S1E3 Primary Root

In this episode of the Be Rooted Podcast, Nick shifts the focus below the surface and introduces what he calls the primary root system of our lives.

While most people focus on what can be seen — success, growth, impact — Nick challenges us to look deeper. Because what ultimately determines whether we stand or fall in the storms of life isn’t what’s above the surface… it’s what’s rooted beneath it.

Through personal insight and powerful conversation, Nick unpacks:

• What actually drives our roots deeper
• Why identity, relationship, and intentionality are foundational
• How discipleship moves us from simply believing… to truly becoming
• And what it looks like to build a life that can withstand pressure, pain, and uncertainty

This episode is an invitation to stop performing and start becoming — to develop a root system strong enough to sustain the life God is calling you into

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today, we are continuing to build on the foundation of the future of this podcast and what it means to be rooted and to be intentional about discipleship. So today we're going to talk a little bit about relationships, the primary relationship, because I believe that order matters. Scripture says that Jesus is preeminent, which means he is before all things, that he is the most important. And when we looked at the great commandment, that we that says that God is first in those relationships. So what does it mean to be in relationship with God? So that's what we're going to be discussing today. I'm looking forward to uh driving forward and experiencing and growing this journey together. Thank you, and I hope you are looking forward to the content today.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Hey friends, welcome to the Be Rooted Podcast with your host Nick Cooper, author, discipler, and your guide on this journey. Around here, we mix ancient and modern wisdom with real-life principles so you can grow deep roots and live out your faith intentionally. So let's stay curious and dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So, as you can see, or if you're joining us just audibly, as you're about to hear, we're going to talk about a primary relationship today. We're going to talk about this route that we talked about that goes straight down. We call it the primary taproot, and it is your relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So this is the primary taproot because it comes from the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. You see, when Jesus was given the question, what is the greatest of all commandments? He did not hesitate when he quoted the Shema, which is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. See, that's the answer that he gave to the scribes when he was asked this question. And when you when you look at the first command, the greatest command, you will find your relationship with God is the most important thing. But he doesn't stop there. He actually says, and the second is like it. The second is inseparable from the first. And one of the passages where he's quoted to say this, I believe it's the Mark passage, he actually uses the term that all of the law and all of the prophets hinge on these two commands. Well, it was only asked for one, so why did he give them two? That the the primary root of God must come first, but the root is not enough without the relationships with others in self. When Jesus says that the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself, he actually exposes the two other root systems. So I want to lean into that primary relationship today. What does it look like to grow in your relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the counselor or the essence of motivation that flows through you and works upon you. So one of the ways that I like to kind of picture this in my own mind is that God the Father is the one that does things for us or upon us. See, the God, God the Father is the God of provision. He is the one that that helps you to build your identity. He bestows things, he gives the Son in Jesus, that for God so loved the world that he gave his son, Jesus, to us. He's the one that listens to your prayers through through God or through Jesus. So it's the God that does things upon us. But then we have the relationship with Jesus or the Son. And the Son is the one that does things alongside of us. Jesus is the one who came incarnate into this world to give us an example, the perfect life that we couldn't have lived on our own, to do the sacrifice that we couldn't have done on our own, but he also puts on flesh so that he can walk this life with us, so that he can experience it with us. And one of the ways that we experience Jesus today is through his church, which is the body of Christ. That having the church walking alongside of you, and when I mean the church, I don't just mean the the four walls that we go to on a Sunday. That the ecclesia of the church that's talked about in the first century or in the original Greek is just the body of believers. They are people on movement with Jesus and for Jesus. So how do we come alongside him? And some of that is helping us to understand how do we use his example to come alongside others. So as we grow in our relationship with Jesus, we can't do that if we're not growing in our relationship with the body. Without embracing the bride of the church and becoming and fulfilling our role within the church, but we're not alone. Jesus actually says in the Great Commandment that, or the Great Commission rather, that I will be with you even to the end of the age. We're never alone. And the last of these three in the primary root system is the Holy Spirit. Now, this is the God of the triune God that is the God that does things within us. So the Holy Spirit works through you. It works in you and it works on you. I personally believe that through my life, the more that I let the Holy Spirit into me and flow through me, maybe it's through intercessory prayer. When the Spirit awakens a person to my mind and says, Hey, this person needs prayer right now. And I'm obedient and I step into that and I say, God, I don't know what this person is going through, but you brought them to my mind. There must be something that they need from you. So, Lord, whatever that is, can you can you do that? Can you release your Holy Spirit on them for through me? And I have been privileged to actually hear some stories from people that I've prayed for and people that I've gone to in prayer because I was obedient to listening to that Holy Spirit, and they've actually shared with me, hey, I don't know what happened, but this God came through. And what I've noticed there that God did something from within me. But in the process of doing something for them, he actually did something to me. He softened my heart. He made me aware. He didn't just make me aware of another person's problems. I get that a lot. I talk to a lot of people and I