dressing well or tracking what you eat or getting eight hours of sleep are all keystone habits. You need to find the ones for you, but don't forget this. You can get all those keystone habits right. Sleep eight hours and make your bed every day and get up and exercise. But if you forget that, as the Bible says, the chief cornerstone of our life is Jesus Christ, the whole thing will still come crumbling down.

What good does it profit a man or woman to gain the whole world and lose your soul? So, can you ask yourself, what does God want to plant in my life? And then let's watch it grow.

Host: Our thanks to Ben Cachiaras this month for helping us look past the tree to the forest and all that God has for us there. Our thanks as well to Acappella ministries for their music of worship. Where we live in rural Iowa, we have a windbreak on the north edge of our property. Over the years, I've had opportunity to plant several new trees, and the ones planted 20 years ago have matured quite nicely. I came to the realization the other day though, that trees I plant today may not reach maturity before God calls me home.

You know what? That doesn't stop me from every spring planting a couple of new trees. Kind of like that in life too. Till the day we die, we're not too old to plant new spiritual trees in our own lives. How about in the new year, planting something new in your life? For a copy of today's broadcast, give us a call. 515-770-2241. That's 515-770-2241. When you call, please be prepared to leave us your name and mailing address.

You'll also find a downloadable copy of today's broadcast at thechristianshour.org. There you can also learn more about our international radio ministry. That's thechristianshour.org. We're also at onepalce.org, iTunes, and Google Play. Thanks for sharing your time with us today. Please join us again next week in the new year for the TCH broadcast, The Christians Hour.