Do you remember? Has it been too long since the taste of first things caused a sweetness in you? Then take a trip down memory lane and remember the things that made you smile, made you feel alive, and perceive all the the wonderful things of early adolescense, and young adult life that made you feel impervious to life's curve balls. I remember, the smells ands scents of flowers of Springs not tasted many times, the freshness and the lively way it made me feel. I remember first love's of friendships made, cars first driven, movies first seen, and first love. Now it seems rote, the experiences of life tumbled together, cynisism's felt, hearts's broken, and hard times too many to say, mixed together in the dough of life and expanded in my mind that presses those early times out.
But, there is hope! For all of life's troubles and experiences that tumble out of somewhere we cannot readily see, there is the hope to be born again! Yes there it is. What Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus, and the woman at the well, (The Samaritan), there was that which made new all over again. Born of the Spirit, as Jesus knew was the recipie for life anew. That which Jesus walked in every minute and every day and for three years to make the thirty three years of his life exceptional. What you say? Yes it is true. The Spirit of God poured out to you has the capacity to make you start all over again in a brand new way. And with it comes a 360 degree way of thinking. It will transform your thinking in ways that is counterculture to everything you have known up to this time. Though cliche in it's useage for our culture, born again terminology is exactly the word for a transformation that will make you again experience life anew, complete with the very things I mentioned above in the first lines of this blog. So do not lose heart in a world that is fast becoming hard to take with it's war's, catastrophes of nature, sadness of stories in the news, and families and friends split because if differences not mended in time to save relationships.
Christ was Messiah, savior, of men, women and children, to lead them into a different kind of living. Though we have to find it ourselves and sometimes it is a bit of a mystery how and why some do and many don't, yet it is true. We have to filter it through the Centuries of the Types of Christianity offered in our culture and pick and choose and wade through perhaps doctrinal mazes to get at it. How ever the purest way is to find those who have already been there done that and see the truth for your self in that. And begin to read yourself the Acts of the Apostles and the beginning of Pentecost and the early Church to understand the roots of our present day Christianity. Sifting through for yourself and coming to the right conclusions when reading and experiencing the Gift of the Holy Spirit will then shed light on what I am saying. And then over time again you will have to guard your heart against a hardning that comes with experience, even in being born again. Because you will now face the same trials, Jesus and his followers did, but you will know without a shadow of doubt that God is in it, and for you and beside you in all of it and you will have the newness everyday to find within you the life Jesus wanted for all of us.
Then comes holiness, sanctification, justification, and all of the Gospel's truth tubling in sometines to fast to to work on. And then you will find all the other people on the same journey as you perhaps doing what they can to reverse the course of a fallen nature, pouring into communities, families, and citizens the hope needed in your new found sphere of influence. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment