Rooted
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. . . . You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. (verses 5, 16, niv)

If you are a follower of Jesus, then your calling and destiny are to be fruitful. Fruit is not a bunch of spiritual or religious activities like going to church, reading your Bible, keeping the Ten Commandments, or even preaching the gospel. Fruit means that when people taste your life, you taste like Jesus. If you are fully grafted into Jesus, the vine, then He says your life should produce tangible results that make people say, “Now that is Christlike.”

Not only are you chosen and appointed to produce fruit, but Jesus said you are chosen to produce much fruit, and not only much fruit, but fruit that lasts. There’s a difference between some fruit and much fruit. God’s plan for your life is not conservative. He’s not satisfied with minimal results. He expects to see much, and you should too. How much do you think you can know Jesus and become like Him? How much do you think you can show Him to the world? He wants that for you and much more. He wants you to bear fruit beyond what you could ask or think.

There’s also a difference between much fruit and fruit that will last. God isn’t satisfied with temporary results. He’s in the business of permanent change. He’s not looking for a month, or a year or a decade, of you growing more like Jesus and pursuing the things He calls you to do. He’s looking for a lifetime impact, a generational impact, and an eternal impact.

Abundant, enduring fruitfulness is the mandate on your life. Ultimately, enduring fruitfulness in your life and the rest of the body of Christ is the key to seeing nations transformed, cities impacted, and culture shaped. But abundant, enduring fruitfulness will only happen, Jesus says, if you “remain in” Him. What does that mean?

Roots Before Fruit
In the growth cycle of fruit-bearing plants, fruit comes at the very end. The cycle starts with a seed being planted in the ground. When watered, the seed will break open and begin to put down roots. That root system will continue to grow as the seed forms a shoot and eventually breaks through the surface of the soil into air and sunlight. Both the plant and its root system will keep growing until the plant is strong and mature enough to bear fruit. Significantly, in order for a plant to survive, much less bear fruit, its root system has to take up more space underground than the plant takes up above ground. When you look up at one of those immense redwoods in the Avenue of the Giants, for example, you’re actually standing on root systems that are wider than those trees are tall. This is the principle of foundations. A foundation always has to be bigger than the thing it is supporting.

Fruitfulness in your life comes about through a similar process. God plants the seed of His word inside you (see Luke 8:11) and waters it with His Holy Spirit, bringing it to life. He begins to give you insight into who He created you to be in Him and what He is calling you to do with Him. He stirs up that desire in you to have a lasting impact in the world. And then He starts to build a root system for that seed in your heart, your internal world.

Your heart is your point of connection with Jesus—the place where you become rooted in your relationship with Him. He wants to develop His heart-to-heart connection with you to the point where you become fully united with Him, where you think like He thinks, want what He wants, speak like He speaks, and do what He does. This is what it means to remain in Him. Only when you remain in Him will you produce fruit that lasts.

For you to bear abundant, enduring fruit, God needs to make you bigger on the inside than you are on the outside. You have to let Him build your root system in secret before He leads you into making a visible impact in the world. In his book Power Through Prayer, E. M. Bounds, one of the foremost authors on prayer, said, “The man—God’s man [and woman]—is made in the closet. His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret communion with God.”

David’s Root System
If you study in Scripture those who had a lasting impact, you will find that God led them through a season of preparation. For Joseph, that season lasted about thirteen years. Moses had to spend forty years shepherding in the wilderness before he was ready to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Jesus Himself spent thirty years preparing for His three years of ministry—the most impactful ministry in history.

Of all the people in the Bible who bore lasting fruit, however,
David is unique, not just because of his incredible legacy, but also because of the depth of insight the Bible gives us into how God established roots in David’s life.

The highlights of David’s legacy are so impressive that a whole book on them wouldn’t do them justice. Within his lifetime, he ushered in the golden age of Israel and established a brand-new culture of worship in the nation. Beyond his lifetime, the blessing on David’s throne affected God’s dealings with every king of Israel and Judah who came after him. The promised Messiah, Jesus, is called the Son of David and sits on the throne of David (see Luke 1:32). The psalms David wrote became a central part of worship for Jews and, later, Christians. In other words, every day for thousands of years, millions of people around the world have quoted, prayed, meditated on, and worshiped God with David’s words. Finally, David was a prototype of New Testament believers, particularly because of his unique intimacy with God and his understanding that God desired a pure heart more than “sacrifice and offering” (Psalm 40:6).

Every person on the planet, especially every Christian, has been impacted by the life of David.

He bore lasting fruit that continues to this day and will continue into eternity.

Yet we can trace all of that fruit back to a single moment, the moment in which God planted a seed in David’s life. This moment took place when he was young—probably between ten and thirteen years old—and it was pretty dramatic. The prophet Samuel, who at that time in Israel was like Billy Graham, the president, and Bono all wrapped into one, showed up at David’s house and announced that he had come to anoint the next king of Israel.

David’s dad, Jesse, didn’t even think to call David in from the field, because Jesse naturally assumed that his youngest could not be the one destined for kingship when David had far more suitable older brothers to fill the role. Samuel surveyed Jesse’s tall, handsome sons and thought,
One of these has to be the king. Yet one by one, each of David’s seven brothers stood before Samuel, and the prophet heard the Lord say, “He’s not the one.”

In the midst of this selection process, the Lord spoke a word to Samuel that we often pull out and quote: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, niv). God was saying, “I’m looking for someone who will let Me grow him on the inside before I grow him on the outside.” He didn’t want another King Saul. Saul looked like a king, but he wasn’t sufficiently rooted in God’s heart to lead a nation in God’s way. God wanted a man He could groom for the kingship from a young age, a man who would actually last in that role for a lifetime and establish the nation on a firm foundation of faithfulness to God.

None of Jesse’s older sons had what God was looking for. So the prophet asked, “Did we miss anyone?” They reluctantly called their little brother in from the field, and when Samuel saw him, he said, “There’s the king.” He anointed David with oil, and the Holy Spirit came on David in power, watering the seed of God’s word and causing it to grow (see verse 13).
From that point, God began to build David’s roots—a journey we will be exploring in more detail throughout this book. Only when that journey was complete did God’s word come true:

When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.
David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years. (2 Samuel 5:3–4, niv)

Thirty years old! You do the math. God took somewhere between seventeen and twenty years to build roots in David and get him ready to bear visible fruit.

A Passion for Roots
My early twenties were a season of seed planting in my life. At the time, I was serving as youth pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, where exciting things were happening. By the hundreds, people were coming to know God, coming back to God, receiving healing of their hearts, minds, and bodies, and being filled with incredible joy and hunger for more of Him. The environment seemed to stir and awaken people’s hopes and dreams for what God wanted to do in and through their lives. It showed up in our sermons, our prayers, our worship songs, and our conversations—everyone was catching a vision for something God was calling them to do.

I was no different. I dreamed about the impact I would have on the world. Practically every minister who came through town and preached at our church called me out in meetings to confirm what God was calling me to do and pray things over me regarding
my future. It felt like I was being barraged with encouraging words from people about my destiny. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to grab hold of the vision God was building in my heart and say, “Yes, God! Let’s do this!”

Funny enough, however, no one praying over me added, “By the way, it...