We Are New

Apr 20, 2021    Austin Andrews

You are new.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

We are in our last few days in dealing with our Moving Forward series. We are going to examining 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. Every one of us needs a new beginning in some way, a fresh start in some area of our life. And this pandemic quarantine ending is a perfect time to allow God to fill us with new life and for us to begin to move forward.

May you get a real sense of hope today as we seek the heart of God together.

This is a time for us to ground ourselves in the love of our heavenly Father. God almost always takes transitions and uses them to our advantage. He desires to continually make us new. Remember...

Lamentations 3:22-24
22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease. 23 Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”

I realize and I hope you too realize that God’s desire is to free us from our bonds and allow us to live that “full” life that Jesus promises us in John 10:10.

Every day is a new day for me to begin again and if I string these days together then I will be able to take a step closer to Jesus every day. So during this last year whatever has stilted your emotions, controlled your thoughts and gave birth to poor choices doesn’t have to win the battle of your mind any longer. Whatever wound that has remained open and festered, can be cleansed and healed.

God is ready to meet us right where we stand. He meets us at our worst, our greatest source of weakness and pain. We often try to meet God at our best, but we need him most when we are at our weakest.

Remember this one very important fact, in Christ we are new!

Triple D: In Christ we are new, and the fact that each day can be a new beginning is scriptural, so what prevents you from doing so? Take a few moments and thing about this and answer honestly. How can you address this for your benefit? For me, I have found my greatest enemy is me. At times I simply struggle to believe that I can do it, but if I keep my focus on God, I realize it isn’t up to me.