Planted - Thanksgiving 2025

PLANTED – Thanksgiving 2025

Psalm 92

Sermon Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship on this Sunday before Thanksgiving… which means it’s the Sunday before the Bazaar!  If you are one of the First Methodist Women involved in the Bazaar, I mean… If you’ve stirred a pot of Turkey Spaghetti… or you’ve helped cook a Pumpkin dessert… or you’ve baked or are baking an item for the bake sale… or you’ve done anything else to make this event a success… stand up.  Now, why do I do that? Because this is one of, if not the largest of all the fundraisers this church holds every year, and every bit of the money raised goes to support local charities.  Thank you ladies for all you have and are doing!

I also want to take a moment to share with you a thank you from the Methodist Children’s Home.  As you may recall, we gave $25,000 to help them reach their goal of $250,000 to receive a matching grant!  That’s right, you gave 10% of the needed funds!  So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we wanted to share Trey’s sincere thank you.

MCH Video

I am so proud of the mission and ministry of FMC and all the good that this church does locally and globally. 

Sermon Slide

We have a lot to be thankful for… so, you might be wondering why I am standing here today telling you to stop going to church.  Well, it’s not a mystery.  We need to stop going to church and become the church!

We need to be planted in the house of the Lord.

So many of us use the idea that we “GO TO CHURCH” to talk about what we do on Sundays.

What I want us to see is that there is so much more to being a part of the Body of Christ than just going to church… we need to recognize that we are the church.  I want us to realize that God’s highest calling on our life was never to go to a church but to be planted in the church, to be the church, to be a light shining into a dark world.

We need to stop going to church and get planted in the House of the Lord!

Ok, let’s look at where that language comes from and what it looks like to be planted in the house of our Lord…

Turn with me to Psalm 92:12-15… (2 Slides) I’m going to read it from the NLT this time to give a little different flavor:

The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

    and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord;

    they flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit;

    they are always green and full of sap,

showing that the Lord is upright;

    he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

<PRAYER>

Sermon Slide

This passage talks about the Cedars of Lebanon and Palms, but I want to bring this a little closer to home today. Around here, when we think of big trees, we don’t think of cedar trees and we don’t see any palms unless we drive to Galveston or Corpus Christi…. But what we see around here are Oak Trees… Red Oaks, Live Oaks, Post Oaks, Burr Oaks, Water Oaks… whatever kind of Oak you can imagine, we have them.

Oaks are huge, beautiful trees…. But how do we get a tree?  How do we get an Oak Tree?  Better yet, how do we get a forest of oak trees?  I know, usually we buy a tree in a pot at Home Depot… But really, there is more to it than just buying a tree.  A tree grows from a seed.  In the grand scheme of things, an acorn is a tiny little thing compared to the oak it becomes.  Inside this tiny little nut is great potential.

But if the acorn just sits on my driveway until I step on it barefoot and scream… it never realizes its potential.  In order to grow to its potential, it has to be what… planted.

For a seed to reach its potential, it must be planted.

A creek flows through our neighbor hood, and along that creek are huge elms, and oaks, and pecan trees.  It amazes me that every tree I see from my back porch came from a tiny seed.  I also noticed how well the trees are doing because they were planted next to a water source.  Even when there is no water flowing in the creeks, down under the soil the moisture is there and the trees thrive, they flourish, because they have access to nourishment. 

According to the Psalms, it is a symbol of how we should be:

I love the way Psalm 1:3 puts it…

They are like trees

    planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

    and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do, they prosper.

Psalm 1:3

The seed reached its potential because it was planted next to a water source.  When a seed is planted next to a river or stream, it has access to its source of nourishment.  It doesn’t have to rely on the atmosphere to supply its needs.  It draws from the source.  There are some of you right now who need to be planted next to the source.  You are relying on the atmosphere, the environment around you, to nourish you, and you are becoming spiritually dry. 

The atmosphere has become hostile… your boss is coming down on you…. Billy Bob Broker told you to invest in Chipotle, and now your 401 (k) is tanking… Your kids are out of control… illness and loss has beaten you down… and you are exhausted… the environment, the winds and changes of the world around you have stunted your growth… what you need is to be planted next to the source.

