Not Was New, But Is New

It is written, “if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation…” When you come to the messiah, you become new. That’s part of the truth, but not all. It’s not what the Scripture says. The Scripture doesn’t say, “ he becomes a new creation. The Scripture says, “he is a new creation.

There is a difference. If you only become new, at one point, as when you first come to the Lord, then you might stop being new after a while, and start getting old in Messiah, he is a new creation. That means you Are a new creation all the time. It’s the present tense.

You Are a new creation. The power of God never gets old. The new covenant never stops being new. Live as if salvation were new to you. Live as if you just got filled with God. Live as you just became new, and you will be. For if anyone in Messiah, he Is a new creation, and that’s good news. -2 Corinthians 5:17-

Just as when you first got saved yesterday -today. You Are just as much a new creation. Walk in the newness of life.

Disconnect From Distractions

If you don’t take time away from the world around you, you’re going to get pulled down by the world are you. -Erwin McManus-

One of the definitions of rest is to be free from anxiety or disturbance. At this time in our lives, we can easily find things that would disturb our rest as well as cause anxiety. They may be enjoyable in the moment and feel like they refresh us, but in the end, we are depleted from true rest.

Countless people are talking about different ways to disconnect in our ultra-connected world. Not everyone is distracted by the same things. What distracts one person is not a struggle for the next.

In order to break away from the distractions in our lives, we have to consider a couple of things. First, we have to know what distracts us. Those things that tear us away from the important because they either feel urgent or they are just fun to indulge in. And secondly, we have to be willing to lay down our agendas so that the most important people in our lives don’t feel like distractions.

Whatever that thing is that steals our peace and rest from us, we must set limits. Likely after reading that sentence, we all know exactly what it is. Instead of letting distractions keep us from rest and the most important people in our lives:

Maybe we dont open our computers for work while out kids are awake.

Or Choose to focus on the good instead of being distracted by worries of the world.

Set a specific ringtone for our family members and let the rest go to voice mail.

Choose not to watch television until the weekend.

Set aside our plans for the future so that we can live in the present.

Set time limits on certain websites, apps or video games.

If we find ourselves in a continual place of anxiety and feeling disturbed, we must decrease or even eliminate such things that cause us to feel that way. It won’t be easy. Anything worth having takes work and sacrifice. Let’s not go another day where we allow the distractions of this world to keep us from God’s best for us.

Sometimes, Being Strong Is Your Only Option

Sometimes, life put us in situations where you only have two options: Either giving up or being strong. Never give up because the best is yet to come.

I am writing about being strong because I’m in a situation where I have been ready to give up, throw in the towel as they say. I have managed to break my ankle in 3 places and cannot put weight on it for 6 weeks.

There are times in life when things don’t always go well. We feel like everything is against you and there’s nothing you can do about it. But then we realize something that we may not have realized before: that sometimes being strong is your only option.

Life often gives us difficulties so that we can learn to never give up. While we may feel helpless and wonder why crazy situations have to happen to us, we will see that we can make it through this and more.

The Story Of The Two Mice

Illustrated this concept of strength. Here’s a short story. It’s about two nice trying to get out of a situation they find themselves in.

There were once two mice that fell into a bucket of cream. They felt themselves sinking immediately. It was impossible to float for a very long in the thick cream. It was like being stuck in quicksand.

They swam around the edge of the bucket looking for a way out, but it was useless. All they could do was swim in place or let themselves sink. It was becoming harder and harder to stay about the surface.

One of them said, “I can’t do it anymore. There’s no way out of this stuff, we can’t keep swimming forever. Since we’re going to die anyway, I see no reason to prolong the suffering. There’s no point in dying of exhaustion for a futile effort.”

Having said that, the mouse stopped kicking it’s legs and was swallowed by the thick, white liquid.

The other mouse, more persistent or perhaps more stubborn, said: “That‘s no way to go! If I’m going to die, I’m going to do it fighting to my last breath. I don’t want to did a second before my time comes.”

He kept treading in the cream for hours and hours. Then, from all his kicking and struggling, the cream began to turn into butter.

The surprised mouse was soon able to get enough footing to jump and reach the edge of the bucket and get out.

