If the root system dies the whole plant is going to die.
If the trunk isn't strong, isn't healthy, the branches won't be healthy.
If the branches are fragile and spindly they will have a hard time producing any fruit (if they can).
And if they somehow cut themselves off, they won't last long.
I've got a good quote to share with you from the Murray book I'm reading. He writes, "What God's words are to me and in me, my words will be to God and in God."
Think on that for a while.
That is profound.
Compare this thought to your closest human relationship. If the other person in this relationship just started talking a lot and asking for stuff and expecting you to do his or her bidding and never listened or spent time with you and just sought you out to get his needs met, how would you feel? How well would you say this person knew you?
We do this with God all the time. I don't know if God gets His feelings hurt like we do, but we will not know Him if this is how we act with Him. And there is no way His words are living in us if this is the sum total of our relationship with Him.
Two more scriptures for you to think on:
"The Lord God has given me the tongue of disciples, That I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakes my ear to listen as a disciple." Isaiah 50:4
"I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides (lives) in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apartfrom Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you." John 15:5-7
What is God and God's words to you?