Let me ask you a serious question?  Are you planted… or are you a potted plant?  A potted plant looks good, but it is limited.  It looks good for a while and it is mobile, so that seems like a good idea.  Let’s say, I decide to bring a potted Red Oak in here as a symbol of being a mighty Oak.  It will look good in here, but after a while, it will need more light most of the week, so we pick it up and move it to where the light will shine through the windows.

Its leaves green up a little and grows… but then maybe the lights are too bright some days, or it won’t grow because the AC or heat blows on it, and it becomes root bound, so we put it in a bigger pot and move it again.  The pot looks pretty and new… we add a little more dirt… and it starts to grow again… and the roots spread a little farther into the new soil…. On a pretty day, we might put it on a little potted plant cart and roll it out on the porch… The oak might even produce an acorn or two… but eventually, the roots will become cramped, the growth will stagnate… and if we don’t find a new pot, it will begin to die.

Do you get the analogy here?  Some of us are potted plants… we keep moving from place to place, looking good… gaining a little bit here and there, but never really investing…. We think we’re playing it safe… Never really getting planted.  We were a seed with unlimited potential… placed in a pot that limits our potential… we are isolated.  A tree can never reach its full potential until it is planted in a location where its roots can grow deep and spread out, intertwining with those of other trees to form a network that supports, protects, and nourishes it.  Are you planted… or are you a potted plant?

SEED IMAGE 1

I know, you might be saying, I don’t know?  What does it look like to be planted?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  I want to share with you an image of what it looks like to be planted in the house of the Lord.

I am calling this the 4 Steps to Being Planted.

Seed IMAGE 2

The first thing we see is the seed.  For us today, it is the acorn.  Locked up inside that acorn is the potential to be a mighty oak tree.  A tree that 50 years from now children will be swinging from.  If you’ve ever been through the Eastern part of Florida, you may have seen the 500 and 600 year old Oak trees, that greeted Pedro Menéndez de Avilés when he landed in St. Augustine, FL.  Inside your acorn is the potential of a tree that 5-600 years from now… it could be standing as children play under its shade.

You and I have the potential, with what we do today, in our lives today, to have an impact on people 500 years from now.  Do you realize that? 

Do you think John Wesley thought we would still be talking about the movement he started nearly 300 years ago?  Do you think Martin Luther thought that his Protest in 1517 would create a movement that would recognize him as the father of Protestantism.  I’m not saying you will start a movement like that, but I have my great-great grandparents to thank for my faith and what I have passed on to my family…  inside of you is the potential to change the world with each ripple of change that God makes within you.

So we are a seed… but until that seed is what …PLANTED… the potential is inaccessible.

So then the seed is planted and what happens first?  It becomes a mighty 40’ Oak, right?… No, not at all.  It starts to produce roots.  The tap root begins to go down into the soil.  Nothing is showing above the surface.  We keep thinking we want to see growth, we want to experience abundance, we want to thrive and flourish and wave our branches in the air like we just don’t care.  Right… but what happens first?  We plant roots. 

What are our roots here?  Discipleship. That first root is our relationship with God.  Without it we are nothing.

SEED IMAGE 3

So, What is discipleship?  It is becoming like Jesus.  Christianity is an apprenticeship.  We were never meant to be followers of Christ in a vacuum.  We were never intended to do this alone.  Yes, there is a component of our discipleship that we do alone.  We have our own private time with God where we spend time reading scripture and studying some type of devotional.  We may spend time journaling and praying privately, in solitude, as Jesus did… but Jesus never stayed in solitude, he would always return to the crowd.  We are corporate creatures, we were never meant to do life alone.

Here at FMC, we use small groups, Sunday School Groups, and Covenant groups as some of our forms of discipleship.  We gather together with other believers and spend time in prayer and study of God’s Word.  We discuss what God is doing in our lives.  We are gathering with others and gleaning from them, but the focus is always toward God in this part.

