He Makes All Things New
He Makes All Things New
In the midst of our struggles, when we feel imprisoned by the old—specifically, old habits, old predispositions, old ways of thinking and old choices that try to come back to haunt and shame us—God makes all things new. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come: “The old has gone, the new is here” (2 Cor. 5:17).
This is an indisputable, inconvertible, irrefutable, once-and-for all truth. The old HAS (past) gone, the new IS (present) here. It’s also a truth we have to remind ourselves of daily.
Dina, one of our amazing New Life Recovery Program ladies, knows all too well the battle between believing truths over lies. “Every single day, I have to remind myself of what God says about me, versus what the enemy says me,” says Dina. “If I don’t, if I’ll fall back to my old ways of thinking … and eventually my actions will follow those thoughts.” Dina takes this “be-transformed-by-the-renewal-of-your-mind” mission seriously. It’s why you see her steeped into her Bible reading for hours at a time. You could call her a fanatic, or you could call her one smart woman. (Both terms would be okay by her.)
Masquerade Ball
Sure, truth is truth and lies are lies, so it should be easy to distinguish between the two, right? Not really. That’s because lies love to masquerade as truth. Compounding the problem is that lies originating from the Father of Lies (are there any other kind?) usually sound uncannily like our own voice. They tell us things like, “It’s too late for you,” “You will never change,” “You’ve messed up too badly,” … or the most insidious lie of all, “There’s something uniquely wrong with you.”
Really, it would be laughable if millions of believers didn’t actually buy those lies.
Imagine instead of that steady stream of slander siphoning the truth from our thoughts, we heard words like, “Your end WILL be better than your beginning” and “My grace is ALWAYS sufficient for you” and my personal favorite, “There is something uniquely wonderful about you!” The thing is, we COULD hear that voice—the voice of our loving Heavenly Father who is ALWAYS speaking—IF we didn’t allow that “other” voice to drown Him out. Really, it’s up to us. It’s why we’re instructed in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “demolish arguments and EVERY pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive EVERY thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
It Is Written
Even Jesus was not immune to the devil’s accusations. During Jesus’ 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, Satan questioned His identity with the words, “IF you’re the Son of Man …” Jesus’ reply to every temptation thrown at Him was always predicated by the same three words. “It is written …”
We would be wise to employ the same strategy. That’s because it works. The lies we hear in our head (that are sometimes deafeningly loud) are not real, but they are relentless. They also differ with each of us. After all, “the accuser of the brethren” has had centuries of practice tailoring those lies to our unique vulnerabilities. But the truth of God’s Word does not alter. And neither does His love. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we [you] are” (I John 3: 1-2)!
