Roots

This morning I was pulling weeds and had the very frustrating experience of not being able to get them up from the roots.  I was feeling pretty lazy, so I just pulled what I could.  That often meant just getting the above ground parts.  The Holy Spirit whispered a lesson to me in this.  We can't just clean up the sin on the outside.  We need to be cleaning up on the inside, pulling out the roots of our sin.  RC Sproul talks about this in The Holiness of God.  He mentions the Pharisees' need to look good on the outside, while perpetuating their misunderstanding of the Law that addresses the inside.  Moses talks about this in Deuteronomy.  He makes a covenant with the people and all those who come after them, warning them to serve the Lord only.  Verse 18 of chapter 29 says,  "so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood."  We need to watch out for those roots that poison our lives.  When we address sin in our lives, we need to let God pull out the whole thing, root and all, no matter how painful or how much of our "soil" gets disturbed.  

Where do these roots lie?  I find that they most often lie in my thoughts.  Everything that will be action starts in my mind.  To only change the action without changing the thoughts that led to the action doesn't really do us much good.  Paul warns us to go after these roots.  In Romans 12:2, he says, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."  As Beth Moore says, we need to re-wallpaper our minds with Truth.  Yes, Truth, with a capital T.  That means we need to be studying, memorizing, applying God's Word every day of our lives.  Those kinds of good roots will push out the weeds by their roots and leave us with transformed lives, transformed actions, to go along with our transformed minds.