A Nugget from New Life Network
Scripture for the Day (June 25, 2018)
Do not be surprised that I have told you, ‘You must be born again [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, sanctified].’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7-8, Amplified Bible)
Have you ever come to a place in your life where you felt like it was just too late for you to start over? You felt like you had just done too much, and went so far that even God couldn’t repair the situation. If so, this devotional is for you.
We have been in our present home for 16 years. One of my jobs is to keep the outside looking nice and I enjoy trimming and making sure the lawn is clean and cut. We have a lot of trees in our yard so I have to frequently pick up all the limbs and pine cones that litter the landscape when the wind blows.
My wife is the flower planter. She loves to plant all kinds of flowers that bloom and bring color to the yard. She is very meticulous about her flowers. There is one flower bush that she planted at least five years ago that was supposed to have these big beautiful blooms on it every year. Well, year after year she waited on it to bloom and it hardly ever bloomed. In the winter time it would die back and it looked like dead sticks but she would never cut it back because that is what the flower experts (whoever they are) told her not to do.
This last winter I was doing my thing in the yard cutting back all the dead limbs and when I came to her flower bush I just automatically cut it back to the ground. I didn’t do that for spite. I just did it because it looked dead. Well, when my wife saw it she was not happy. Why did you cut my flower bush back??? You weren’t supposed to do that!!!
Fast forward several months. I overheard my wife talking on the phone to one of her girlfriends about this particular flower bush. She said, “You are not going to believe it, my flower bush is beginning to bloom”. By the way, she never said a word to me. Today, as I was walking by that same bush and admiring the pretty new blooms, God spoke to me and He said this, “All it needed was a fresh new start”. The only way that fresh new start could happen was to cut away all the dead branches and all the previous non-producing growth. That is exactly what happens when we are born-again. We are made new creatures in Christ. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. You are now in a position where you can bloom and prosper in the things that God has called you to do.
The Apostle Paul (the very one that persecuted Christians and watched as they stoned Stephen to death) described it like this: Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)
A fresh new start is not impossible. In Christ, all things are possible. He can make you a brand new man or woman. He will cast your sins as far as the East is from the West and that distance is incalculable. All you have to do is believe. The price of admission has already been paid. All you have to do is walk through the door.
