Old Roots New Fruits (Holly Furtick)

We've been talking about how last weekend many of us participated in our year end offering, and I just love watching everybody come and give cheerfully here at Valentine, and I know that there were people giving online and at all of our locations, and it's just it's one of my favorite things to watch because giving is not like buying something. It's not like spending money on something and

you're never going to see that money again. Giving is investing in the work of God, and it's sowing a seed and believing that you're going to see a harvest for the future. And for a church this size, that means that we have a lot of seed in the ground going into next year. Right so the offering is not over. Like you have heard Pastor Steven say and Chad said, I just want to say it to you too. You can still give. You go to Elevation Church dot

org click give and God's gonna bless you. And make sure that you're making plans to join us for Christmas too. It's an amazing opportunity to bring someone. I feel like everybody's been saying this on stage. I just want to say it too. Don't miss it. Bring your neighbors, bring your people you work with. It's always a fun, worshipful experience to be here with your family. And so make sure you find out the times that your campuses are going to have your Christmas experience and when we're going

to be online and then here at Valentine's. So I know our pastor just prayed, and sometimes I feel like when he prays like that, I could just go home because there's nothing like having somebody pray over you like that. And I know that there are a million things on your mind right now that you have a running list of things that you need to get done. Maybe you're stressing about how you're going to pay for Christmas. Maybe

you're stressing about you know, relationships, certain family members. Maybe you still have gifts to buy and wrap and delivering food to prepare. And so every time that I preach, I just like to give people a moment to just acknowledge that all of those things are on our minds and just give you a moment to let them go. And it just for the next few moments that we have together. We just need to give God the space that he deserves in the midst of all of the

chaos and all of the busyness of this season. I just want us to remember that Emmanuel's here with us in this place wherever you're watching from. God is here and he wants to speak to us today. So just open up your hands like this. I know we already prayed. We're gonna pray one more time, and I want you to repeat after me. Lord, I'm ready to receive from you now. I want to hear what you have to

say to me today in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, before you take your seat, I want to read our scripture. It's not a long one. It comes from Isaiah chapter eleven, verses one and two. It says this a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord, and he will

delight in the fear of the Lord. Today I want to talk to you about old roots, new fruits. Give somebody a hug and take your seat. So I have one silly Christmas obsession. I'm not actually a huge Christmas girl. Sorry if that offends you. I don't care very much for Christmas music. In fact, I can really I really only like instrumental Christmas music. Like I'm not a big Christmas music fan. Also, I'm sorry. Like I said, I've

never done elf on the shelf with my kids. I know some people really love it and it's great, just not me. We also have never gone to a tree farm as a family to cut down our Christmas tree. Just not into it. But there is one Christmas tradition that I love. And if you know me, you know that I love Christmas ornaments. Not these kind of Christmas ornaments.

These these are filler ornaments. Now understand. I have a tree, a big tree in my living room, and I call it the fancy tree, and it has all of the beautiful, glittering, coordinating ornaments and you know, the sticks and all those things in our living room. But in our family room we have the family tree, and this tree has colored lights on it and it is basically a documentation of the history of the Furdick family. So every year I pick out an ornament for every person in our family.

Sometimes they get more than one ornament. It just it's things that represents something that they love or they accomplished in that year. So like I brought a few to show you. So this was Elijah's ornament last year because he got his driver's license. Okay, and then let's see, uh, where's grams? Here's this one's grams from twenty eighteen when he won the North Carolina State wrestling championship eighty five pounds. Okay. This was Abby's ornament the year that she turned two.

She loved the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and she carried this ornament around the house the whole Christmas season. She broke the ear off. I couldn't get it to it glue back on, so it's had tape on it since twenty thirteen. That was Abby's This year, Steven he got, but he got this because he wanted Grammy this year. Hello, we couldn't let that go undocumented. On our Christmas tree. Even Bo has an ornament with this little paw print. Okay.

I also document the places that we go. So if I love gift shops when we travel, I am a I am a gift shop tourist. And so you know, here's here's our ornament from the Holy Land. Here's our ornament from Steven and I went to Big Sur for our twenty year anniversary. I always write everything on the ornament to document the year and everything hold on. Here's one from our family vacation Sullivan's Island. You know, all

of these things are the history of our family. And this year, when we were decorating the house, I could not find the travel ornaments anywhere, and I checked every tub, I checked in the attic for maybe like a missing box that didn't get brought down. I checked all those

places multiple times. And I'm not I'm not proud of this, and I can't believe that I'm actually telling you this, But I cried because I had convinced myself that all of our family memories had accidentally been thrown in the trash when we were putting Christmas away last year, and that we were basically gonna forget all the places that we have been and all the things that we've done. And Steven said exactly what he was supposed to say.

