A NEW SELF

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  (Galatians 2:20 NIV)

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give Me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down… Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked -- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.” 

-- C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

#5805

THE GOD OF THE “RE” PREFIXES

On Sunday in worship Rev. Wes Olds, the pastor of Grace Church where we are attending while in Florida, suggested that the God we worship is a God of the “Re” prefixes. The sermon series is on “Rebuilding” which is a timely theme for the area of Fort Myers following the devastation of Hurricane Ian last September (2022). This church also has a huge “Recovery” program with a worship service dedicated to “finding freedom from your addictions, afflictions, and compulsive behaviors.”

It got me thinking about all the “Re” prefixes that God is involved in. In addition to Rebuilding (Nehemiah 2:4-5) and Recovery (Isaiah 6:1) here are others that came to mind, in no particular order, with Scripture references: Redeeming (Ephesians 1:7), Reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-20), Return (Zechariah 1:3), Rebirth (John 3:3), Relationship (John 17:3), Release (Galatians 5:1), Revive (Isaiah 57:15), Renewal (Romans 12:2), Restore (Psalm 51:12), Reunite (John 20:20), Repent (Mark 1:15), Respond (Matthew 4:19-20), Rescue (Psalm 31:5), Remember (Isaiah 49:15-16), Receive (John 1:12), and, of course, Resurrection (John 11:25).

I am sure there are other words of faith that begin with the prefix “Re”. But you may find that one of these listed here, along with its Scripture verse, is just what you need to hear today. 

-- Rev. David T. Wilkinson, SOUND BITES Ministry

#5522

THE SEASONS OF GRIEF

"For everything, there is a season," a familiar verse [in Ecclesiastes] tells us.

Life and death come quickly in nature -- buds swell into green leaves, turn golden, then brown, and drop to the earth. Nature shows us [rebirth] as plants are reborn and flowers, once fresh with life, return to the earth to become nourishment for other plants.
 
Nature shows us seasons of life and death everywhere we look.  But nature seams not to mourn these deaths -- not the flowers, not even the animals. Within the lifecycle is a built-in process of survival as one part of nature nourishes another.
 
But people do mourn and grieve -- and so we alone need a season of grief. In this season, the seeds of rebirth are planted. What varies from person to person is the length of this season, the right time for harvest, and the time when rebirth comes.
 
When the seed of life is implanted in a woman we speak of her pregnancy going "full term." By this we mean that she will carry her unborn child the full term of nine months, without intervention. The season of grief must also be allowed, without intervention, to go to full term.
 
It makes me angry when people say, "Get on with your life, it's time to stop grieving." Nobody can tell you what the season of your grief is. It may be a summer, a winter, a spring, a fall, perhaps another winter -- or another -- or another.
 
Just as the gestation period varies from creature to creature, the natural process of grieving varies from person to person. The harvest of renewed life will come in its own season.
 
-- Ted Menten in “After Goodbye” 

#5438

ONLY THE BEGINNING

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  (1 Peter 2:2-3 NIV)

While the new birth is necessary at the beginning, it is only the beginning. We must not think that because we have accepted Christ as Savior and therefore are Christians, this is all there is in the Christian life.

In one way, physical birth is the most important part in our physical lives, because we are not alive in the external world until we have been born. In another way, however, it is the least important of all the aspects of our life, because it is only the beginning and then it is past.

After we are born, the important thing is the living of our lives in all their relationships, possibilities, and capabilities. It is exactly the same with the new birth. 

-- Francis A. Schaeffer in “True Spirituality”

#4908

A CHANGE OF MIND AND HEART

“Jesus replied [to Nicodemus], ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’”  (John 3:3 NIV)

We believe in conversion.  But what is it?  It is the most basic transformation in life.  It is a revolution at the heart of one's being.  It is the new birth.  It is not a natural growth but a supernatural rebirth.

For selfish persons, conversion means a basic change in the center of their commitment.  Self is dethroned; Christ is enthroned.  For those who measure success and failure in dollars and cents, the new birth means the reign of Christ and of His standards.  For those who put their highest trust in political organizations and in the might of arms, conversion means seeing in Christ the only hope of the world.  To those who are crippled by failure and despair, conversion means absolute trust in the healing ministry of the conquering Savior.  In short, we are born of the Spirit when Christ becomes the master impulse of our life.  And we enter into this new life at the moment when we take all that we know about ourselves and lay it trustfully before all that we know about Christ.

Conversion or the new birth, then, is a basic change of mind and heart.

-- Bishop Mack Stokes in “Major United Methodist Beliefs,”  published by Abingdon  Press, Nashville, TN.   Used with permission.


#4794

SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION

Every animal on earth has a set of correspondences with the environment around it, and some of these correspondences far exceed ours. Humans can perceive only 30 percent of the range of the sun’s light and 1/70^th of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Many animals far exceed our abilities. Bats detect insects by sonar; pigeons navigate by magnetic fields; bloodhounds perceive a world of smell unavailable to us.

Perhaps the spiritual or “unseen” world requires an inbuilt set of correspondences activated only through some sort of spiritual [awakening]. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” said Jesus (John 3:3 NRSV). “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit,” said Paul (1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV). Both expressions point to a different level of correspondences available only to a person spiritually alive.

-- Philip Yancey in “Seeing the Invisible God”


#4692

NEW LIFE IN CHRIST

“There is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 3:22b–24)

The process of salvation involves a change in us that we call conversion. Conversion is a turning around, leaving one orientation for another. It may be sudden and dramatic, or gradual and cumulative. But in any case it's a new beginning. Following Jesus' words to Nicodemus, "You must be born anew" (John 3:7 RSV), we speak of this conversion as rebirth, new life in Christ, or regeneration.

Following Paul and Luther, John Wesley called this process justification. Justification is what happens when Christians abandon all those vain attempts to justify themselves before God, to be seen as "just" in God's eyes through religious and moral practices. It's a time when God's "justifying grace" is experienced and accepted, a time of pardon and forgiveness, of new peace and joy and love. Indeed, we're justified by God's grace through faith.

Justification is also a time of repentance -- turning away from behaviors rooted in sin and toward actions that express God's love. In this conversion we can expect to receive assurance of our present salvation through the Holy Spirit "bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8:16).

-- George Koehler in “United Methodist Member's Handbook, Revised” (Discipleship Resources, 2006)

#4561

REWIRING THE BRAIN

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 NRSV)

Faith is unlearning the senseless worries and misguided beliefs that keep us captive. It is far more complex than simply modifying behavior. Faith is rewiring the human brain. We are literally upgrading our minds by downloading the mind of Christ.

-- Mark Batterson in “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars”

#4383

NO GROWTH WITHOUT PRUNING

A sentence in one of the books [I was reading on osteoporosis prevention] struck me: "Like all living tissue, bone is constantly being broken down and reformed."  The words seemed to apply not only to our bodies but to the perpetual Christian emphasis on brokenness.  Repent!  Confess!  Acknowledge your sinfulness!  I grow tired of this continual retracing of steps, impatient for the beckoning road ahead.  But it was the word ‘living’ that leaped out at me.  It's living tissue that is continually torn down and rebuilt.  As long as my relationship to God is alive, this biological fact seems to suggest the tearing-down process will be part of it.  The confession of sin, the admission of guilt, will go hand in hand with renewal. ... There can be no growth without pruning, no rebirth without death.

-- Elizabeth Sherrill in Journey into Rest


#3400

DYING AND REBIRTH

It is through dying to concern for self that we are born to new life with God and others; in such dying and rebirth, we find that life is lent to be spent; and in such spending of what we are lent, we find there is an infinite supply.

-- Glenn Olds


#3241