All things new

One of my new favorite songs talks about God making all things new. This topic keeps coming up over and over during the past few days and just now it was in my Bible reading in Psalms. I was thinking about it and I turned off the light and it occurred to me to think about the phrase in a different way...

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, God can make all things new.

 I Love that idea. God can make all things new. I have heard that phrase many times. I have contemplated it, claimed it, and prayed it for myself and others. My focus has always been that God can make ALL things new. There is nothing that you can bring to God that He can not fix. There is nothing too big, nothing too bad, nothing that will overwhelm Him. There is no life circumstance that can not be turned around. ALL things can be made new. We have all messed up. There is a time in everyone's life that choices have been made and we are left holding pieces. Things did not go as planned, but God can take any and all of it and make it new. I am so thankful that we have a big God...so big that He can encompass anything in our path. He can make it new...

But tonight it dawned on me that there is so much more...He can make ALL things new...but I think we need to look at...He can make all things NEW. When we accept Christ and He comes and inhabits our life, he does not come and clean up our sinful heart and our selfish ways and make himself at home in our old heart and our old life. It is not our old life now forgiven. It is not our old self on a different path. It is not just a makeover or a remodel...It is NEW. Not a better version of the old, but something completely NEW. He takes our old sinful, selfish heart and gives us something beautiful, wonderful and NEW.

Wow! That is an amazing concept. There is freedom in that newness. We do not have to try and conform our old ways into something pleasing to God. He gives us a new nature, a new life that IS pleasing...we don't have to try...we are new.

I heard Ed Young talking about this concept this week. He made the analogy that we are like old yucky crab apple trees and we produce yucky crab apples. They are bitter and sour and make you sick. When we accept Christ, He is the Golden Delicious Apple tree. He does not simply put His Golden delicious branches on top of our crab apple tree branches to cover it up. He cuts our crab apple tree to the tiniest sliver of a stump...then he takes His Golden delicious Tree, the whole tree roots and all, and plants it over the stump and lets the Golden delicious roots grow over and around our old stump until there is nothing left of the crab apple tree...all that it is left is the Golden Delicious apples and His tree.

I don't know about you, but this resonates in my soul. It is not Pam the sinner trying to be the saint. It is Christ's heart and soul living out through me...my NEW-ly created life, living out a purpose that was created for me. Christ in me and through me...ever fiber of my being His. ALL things NEW.

I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds too good to be true. Maybe even too easy...there is a part of us that thinks we need to constantly be struggling and working and beating ourselves up for past failures and past mistakes. That we somehow need to pay for the things we have done so that we can "earn" this new creation...but that is not the free gift that God is offering each of us. Now, don't get me wrong, we do have to strive and push ourselves to keep moving ahead...to keep on our new journey and there is are days when it is not easy...but we are not alone. and we are not our old selves...we are NEW and we are moving ahead and God is constantly working in us and around us everyday if we can be open to it. I have said this many times...the journey is not always easy, but it is always worth it. Embrace the NEW life God is giving you and go pour it out as a living offering to Him everyday...I promise, you won't regret it.