Ever ask, "why is everything going wrong in my life?"

(A man I trust once told me that the bigger the view you take, the better perspective you’ll have….)

WHEN THINGS went bad all those years ago, everything was ruined or killed or cursed.  It was like an invisible Tsunami that hit everything, only you couldn’t see the wave and all the damage wasn’t immediately obvious.  But it changed everything.  We all died because from then on our spirits were separated from God (life without God is death, but if you’ve never had life you wouldn’t know the difference; like a phone with no service, it’s there, but it’s dead, disconnected).  The human body began dying (no, it didn’t drop dead right away; we get to experience guaranteed progressive wasting away, and then die!).  And the whole earth fell down and was cursed and started decaying (things rust and go to seed and degenerate and spoil and get messy if we don’t maintain them).  What a mess.  Death, death, death.  You know how when the ‘fridge or the TV goes out you calculate is it better to fix it or replace it?  This is so bad God doesn’t even try to fix it.  There’s no repairing what’s ruined.  There is replacement.  So when I trust what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross, I get a new Spirit.  Then after I die I’ll get a new body.  And in the end the whole earth will be made new.

IT SEEMS God's way of fixing and improving is to let the old be dead, and to bring in the new.  Sometimes He seems to want the old to realize it’s dead, and give up trying to be alive, before He brings in the new.  So to prove that it’s dead, He lets bad things happen to the old’s efforts to stay alive.  It might happen in a marriage or family relationship, or at work, or with money, or maybe health, or with feelings and emotions.  It might not be that there’s anything wrong with those things, or that He wants to get rid of them; it’s what they’re being used for: a substitute for God.  So they get messy and frustrating, to prove they can’t really replace what God wants to be for us.  He might use a thing we need and that He wants to give us, as a thermometer to show us our temperature with Him.  If we’re bullheaded, it can take a long time.  Sometimes it can take a long time even when we’re not bullheaded. 

IT’S EXCITING to replace the old car with a new one.  But, if you’re the old car and they take a sledgehammer to you so that you feel and experience death and the need to be replaced, and you’re starving for relief, that might not seem exciting.  But, really it is, because the birth of a new trust in something trustable is way more exciting than a patch on something old just to keep it running.  Maybe this is a little like that. 

Comments

[JD Wetterling]

For a guy who spends his time under a dirty hood, you're an eloquent dude. This is a beautiful, powerful modern paraphrase of an old eternal truth. God bless you, bro.