He was like, Holly, I'm sure they'll turn up. And I was like, no, they're not going to turn up. I've looked everywhere the Furdick family history has been erased. We found them, of course, about an hour later, and they're all safely on our tree. Our history is preserved. That was my Christmas miracle. I know you're relief for me. Okay. So in this passage, we don't have a beautiful tree

with shiny ornaments. We have a stump. And Isaiah is prophesying to the nation of Israel, and he's telling them that even though they're in captivity and their nation has been reduced to almost nothing, he's saying, a messiah is still to come. And when this Messiah comes, he's gonna rule with wisdom and understanding. He's gonna be the ultimate perfect king. When he judges, it's gonna be the perfect judgment. And when he comes He's still gonna come through the

line of David. He says, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his roots. The branch will bear fruit. And some scholars believe that Isaiah used Jesse, David's father, to symbolized even further how there would be a complete absence of royal dignity in the House of Israel. By the time that the Messiah comes a stump from the very thing that looks absolutely dead, there's a chance of life. The Messiah, the perfect King, is gonna come.

So I was thinking, if Isaiah were here today and he were to visit my home and he were to look at my Christmas tree, I think he would ask me, why why the tree go with me here? Because the tree is beautiful and this tree is real. But actually this tree is dead, like dead dead, because it has been cut off from its roots. But boy, can we

make a dead tree look good? You know, like one trip to hobby lobby and fifty percent off, and we've got ornaments, and we've got lights, and we've got a little basket thing around the bottom and a tree skirt, and we put presents under it and it's beautiful. But it is dead, dead, dead, And in about a month, this tree's gonna turn brown and it's gonna fall apart, no chance of life because it's been cut off from its roots. If Isaiah was picking a symbol for Christmas,

I think he would pick a stump. Guess what, I've got one that they're gonna bring out. Okay, so they're bringing out my stump. Here comes shout out to Preston Wilson from our Gaston campus and also our production team here at Valentine. I have no idea how they got this thing in here. This is a real tree stump, and I think I'm gonna have you guys here take my table and I'm gonna use this because I want this to be front and center today. Oh here, take

the basket too. I'm done with that, thank you. Okay, stump, don't look at them. It looks dead for all intents and purposes. It is dead because everything that represents life, branches, leaves, blossoms, fruits have been cut off and thrown away. But there is life beneath the stump, because there's roots that are alive under the surface. When person said it this way, he said, the spirit of Christmas is sentimental like my ornaments. But the spirit of Christ is supernatural life where it

seems impossible. And it was about six hundred years from the time of this prophecy to the time of its fulfillment. And by the time that the Messiah comes, the people of God as a nation look almost extinct. There is just a remnant of people who still believe that the Messiah is gonna come. And when Jesus enters the scene, not as this glorious, shining king, he comes as a baby whose birth is so overlooked that he's born in

a barn, a tender shoot. Isaiah says, this is Christmas, not this Christmas is about having hope for the places where you feel stumped, your mistakes, your disappointments, the areas where you feel like you're failing. Sure, we all have wonderful accomplishments that deserve to be celebrated. And I love reading people's Christmas cards and their messages on social media when they post a picture of, you know, their family Christmas picture. I love how people give updates. I guess

I'm nosy. I like to know what's going on in people's lives, so I like when they talk about this trip that they went on, or they moved to a new neighborhood, or they welcomed a new grandchild and into their family, they got a new puppy. All these things are wonderful and we can celebrate them. But just know that nobody talks about their stumps in their Christmas card, and you shouldn't. We don't want you to. But the message of Christmas is not about the shiny areas of

your life. The message of Christmas is that there's hope for your stumps. How is this possible? I'm gonna give you a quick science lesson. Thank you YouTube and this little known channel that I found called Granny's Garden. Okay, So Granny had a tree in her garden and the tree was not doing well. Most of the branches were dead and the dead branches were stealing nutrients from the few remaining live ones. But the tree itself was in an important location in her garden and its root system

was keeping a hill from eroding in her yard. So she needed to save the tree. But in order to save the tree, she had to cut it down and grow it back from the roots. So she cuts down the tree, knowing that what's gonna happen is that the root system is going to spring into action. Because as soon as the root system realizes no leaves, no branches,

