All Things New

This is somewhat a continuation of yesterday's post... I didn't want that one to be any longer than it was though :). I like for things to be clean. I am actually a person who finds some sort of weird enjoyment in cleaning the bathroom, but only because I like watching it become clean. I've been working on updating my house and making it my own, and it's a long process as I save money for different things and then actually find time to paint and all that. I've gotten base coats painted in my living room and kitchen. The living room coat was "interesting" to paint because it was a white base coat going on a white wall. However, there is already a big difference in the room because the walls are now incredibly clean. There were a few places where there were some chips of paint missing, places where dirty hands had touched the wall, and now they are all covered in clean, beautiful paint (I am adding a color over the white, fyi, just haven't gotten around to it). It's like my living room and kitchen have a new life.

I have never been one that can quote Scripture off the top of my head. I know people that seem to have a verse for anything and everything, they can even tell you where it's found. I can maybe give a poor paraphrase of a verse and just tell you that it's in there somewhere. A few times here lately I've noticed that a certain verse or group of verses will be on my mind a lot, so I always look them up to get clear in my head exactly what it says. "Oddly" enough I will end up needing those verses in a situation, or to share with someone...funny how that works, huh? The other day the verse that talks about becoming new creation came to mind, so I looked it up, and the whole passage around that verse stuck out to me.

"Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled Himself to us through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Something else about God that completely amazes me is that even though He knew long before I was born that I would do all sorts of things that would disappoint and hurt Him He still chose to create me. Before God even made people He knew that sin would enter the world, that the punishment for sin was eternal separation from Him, and that the way for Him to save us would be to sacrifice His only Son...AND HE STILL CREATED US! But He didn't stop at creation, He did send His Son, and through accepting His sacrifice we are made new, given new life, like my walls. In Isaiah it talks about how we are all unclean, that even our righteousness is like filthy rags (according to people much smarter than me the filthy rags are the equivalent of menstrual rags, which is pretty nasty...so you get the picture that we are dirty people?). However, in Isaiah it also talks about how Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and that by His stripes we are healed. (Side note: A recent new friend of mine designs and sells tshirts, and he has a pretty awesome one from that passage in Isaiah, check his stuff out at fhscmerch.storenvy.com...or find him on facebook under Bryan Conway :) I realize there are a lot of big words in all those verses, like reconciliation, iniquity, transgression..but it all boils down to He made us, we let Him down, He loves us and He took our punishment so that we can be made new (and clean!). I don't know about you, but I really felt His love for me pouring out of those verses in 2 Corinthians. But those verses don't stop with us being made new, it also says that we are to be His ambassadors, making the appeal on God's behalf that others be reconciled to Him as well. His gift isn't one for us to accept and then stop there, we need to be making it known to anyone and everyone we can. We've got THE BEST thing ever, and we should be sharing it with the lost and hurting world that could use a new, clean start!