“Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.”

(Isaiah 40:24)

I don’t know if I will ever forget the storm that blew through the IBLP Headquarters in the Chicago area a few years ago. I would say the winds were easily at speeds of 70 miles per hour. Such strong winds did quite a bit of damage to the trees on the property. Along the sidewalk that goes through the property there are some huge trees that I think are Colorado Blue Spruce trees. My understanding is that these trees were brought in from Colorado and in Colorado the climate is drier. Because of this the roots have to go much deeper to get to water whereas in Chicago they do not have to go very deep because the water is so close to the surface. I think because of this they have a very shallow root system.

When the storm came and the winds blew some of the trees were blown down because the root system was shallow. In Isaiah 40:24 and in the the verses leading up to it we see that the Lord brings those whom the world considers high and lofty to nothing and that He blows on them and they wither and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble. My question for you is: why? Why do the people talked about in this verse wither away and the whirlwind takes them away? I believe the answer is found earlier in the verse: they did not take root in the earth.

So let me ask you another question; a more personal question. What is your life rooted in? Please think about this question carefully before you answer. Your answer is critically important. We are living in perilous times, in times where good is being called evil and evil is being called good. I really believe that we are at a point in our nation where God is beginning to shake everything that can be shaken so that the things that cannot be shaken might remain. We read in Hebrews: “Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27).

I believe that we are beginning to feel the tremors of a shaking that God is bringing to this nation and to the world. Praise God for the shaking. It will shake off the things of the world, the flesh and the devil because all these things can be shaken and will be shaken. What stands will be only that which is of God. So I would ask you again, what is your life rooted in? Is your life founded in the bedrock of God’s Word or in the sinking sand of self?

The word for the whirlwind that drives away the stubble used in this verse means ‘hurricane’. This is no light breeze but is an extremely strong hurricane level type of wind that will blow away anything that is not grounded in the Word of God. So how do we become grounded in the Word of God? How do we root our lives in what will never be shaken? We find the answer in Psalm chapter one. This verse in Isaiah 40 is similar in many ways to Psalm one. We read in Psalm one that the secret to becoming grounded in God’s Word is through meditating on the Word day and night.

If we meditate on God’s Word day and night we become like a tree planted by rivers of water firmly rooted and planted. When the shaking comes and wind blows we stand strong because we are rooted  in the Word of God through meditation, not in the power of our flesh or in our own strength but rather by the supernatural power of God. As is mentioned in Isaiah forty and Psalm one, the ungodly are not this way. They are like the chaff or stubble that the wind drives away.

If we meditate on the Word of God day and night our lives will be grounded in what can never be shaken. As it says earlier in Isaiah 40: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” (Isaiah 40:8). Let us set our mediation on the Word of God that stands for ever!

-Gabe Cleator