that means no growth. So it's gonna draw from all the nutrients down underneath the ground, from the farthest tips of the roots, and it's gonna push up a tiny baby shoot. I have an image of what this looks like. This is our Christmas tree. When the thing that has been tripping you up, the thing that you thought was dead, that actual thing brings forth new life, baby, baby life. But first we have to identify the stump. So we had some dead trees along our driveway and we had

to have them cut down. And when the guy came out, you know, he gave me some price options and he said, you know, I can cut the tree down for X amount of money, and it's really expensive to have a tree cut down. It's like, I don't want to spend my money on that, okay, And then he said, well, but if you want me to remove the stump, it's gonna cost even more. So of course I was like, well, who cares about stump? I chose the cheaper option to

leave the stumps. The problem became that people didn't know that there were stumps along our driveway and they would accidentally run over them. Buck is smiling because I'm pretty sure it was him that one time I came home and he was having to have his car towed. Sorry about that, Buck. An unidentified stump will cause you problems, Okay, you will. It will trip you up. So we've got to go ahead and just acknowledge the stumps in our lives. There's there's big ones, there's little ones, but we all

have stumps. You might have a stump because of something that was not your fault, something that was done to you, an accident that happened, maybe an attack from the enemy to keep you from living out the calling that God has placed on your life. You might have a stump in your life that was completely of your own doing. You know. Right now, I have two teenage boys, and I was talking to a friend the other day about the difference in the differences between teenagers and toddlers, because

there's actually quite a lot of similarities. They sleep at all the wrong times, they constantly want a snack, and you're always trying to keep them from hurting themselves. The difference is the stakes are so much higher with teenagers. Let me illustrate this. I have a picture. These are my toddler boys, and you can see my face in the background, like that was the face that I constantly had because these little boys were constantly climbing and jumping

and in danger of getting hurt. And I right there, I'm just envisioning us going to the er to get stitches. This is what I have. Now I've got another picture for you. Okay, Elijah has his driver's license, Graham has his drivers permit. When they were toddlers, I was worried about stitches. Now stitches are the least of my worries. People's lives are at stake, and I tell my boys you can take the picture now. I tell them all

the time. I'm saying, you have to think, you have to be aware of the decision that you're making, because one dumb decision in a moment can alter the course of your life. I'm just trying to keep them from getting some stumps too soon in their life. And you might have a stump in your life today that represents a bad decision that you made in a moment and you don't know how you're ever going to recover from it.

But there's a third kind of stump, and it's perhaps the hardest one to understand, because it's when God creates a stump in your life. John fifteen. Jesus is famously talking to the disciples about the vine and the branches, and he tells the disciples that the vine dresser he's talking about God cuts off every branch that does not bear fruit, the same thing that Granny was telling us,

the diseased branches, the dead branches, the suckers. Suckers, that's an actual gardening term, and it means that the non fruit bearing branches are sucking the nutrients from the fruit bearing branches. And I know you didn't come to church today for a science lesson, but Jesus said it. He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit. So I came to tell you today, perhaps that relationship

was a sucker keeping you from bearing fruit. The dream that you had in actuality would be a nightmare, and God was keeping it from you so that you could experience the fullness of life in Christ. So we've got to come to terms with our stumps today. And it doesn't matter how they're there. It doesn't matter if the devil couset, or if you cause it, or if God caused it. It's there and it's painful, and it's disappointing,

and it's tripping you up. The good news that I have for you today is out of the stump will come a shoot. This prophecy. It's about Jesus the Messiah. But it is a truth from God's word for you today. One version of Isaiah eleven one says, a new branch bearing fruit from an old root. I want you to know today that a new fruit is going to come from an old root. There's time where you plant seeds and you do a new but today new fruit from an old root. Jeremiah seventeen seven. This is one of

the best verses in the whole Bible. In my opinion. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes, Its leaves always green, It has no worries in a year of drought, and it never fails to bear fruit. If you are a believer in Christ, today, I want you to know that your roots are there. You just have to tap them. When the tree gets cut down, what

are the roots do? They spring into action. It's like quadruple time the work that it normally would do, and it draws up everything it can. But you know what I do a lot of times with my stumps, I just pretend like they're not there. I numb whatever it

is you do to numb. You know, we watch TV, or you avoid, you chop, you scroll, And honestly, scrolling is the worst thing that you can do because when you're scrolling, you're looking at everyone else's beautiful life and you start to think like, well, I'm the only one that has stumps. But of course they're not gonna put their stumps on their Facebook page. And if they do, this is really bad. I mean, we don't. Please don't put your stumps. But don't compare your stump to someone

else's tree. Don't ignore it, don't compare it, just acknowledge it. And I've got roots. You're like a tree planted by the water. You might have been cut down in an area of your life, but you're rooted. There's life that's still there. So I put together a list of ways for you to tap your roots. And none of these things are gonna blow your mind. They're all sort of common sense. Sometimes you just need a friend to come alongside you and s hey, here's you can do this.

