Stumps

Good morning,

My father was not a great landscaper.  Basically, when he had our home built, there was no money for fancy foliage.  I was a toddler then.  I remember when the hedge of boxwoods was planted in the large, long planter in front of the house, years later.  The most maintenance work that was done in those days was to trim them and mow the grass.   My husband on the other hand, makes the yard work a creation of art.  At our first home, he planted crepe myrtle trees.  Then, in January, usually, he pruned them down to stumps.  I came home one day to find that he had done this, and was horrified! He had killed our lovely trees!

But, no.  Out of those seemingly brutalized and dead-appearing stumps came shoots, and then branches, and then, unbelievably, gorgeous flowers a few months later.  New life came from the seemingly dead.

11 

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;

    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

2 

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—

    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

    the Spirit of counsel and of might,

    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—

Isaiah 11:1-2

Wouldn't you have expected Jesus to be born from a perfect family tree?  A tree with no imperfections?  Yet, the Bible says he sprang forth a Branch from the stump of Jesse's family, a family whose pedigree was hardly sterling.  There was no silver spoon in David's mouth.  He was the youngest, almost forgotten son.  NO ONE would have predicted that the Life who was the Light of Men would spring from David's roots.

Yet, this is what God does - - - He takes the forgotten, the small, the seemingly insignificant, the hopeless - - - and He regenerates, redeems, restores.

Until we met God, our spirits were like that stump.  The Bible declares that we were "dead in our sins" (Ephesians 2:1).  Although created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) there was no hope for us to be restored to God, regardless of our schemes, plans, promises, sacrifices...no hope.  What did God do?  He brought life to the stumps of our lives, through His Son. He irrevocably saved us, just as centuries earlier He grabbed hold of that young shepherd boy, David.  Covering him with His Spirit, He transformed that boy into a mighty king, making him into a man who pursued God with his whole heart.  He anointed that boy the physical ancestor of His only begotten Son, our Savior.

Beyond the miracle of our salvation, through faith in Jesus, we often find stumps in our Christian walks. They are not always resplendent ones.  Most of us have areas we consider dead.  They may be a relationship, a project, a career, a hopeless situation.  We are confronted with what look like lifeless stumps.

Oh Believer!  God is there!  His life is in you, so that your stumps may soon live again.  There is resurrection power through Him, and He is in you.  Seek Him this Advent season and ask Him to reveal Himself to you through those stumps in your life.  Fix your eyes on Him.  Ask Him to show Himself mighty through your challenges and even "failures".  Ask Him to show you glorious, new shoots as you sink your roots deeper and deeper into Him.

Father, we give you our stumps, asking that You reveal Your glory to us through them today.  Even if we see no new growth yet, help us to trust in You, that You have a purpose for every one of them and that Your Spirit within each of us, Your children, is quietly at work.  Faith: the evidence of things unseen.  Please grow our faith in You today, Lord, as we wait this Advent season.   In Jesus' name, amen.

Hello "New"!

Good morning!

Part of the human experience is "dirtying things up".  Houses don't stay clean.  Babies don't stay "changed".  Our cars tend to become "rolling trash heaps", especially in busy families.  It's just a constant battle to keep things clean!

Perhaps that is part of the allure of "new".  New things are clean and fresh and usually beautiful. They smell so good.  They look so good!  We love them.

But, more than the sensory gifts of "new", newness represents a fresh start.  Don't we often want this? Like the little child who erases her pencil scribbling on her classwork to the point she tears a hole in the paper, we long for a new, clean sheet...a second chance.  We long for redemption.

Today's focal point in the Scriptures is 2 Corinthians 5:17, a beautiful jewel in yesterday's passage:

So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away--look, what is new has come!

(NET)

This verse bring hope to the weary, the beaten down, the despairing.  It hands a crisp, new sheet of paper to the frantic soul, searching to be made clean.  When we accept Jesus as our Savior, a spiritual transaction takes place between us and Him.  It is as if He hands us a fresh start.  At that moment of our salvation, He places His Holy Spirit within us, forever, takes away all of our sins, forever, and (metaphorically speaking) puts His indelible stamp of ownership on our foreheads.  This transaction brings a transformation: at that moment, we become a new creation of His!

Now, this may seem confusing because this verse does not mean that we will not ever again battle the filth of the human condition.  "Becoming new" does not take away our humanity.  Unfortunately, our in-born, sinful nature co-exists alongside our new, re-born spirit.  So, while He forgives all our sins -- past, present and future, we will continue after our salvation moment to lapse into sin.  We will get somewhat dirty, and will have to regularly come to Him for confession, forgiveness, a spiritual bath, if you will.  Still, the victory overall is ours, because we belong to Him, who has triumphed over sin and death.

Although we will still continue to struggle against sin, Christ "remembers our sins against us no more" (Hebrews 8:12).  Isn't that a precious thought?  So often, we find it hard to accept His forgiveness, his offer of cleansing and newness, because others will not forgive us, or because we won't forgive ourselves.  This is one of Satan's traps.  God has promised that He removes our sins "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12).  While this does not usually mean that we escape the earthly consequences of our past sins, we do in Jesus Christ escape the eternal death that is payment for them.  In our omniscient God's mind, they are eternally "forgotten".

Part of knowing Christ is that we look at things in a new way.  For one thing, in our salvation experience and then resplendent walk, our view of Jesus Christ changes.  Before coming to know Him, our view of Him was tainted by Satan's lies and the world's false portrayals.  Once He lives inside of our hearts, we come to know Him, spirit to Spirit, ours communing with His.  The unbelieving world stops at examining Jesus's earthly life; but we, His own, plumb the depths of His Spirit's riches.  The world is mesmerized by a baby in the manger.  We worship a risen and glorified King on His heavenly throne.

Therefore (as Paul would say), because of this, "and so", when we receive that new sheet of clean paper, that fresh start, what we write on it is different.  We not only view Christ differently, we view others differently also.  We enthusiastically embrace our spiritual gifts .... gifts He gave us to use in the ministry of reconciliation, blogged about yesterday.  We see people not as family, friends, or acquaintances, but rather as people for whom Jesus gave His all, so that they, too, can become a new creation, so that they, too, can receive forgiveness for sins and eternal life in Heaven.

The salvation experience is a glimpse of Heaven, actually.  As humans, we love newness because it gives us a taste of the eternal newness, completion and perfection we will experience that moment we leave this earthly body and come face-to-face with Him.  The image of God in every human, Believer or not, longs for that, because it is how He created us from the very beginning.  He created us to long for the peace which is only found in Him.

Do you know Him?  I don't mean "know OF Him".  But, have you encountered His offer of salvation and accepted Him into your heart?  If not, reach out to Him in prayer, asking Him to rescue you from sin and it's inevitable consequences (eternal death).  Only He is able to hand you that beautiful new start.  Reach out and take it today!

Father, I know that this post was meant for someone today who feels like there is no hope, that there is no escape from his or her past decisions.  But, Lord God, You are the God of the impossible!  It is only You who can "make all things new".  I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you took the payment for all my sins and gave me that "fresh start" so many years ago.  It is a "foretaste of glory divine" to know You and to walk with You, every day of my life.  In Jesus' name, amen.