I started the process of working toward my next sermon, Sept. 7, last night. I have a working title: Extreme Makeover. I have a working summary: Working from fear to hope.
I have a scripture: Ezekiel 36:26: "I will give you a new heart and put new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."
And, well, I have coffee in a cup, steaming.
Dora is playing on the television, saying something about a rainbow ribbon.
And miles to go before I sleep.
What does it mean to have a new heart and a new spirit? Yesterday my daughter-in-law had a bit of a dispute with her boss. I won't go into details because it wouldn't help any of the interested parties, but the bottom line is she is in danger of either leaving or losing her job.
Is that a new heart? A new spirit?
To give further context to your thoughts, add the 25th and 27th verses: "Then I will sprinkle clean water on your, and you will be clean...I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances."
This week my dear wife, Mary, went to the doctor and her doc said Mary's blood sugar was, to coin a phrase for the tee shirts, "out of whack." It was terribly high. So, again we march into the canyon of high blood sugar, with high-blood marksmen having marked out the high ground ahead of us. New diet begun, vegi power and such, meds and all. We begin again. We've begun before. We shouldn't stop so that we have to start again.
Mary has been riding her bike each morning of the week. All signs are promising. A "new heart and new spirit" has begun.
But the question is always going to be whether we can keep it up or whether it is a respite in a storm of sugar?
The thing is, God is more than directly willing to give to us a fresh start, a new beginning, an Extreme Makeover. He gives to us a blood-washed life. He gives to us a pure water spirit bath, with us coming up out of the water a new creature. Says it right there in the Word. But from experience, which is also an ample teacher, I've seen that it all these good things take time.
Paul wrote to the persons at the church he planted in Corinth, "So then, if anyone is in Christ, that persons is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, the new things have appeared."
It seems to me that if we are going to be new creatures, if we are to seriously talk about change, we must talk about longevity, not even newness.
Go back to Saul's journey to Damascus. He was knocked off a horse. He life was changed. He immediately wanted to show the new Saul, but no one believed him. In Acts, chapter 9, we read, "When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple."
The heart was made new. The Spirit was given to the old person, making, the scriptures trueThe body, the actions, the complete newness would have to take time.
Extreme Makeovers are the beginning, it seems. The outcome, however, takes time.
Like, oh, two weeks or so... What do you think about Extreme spiritual Makeovers?
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