Remember how you do this? And that's my goal today. So I'm gonna give you a couple of ways to tap your roots. They all start with the letter are are you ready? First one is remember? Can you remember the past faithfulness of God in your life? I feel like I say this every time I get on this stage, but maybe like, see me as your mom today. You know how your mom tells you the same things over and over again, But this time you're gonna listen. Okay,

this is so important. Sometimes we have to recall the goodness when you when you're staring at the stump, recall the goodness of God in your life? Can you remember a time that He provided for you? Lamentations three says that this I will recall to my mind, and therefore I have hope. It is because of the Lord's great mercy that we are not consumed. His compassions fail not they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness God,

He's been faithful to you. Focus on his faithfulness. The next one is rejoice one of my all time favorite pastor Stephen quotes in twenty years of hearing him preach, is when he said, my joy is my job. I'm not waiting on someone to make me smile. I'm not waiting on something good to happen to me. I will rejoice right now. I will take time to be grateful, not only to look back, but to look around and to see the goodness of God right now in my life.

I can focus on my stuff, what I don't have, or I can choose to rejoice and what I do have. God has been good to you. To put a smile on your face and sing a song and lift up your hands because He's been good to you. Rejoice in the Lord. And then there's requests. My dad taught me when I was a little girl that God's phone number was Jeremiah thirty three to three. It says, this call unto me, and I will answer you and show you

great and mighty things that you do not know. I just want to say it might be time for you to stop talking to people about your problems and present your requests to God. He is the one who will show you the things you do not know. Cry out to him. Tell him what's in your heart. Ask him to show you the way forward. The Bible says, knock, and I will answer. Make your request to God. This next one is kind of counterinto it. Okay, it's a

little bit harder to hear. Regard. Philippians too, tells us that if we are to be like Jesus, we are to not merely look out for ourselves, but also for the interests of others. Paul says, we must regard others as more important than ourselves. I know your situation is difficult. I know your situation is painful, but I guarantee you that there is someone else close to you who also

has a great need. You don't need to compare your stumps, but sometimes the best thing that you can do when you feel like something has been cut off from your life is to do something for someone else. It doesn't make sense, but just trust me, if you will stop staring at your stump and look around. Christmas is all about perspective. It's about learning to see and value what God sees. A baby in a barn, shepherds in a field. Can you regard someone else as more important than yourself?

Get your mind off of yourself. Then there's the root of routine. Now last week, if you were not here last week, you've got to go back and listen. I know I say that every time I preach too, but that's because if you're missing church, I feel so bad for you. So Stephen talked about getting his haircut. Does anybody remember that? It was a really small part of

his message, but it spoke very deeply to me. And he said that when someone asked him one time, what do you do when you don't feel like preaching, and he said, well, I get my hair cut. And he talked about just doing the next thing that he does, the thing that he does every week before he preaches. And he told us that we have to learn to send a signal to ourselves that it's time to do the work that we've been called to do. No matter how you feel, no matter what's been taken from you,

keep your routine. Get up, get going, exercise, take a walk, take your kids to school, show up for work on time. Do the things of life. Have your song. A guy came up to us at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago, and he said to Stephen, with tears in his eyes, he said, I just want to thank you for the song. And I was thinking he was gonna, you know, do some like like you know, come to the altar, or like a you know, a slow song. He said, I just have to thank you for the

song Rattle. He said, I've listened to that song at least every day for the past year, and that song has saved my life. Find your song and put it on repeat, because it's gonna tell your body, it's gonna tell your mind. It's gonna tell the devil that you're getting to work now, that you're not gonna be stopped. You're not gonna be stumped. Find your verse, keep doing the things that you know you're supposed to do. It's simple, but sometimes we forget. Life cannot stop because something didn't

turn out the way you thought it would. And when you keep your routine, you're sending a message to yourself, and you're sending a message to the devil and everyone around you that a shoot is gonna come up from this stump. By God, I'm not stopping just because something got cut off. I've got roots that go deep, and I'm gonna keep doing the things that I know to do until I see that shoot come up. The last one is remain. I gotta show you Psalm ninety two.

