In the second installment of the blog series, “Worship as a Lifestyle,” Melissa Helser shares about what it looks like to live a sustainable life that produces fruit in every season.
Today, I am going to write on the subject of sustainability. I want to start with a beautiful quote that I heard recently, “There is nothing that I admire more than somebody who is planting trees under who’s shade they may never sit.”
Sustainability is a hot word right now. When you start researching sustainability, on an economical level, you will quickly see, that what it is, is a mindset. It’s a mindset that if you don’t learn to see beyond you, then you aren’t actually sustainably living.
Sustainability is a mindset that abandons selfish living and sees every moment in life as a grand symphony that the Father has been playing throughout the ages.
In Psalm 102:18 it says, “Let this be written for a future generation. That a people not yet created yet, may praise the Lord.” Sustainability sees the moment you’re in right now, and the moments ahead that you won’t be here for.
I love sustainability. I became obsessed with it when I was in the depths of an intense season of my life. When I was in the midst of the wilderness, dealing with a fierce physical disease, I learned how to very sustainably walk with Jesus — if you don’t, the wilderness will consume you. I learned very quickly that I didn’t really know God; I had reduced Him to these big moments.
I grew up as a pastor’s kid, and I grew up in churches, and that’s when I would feel the Lord. But when I was seventeen at home, very sick, I was like, “I need to get a grip. I don’t even know if I know the Lord.” Right in the middle of me being exhaustingly sick, I had a friend ask me, “Melissa, what’s the fruit of your life? Is this season, is this wilderness season producing good fruit?” That was the moment that changed everything for me. That was when I decided, I want to be a fruit producer.
I would ask you, what are the orchards you are planting of the nature of God, that future generations will walk through, and taste the fruit of your life. What are you building? I want the generations that are coming, the children and their children to walk through the orchard of my life and be affected by the places I’ve given my life to knowing the nature of God.
I long for a people to become so addicted to the nature of Jesus, that they actually give their lives to planting seeds that produce good fruit.
Let’s say I have an appleseed. It’s tiny. If I put this appleseed in the ground, I don’t stand over the seed and coach it. I steward it– there’s a difference. I steward the miraculous.
That’s just it, sustainability is the understanding that we are stewards of the miraculous.
If I put this seed in the ground, I’m going water it. When it gets bigger, I’m going to prune it. I don’t make the miracle happen, I steward the miracle. There is a great relief that God wants to give you, that you are not responsible to make the miracle happen — you are responsible to steward the miraculous. I’m not talking signs and wonders, I’m talking the miracle that’s inside. I’m talking the nature of Jesus that’s inside of you, the nature of the Holy Spirit. You have a responsibility, not to create but to steward. God is doing amazing things. He wants to do amazing things in your life. But you have a responsibility to care for those things daily.
I want to talk about roots– about creating a root system of fully understanding the nature of God. That system will withstand any storm.
Serving a system without really knowing Him in your heart, will keep you on a religious treadmill your whole life.
Because, you know what happens? If you crave man’s approval without actually knowing the applause of Heaven, you get done singing your song, you hear the clapping, and you’re feeling really awesome. Then you go home, and there’s no applause. Then what are you going to do? If you live by the applause of men, then you’ll die by it. If you don’t know what He sounds like, every other voice will pull you left and right. You have to know. You have to get to a point to where you can hear Heaven’s “thank you.” You need to become obsessed with the nature of God.
Jesus spent thirty years doing family, got marked by the pleasure of the Father, went and did three years of ministry, then went to be with the Father. When He left, He said something like, “Don’t worry. I’m giving you the Holy Spirit.” Everything Jesus came to do was to restore our understanding of the Father. He was led by his Father’s voice. Think about the life of Jesus– He modeled sustainability in the most brilliant way.
For more of the “Worship as a Lifestyle” blog series, check out Brian Johnson’s post about overcoming anxiety and choosing God through the pain. Click here to read more.