This is the time of year when retailers prey on our longing for a fresh start. They promise a new you if you buy their products, follow their rules. There’s a good chance you already know from experience that’s not going to cut it. You won’t get what you want with a fresh wardrobe, a juice cleanse, or a new diet. You won’t get it through hard work, or even good intentions.
The promise of real and lasting change can’t come from someone who ultimately is only interested in what your wallet can do for their bottom line. It can only come from someone who cares about you and your well-being. Your heart and soul.
The questions is, do we really truly believe that God can change a life? Or do we think it’s up to us to clean up, straighten out, get our act together? Dead men can’t do anything about their condition – only God can breathe new life into them. This is what we are without Christ.
But what can we be with Christ?
We can be loved. We can be rescued. We can be restored. We can be made new. We get a fresh start with a new heart and a new mind.
God doesn’t want us to be stuck in our old ways of thinking, acting, living. Those ways never worked for us in the past, and they aren’t going to start working for us now. Instead He makes us new persons so we can start over. He changes our condition, our standing, our future. It isn’t a limited time deal and isn’t tied to the calendar. Any day, every day, we can begin again.
Real change, lasting change, happens when God enters and transforms what is into a new reality. What could be. What was intended to be.
Those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun! All this newness of life is from God, who brought us back to himself through what Christ did. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18