It says the righteous will flourish like a palm tree. They will grow like a cedar of Lebanon. Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age. They will stay fresh and green. Are you planted in the house of the Lord. Because I'm just gonna tell you, this place is a stream, and every week our pastor comes out on this stage with water for our thirsty souls. This is fertile soil for your roots.

And whether you're watching online or you're joining us at one of our campuses, the people watching with you, the people sitting next to you, the people in your eGroup, the people you volunteer with. They are the ones who will walk with you through your pain, through your divorce, through your surgery, through your recovery. This is the place where your roots find a direct source of water. Draw from the root. Look for the shoot. Christmas is a

tender shoot of hope. I have one. It's small, it's vulnerable, It comes in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. And when I see this shoot, I was thinking of a couple who's on staff at our church, and they've been trying to have a baby for five years. And she told me recently that they've almost finished their home study become foster parents. Parenthood has been a stump in their lives for five years, and finally this Christmas, there's a shoot,

a tiny tender shoot of hope. I love the Christmas carol that says a thrill of hope when you find that tiny shoot and you know God is in this, this is the way, this is the way he wants me to go. He hasn't given up on you. And she told me this week, she said, I never thought that this would be my parenthood journey. But God's plans are always better than ours. Be careful because the shoot may not, but always look the way you think it will. When God chose to send Jesus to Earth, he picked

an unlikely couple. The baby was born in an unlikely place. He didn't send his son to Earth descending from the clouds as a full grown man. He sent Jesus in the form of a needy little baby. And that's why Isaiah called him a tender shoot, coming forth from the place you never expected. And that's the thing about hope. Hope is here, but it might not be the way you expected it to be. It's not going to be big,

not this time. It's going to be small, like a baby step to fill out the applications, to schedule in a appointment with a counselor. And it's gonna need nurturing, and you're gonna have to tend to it, and if you're not careful, you might miss it. You're gonna have to slow down. And I'm so guilty, especially this time of year, filling my schedule so full that I don't have time for Jesus. I don't have time for a shoot.

That's this Christmas tree. The meals and the parties and the family and the lights on the house and the kids programs and the gifts. All of those things are good, but don't let them make you miss the miracle of the shoot, the new thing that God is doing in your life. Through that disappointment, through that thing that was tripping you up, through that failure, there's life in the dead places this Christmas Jesus said. Jesus said in John eleven twenty five, he said, I think we've got it

up here. I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live. God is doing a new thing in your life. He wants to give you a new name. He wants to restore your dignity. He wants to give you a second chance at love, a second chance at healthy relationships, new dreams, new paths, new fruits from old roots. That's the good news. Something good is going to come from that dead spot, because that's how God gets the glory. You don't need

to plant a new seed. You already have roots. Draw from the roots that you have, and wait and believe. Isn't that the message of Christmas, of the Christmas story? Wait and believe that God does his best work in my dead places. Amen, let's pray. Lord, you said in your word that you came to Earth to set the captives free. So she came to comfort those who warn that you would give beauty for ashes. And you said that we would be called oaks of righteousness, a planting

of the Lord for the display of your splendor. God, would you work in our dead places today so that we can be a display of your splendor, so that people will say, Wow, look what God has done. In your life. Open up our eyes God to see the tender baby shoots. Help us to see that hope is here right now. It's not there, it's not in twenty twenty three. It's here, It's right now. Help us to see what you see. Don't let us miss the tender shoots that you're pushing up in our lives. God, we

love you so much. This in Jesus name, We pray Amen. Well, thanks for joining us today for the message, and we trust that God spoke to you right where you are as we're in this year end season. If God is speaking to your life and you'd like to begin tithing or give above and beyond, we would invite you to head over to Elevationchurch dot org. There you'll find all of the information available for you to take part in the year end offering. If you haven't begun tithing, we

would always encourage you to start there. Place God first in the air of your finances and begin tithing and make that a part of your every day life. If you already tithe, then would like to go above and beyond and help expand the ministry here at Elevation Church. You can also do that through the year end offering. All you have to do is click the banner at Elevationchurch dot org. You can select the campus that you're

a part of. If you're a part of our online community, select online, and if you're part of one of our physical locations, make sure that you select one of those campuses. Then you can select how much you'd like to give and be a part of all the God is doing right here at Elevation Church. Again, we thank you for being a part of the family here and we can't wait to see how God works in and through your life as you open up your hands and ask God

to use you right where you are. Thanks for being a part God bless