On the insert in today’s bulletin, you will find a list of some of the discipleship groups we have at this church.  Call them small groups, or home groups, or Sunday School, or Night School… I don’t care what you call them, as long as you are involved in them…

But here is the neat thing about getting rooted.  When the acorn sends that tap root down, soon it begins to have lateral roots that grow… these roots grow out 4 to 7 times the foliage you will see when the tree is fully grown.  They never grow more than about 18” under the soil though.  That’s why you will sometimes see large 100-year-old Oaks that have been planted in isolation blown over in a hurricane or wind storm.  You see, that Oak was never meant to stand alone.  As its lateral root mass began to develop and grow, it was meant to intertwine with other roots.  When a forest grows, the roots of the forest intertwine and become a support system for one another.  When one root system is too weak, the others around it will support it.

On our diagram, were we see these lateral roots beginning to develop is what we will call “fellowship.”

SEED IMAGE 4

Fellowship is a natural outgrowth of discipleship.  When you spend time together as a group, studying God’s Word, talking about what God is doing in your life, you begin to build roots that tie into one another’s life.  You begin to do life together.  You become a support system for one another.  You start to do things together.  Maybe you have a gathering at your house, and these are the ones who will attend.  You have a tragedy, and these are the ones who surround you.

To be planted, to start living into your potential, you set down roots, you let those roots spread into the lives around you, then, and only then, once the roots are firmly established, does the growth begin to be seen.  When a plant starts to grow above the ground, we know something is happening.  It is when the glory of the plant begins to be known. 

All from this tiny seed.

You see, too many of us discount the seed.  We discount this tiny little thing, thinking it surely can’t produce the glory we want to see… but let me tell you this, “What you discounted as small, God is counting on to become tall.”

That little gift you are wondering if you should give… God can multiply it.

That one hour a week that you are wondering if it will make a difference in the life of an elementary student or a youth?  God can do amazing things in the life of that child each week if you will be the vessel of God’s love and grace...

What you discounted as small, God is counting on to become tall!

SEED IMAGE 5

Here’s the thing with the roots we plant. When what was small, begins to become tall, we have already been planted… we have already started to spread our roots into the lives of others, and they have invested in our life… so when we start to become tall… worshipis a natural outpouring. 

We recognize that what we are, the glory, the growth that others see, is really nothing more than what God saw in the beginning.  When we are a majestic oak, because we are planted by streams of living water, we know that our might, our power, our strength has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with who is inside of us.

Let me share one more truth about planting.  The process of planting, and the process of burying are the same.  Let me say this another way that I recently heard. “The place of death and the place of destiny both start in the dirt.” 

The difference is what is inside of that which goes in the ground.  If there is nothing inside of that which goes in the ground, nothing will come forth.  If my dog buries a bone in the yard, it isn’t going to grow a cow.  But if I plant this acorn, it just might grow an oak.

If we recognize that Christ lives in us, that the Spirit of God was breathed into us at creation, then we know that there is unlimited potential inside.

You may feel like you’ve been buried.  You may feel like you’ve had piles and piles of dirt heaped on top of your head to keep you down.  But if you have Jesus inside you… if you have the Breath of God filling your soul… if you are a follower of Jesus, then you aren’t buried, you are planted… and within that seed, within that root system that is being established, there is unlimited potential… and it is a potential that lives on long after you are gone.

Here’s the other difference between being planted and being buried.  If you are just buried, your impact for God in this life is over… it’s done.  Maybe the obituary tells of all the great accomplishments, all the money made, the inventions developed… all rubbish, all of it will someday be gone too.

But if you were first Planted in the House of the Lord, and your roots have gone deep and wide, and your limbs have grown and produced fruit.  Someday, that fruit will bear more fruit and more fruit… and what God began in you, the potential of what you had in your seed… grows exponentially with each seed you produce.  In a sense, you become immortal as what God has done through you lives on in the impact that your life has had on others.

 Title Image

So, next time you walk out on your driveway, or on your back porch and step on an acorn, don’t cuss… that’s not good… instead, thank God for the potential in that acorn… and the potential inside of you.

And so, this Thanksgiving… Stop going to church… and be planted in the house of the Lord.

Amen.