Why give in? We all have a survival instinct that urges up to keep going, but many people are like the first mouse and just give up. Perseverance and seeing things through is how to get out of any situation, however, complicated the situation.

Never Give Up

Being strong is your only option. It’s true that we sometimes give up on things because we don’t have enough motivation. But imagine one of the worst situations you could ever experience or has happened to you. At times like these. You only have one option- Be Strong.

When A River Is Not A River

A river isn’t a river when it stops flowing. If a river stops moving, whether by freezing or by becoming stagnant, it’s no longer a river. The life of God in us is compared to a river-rivers of living water flowing out of our innermost being. If you stop following in God, your walk will become stagnant or frozen.

Therefore, if you want to be really alive in God and be filled with the abundant life of God, you can’t stay the same or you’ll get stagnant. You have to get going and flowing. You’ve got to keep growing and changing into His image. You might be all frozen up right now. In the power of God, start breaking the ice of your spiritual rut. Break the ice of your worship.

Ask God to lead you. Do what you know He’s leading you to do. Break the ice with that person you haven’t forgiven or that unsaved stranger and tell them about God’s love. Get moving, get flowing, break the ice, and the river will flow. Because the abundant life is a river, and a river must flow.

Become an ice breaker today. Get it flowing and keep it moving in the power of God.

Are You Forsaken

Psalm 22 in the Bible begins with the most anguished cry in human history: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These are the words that Jesus took on His lips at the depth of His suffering on the cross. His suffering on the cross. His suffering was unique at that point as He offered Himself up for the sins of all people. And so, we have tended to see this cry as unique to Jesus. But such an approach to these words is clearly wrong. Jesus was not inventing unique words to interpret His suffering.

Rather He was quoting Psalm 22:1. These words were first uttered by David, and David was speaking for all God’s people. We need to reflect on these words and the whole Psalm as they relate to Jesus and to all His people in order to understand them fully.

The psalm begins with a section dominated by agonized prayer of David. David is expressing in the first place his own experience about feeling abandoned by God. Here is the most intense suffering God’s servant can know-not just that enemies surround him and that his body is in dreadful pain, but that he feels that God doesn’t hear him and does not care about his suffering. And this is not just the experience of David. It is the experience of all God’s people in the face of terrible trouble. We wonder how our loving heavenly Father can stand idly by when we are is such distress.

Yet, even in this extreme distress, David never loses faith or falls into complete hopelessness. His anguish leads him to prayer, and the first words of the prayer are “My God.” Even in his suffering and wondering about God is his God. Amid his anguish, he articulates that faith. He remembers God’s past faithfulness. “In you our fathers trusted, they trusted, and you delivered them. To you, they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and we’re not put to shame.” Then David remembers God’s past care in his own personal life: “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you I was I cast from by birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” A recurring spiritual remedy in the Psalms is to fill the mind with memories of God’s past faithfulness to assure us of His present faithfulness.

We see David’s hope also in the earnestness of his prayer for present relief. He knows that God can help, and he turns to God as the only one who can help him. “But you, O’ Lord, do not be far off O you my help, come quickly to my aid!” We must never stop praying; even in our deepest distress.

In John Calvin’s commentary, he concluded that a sense of being forsaken by God, far from being unique to Jesus or rare for the believer, is a regular and frequent struggle for believers. He wrote, “There is not one of the godly who does not experience in himself the same thing. According to the judgment of the flesh, he thinks he is cast off and forsaken by God, while yet he apprehends by faith the grace of God, which is hidden from the eye of sense and reason.” We must not think that living the Christian life is easy or that we will not daily have to bear the cross.

This Psalm is not only the experience of every believer, but it is also a very remarkable and specific prophecy of the suffering of Jesus. We see the scene of the crucifixion especially clearly in the words, “A company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet-I can count all my bones-they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them and they cast lots.” (Auction off) Here we see that indeed this Psalm comes to it’s fullness realization in Jesus.

Jesus knew this Psalm and quoted its first words to identify with us in our suffering since He bore on the cross our agony and suffering. “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has power over death.” (Hebrews 2:14) Jesus does deliver us by becoming our substitute and sacrifice for our sins.