get to you know share a lot of people's struggles with them. But he softened me. And he he made me aware of the power of the spiritual realm. That that just simply by listening and simply by being obedient, that he helped me to see that there is a whole nother space, a realm that God is working through. And when he's doing that and as he's doing that, he's working on me for the benefit of others. An example I want to give you from my own life, and I have yet to discover who this person was. Um you might think this is a little bit weird because I did, and I still do, but this is a true story. Um, a few years back, I I entered into a my a nonprofit ministry for the first time. I became a self-funded um minister of the gospel through a ministry to men. And early on in that in that phase, I did a lot of praying. And I remember a time I I left my house and I was driving to work. I was an auto mechanic at the time as well. I was trying to be a little bit bi-vocational, and I had just stopped my morning prayer. And I was just listening for a moment, I was just resting for a moment. And I'm gonna set the stage a little bit, a little bit more because it was a crisp February morning, and it was there was like a crystalline fog in the air. And there was the morning light was coming through, but it was foggy and it was kind of shiny. I it's kind of surreal. But anybody who's known me for a while knows I'm kind of a bird guy. And as I'm driving, I see to my left this image of a large bird kind of flapping. All I really see is it's is its silhouette because it's behind this kind of crystalline fog. And I'm inspired, I'm in I just drawn to it. So I I look over and I watch this bird, and he's kind of pacing me. And in a few moments I realized like this is this is a big bird. So it flies over my car and it begins to spread its wings over my windshield, and it begins to draft off from my window. And I lean forward and I look up, and it is the most beautiful snowy owl. I have never seen a snowy owl this far south in the state of Michigan. But I watched that bird for probably two or three seconds. It probably wasn't very long, but it felt like time stood still. And it and within moments, it flapped once and flew away in and perched in a field just to the right. Now, this could have been just a weird, really cool moment. And that's really all I thought it was for a second. But in about an eighth of a mile, I had to make my turn. And just as I made my turn, I got an overwhelming feeling. And I can remember it just as well today as I as I as I did years and years ago. And it was the somebody was praying for me. They were praying for my provision, my protection, and my direction. Now I don't know who that person was, but I am so grateful because that moment created an opportunity that would last through my ministry. Knowing that other people were behind me. They were praying for me, they were shaping my ministry from the other side, and they didn't even know the impact of that. It gave me the confidence to keep moving when things got hard. And it helped me to see that not only other people were on my side, but God was on my side. He was listening, he was empowering. I got to experience the provision of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit in that moment, and it helped me to continue to grow in my relationship with Him and with the power of the Holy Spirit. Now that's just one example, and it actually seems kind of surreal, even when I tell the story again, but it is it is a story that that will always drive me because it drove a few of these roots just a little bit deeper. And when I went through moments of struggle, when I went through moments of drought, when I went through moments of doubt, I was able to tap in to the living water that was a little deeper than what I had before. So those are a few examples of how this primary root can can drive down and how it can dig and how it can grow and how it can spider out into all these wonderful things. You see, as long as everything above it is growing, everything below is growing too. And if you want everything above, if you want the person that you are called to be to be healthy, then everything below needs to continue to grow too. And you can be intentional about that. You can be intentional about entering into the relationship with the Holy Spirit and asking him to work on you as he works through you. You can be intentional with your relationship with Jesus by saying, brother, friend, how can I serve alongside of you today? How have you served alongside of me? One of my favorite stories from the Bible with this Jesus alongside is actually the story of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Where as these three, the Shadarach, Meshach, and Abednego, end up being thrown in a flaming furnace because they they simply would not bow to the rule of their day. They had to bow to their their God, Yahweh God. They said, no, we are not gonna stop worshiping our God. And if that means you throw us in a fire, you throw us in a fire. And and if we burn, we burn in obedience to God. But if he saves us, then you will know who our God is. And as the passer buyers or as the spectators look into that fire that they were just thrown into, they don't just see Shatterak, Meshach, and Abednego. They see a fourth man. They call him the fourth man in the fire. I am convinced that that fourth man was Jesus. That that fourth man came and he sat in that fire with them. He could have just saved them from afar. He could have just spoke a word over them and said, Father, hey, can you protect my servants? Can you keep them from burning? And he he would have done that. God would have protected them, he would have done something upon them. But Jesus didn't just say, God, will you protect them? He said, Will you protect us as we endure the flames of the fire? Like there have been other moments in my life where I couldn't have done it without the presence of Jesus, without the strength that He provided. And sometimes that strength feels supernatural. Sometimes it's the peace that surpasses all understanding. But more often than not, it was the church. It was his body. It was somebody coming to me when I needed somebody to help me through my fire. It was somebody that saw my pain, saw my struggle, and they said, We're gonna help you to worship God. We're gonna help you to stay in relationship with Him. They gave me the most precious gift that any person I think could give. And they gave me the embodiment of the Son of God as an image bearer of His. They came and they were willing to walk alongside me. Yes, there are moments where it was supernatural, and I felt the very real presence of an invisible God standing next to me, maybe even carrying me. But more often than not, it was a real person right in front of me, helping me to get through whatever I needed to get through, and doing it through the example of Jesus. So lastly, I'll come back to God the Father for a moment. The Father is the giver of good gifts. James actually says that every good and every perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. God doesn't change. His character doesn't change. He is the same God of love, he is the same God of provision, he is the same God yesterday, today, as he will be tomorrow. So I can put my faith in who he is. And I can tell you story after story after story from other people, some from myself, but from other people who have said, God just showed up in a moment that I needed him. Actually, just had a conversation with a friend who's on the other side of the camera. I'm gonna tell a little bit of his story. He lost some income. And in a moment of prayer, he said, God, I need you to show up. And there was a specific amount that he needed him to show up because of what he lost. And no sooner did he, in his words, hang up his conversation with God that the other phone rang. He said amen and left it to God, and a phone rang and said, Hey, do you have some time to do take on this job for me? And he goes, Sure. Without asking how much, without asking what was in it for him, he says, Yeah, I can do it. And he says, Well, what's your budget? And believe it or not, it was exactly what he needed. That is the provision of God. That he knows your story, he knows your struggles, he knows what you need, and the God of the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation, there is no shadow of turning, knows you. And he wants to give you the thing that you need, not just the thing you want. And he knows you better than you know yourself, he knows your situation better. And sometimes what you need is the struggle to endure. Sometimes you need a little something to get you by, but you have to trust him that he knows what you need. And in my friend's story, he needed some help filling a gap. And the father provided. So I want you to know that that I guarantee, and he can speak to this if he wants to, that that encouraged his relationship. That drove some of these roots a little bit deeper. And I know that he's had stories that are similar to this. So that's not the only story that has driven those primary roots deeper. He's probably got more than I do. But God knows you, he knows the experiences that you need that will draw you to him because what he wants from for you more than anything is to have a relationship with you. And whether it's through trial or through victory or through provision or through struggle or through the Holy Spirit, He wants you. He cares way more about everything that's going on underneath than he does the things that are going on up above. Because if you have a strong relationship with him, you can endure the storms, you can endure the droughts, you can make it through the fire. So I encourage you as you hear this today that you just ask yourself which one of these relationships with the triune God do you need to be a little bit more intentional with? Do you need to ask God to give you something, to show you something, to provide something, to to build a foundation, to to help you to understand you? Do you help do you need Him to give you some identity to provide that for you? Do you need to lean into the God of the Son, the God that came to earth incarnate and put on flesh and walked alongside humanity and who is walking alongside you today? Do you need to go to the church to enter into a relationship with other faithful believers? Again, not just the four walls, beyond the four walls, finding other men and women that have the same vision for the future for you that you have for you, that you want to grow closer to God. Maybe you need to get a little more intentional with your relationship with other faithful believers, the ecclesia, the movement of Christ. Or maybe you just need to lean into the Holy Spirit a little bit. Maybe you need to ask Him to work on you. Or maybe you have to ask Him to work through you. Maybe you're one of those guys that's that's been filling yourself up with the Holy Spirit for a really long time and you haven't let any of it out. You haven't found the place that God has called you to serve. You haven't found the place that God has called you to give his Holy Spirit energy to. Maybe you need to stop being a reservoir for the Holy Spirit and start being a conduit. Start being a river. And you can do that intentionally. I'm not saying that you need to go serve in Africa. Maybe all you need to do is say, Holy Spirit, help me to see the person that you've already placed in my life today that needs a little bit of prayer. They don't even need to know about it. They don't need to know that you're praying for them. You can even do that one in secret and in silence. You can't walk alongside them without them knowing that you're there, but you can pray for them. So if you need a step, maybe that's an intentional step that you can take. So just think about those three primary relationships and ask yourself this question: where can I be a little bit more intentional today? Remember, friends, to always stay curious.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Hi, my name's Andrew. I'm one of Nick's friends, but I'm also the guy editing this podcast. Nick invited me to share on this podcast because I recently had an experience that drove my roots deeper. You see, I'd had a job up until December 2025, and that job provided a significant amount of our income. I knew that we would be losing that in January. So I tried to schedule some jobs. They scheduled, but then they fell through. Then Christmas came about, and I didn't think about it until December 28th. And all of a sudden, some nervousness and anxiety welled up in me. What are we gonna do? We don't have a way to replace that income. We have bills coming due on the first. So I picked up the spiritual phone, as I call it, and I tapped into my primary roof and said, God, I know you are my provider. I know that you have a plan for us, and I am trusting and I am putting my faith in you. And as I hung up the phone spiritually, said amen, the physical phone rang. And a friend of mine called me and said, Hey, I've got a job for my company, tight turnaround time, not a lot of time to film it. Are you willing to do it? And I said, Yes, of course. And I was like, Did you have a budget in mind? And he told me what he wanted to keep it at. It was the exact amount of money that we needed for the next month. To the dollar. Tapping into that primary route and laying my faith on the line gave God an opportunity to come through. My roots that day grew deeper. I saw God in a new light. Almost instantaneously answering my prayers. And my prayer and hope for you is that you tap into that root as well, so that your roots can grow deep and the worries of the world, the winds, the storms, they don't even phase you. Remember, stay curious, my friend. AI was only used to enhance the sound and visual experience. All content is authentic and does not contain AI generated thoughts or concepts.