Would you rather have a new outfit or someone’s discarded clothing? Would you rather have a new car or buy one that has been well used with high miles? How about a leftover dinner plate from the week before or a freshly made burger and fries? What if you were given the opportunity for a free all inclusive trip to the place of your dreams? Would you say no thanks, I’d rather wait until I can earn it all myself?
Matthew 9:16-17 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
As I read these parables this morning, I realized how often we choose to live our lives in the old. We recognize our need for the Lord. Often though, we want Him to fix something. Put a patch. Pour into the old dry container.
Instead, he is trying to give you something entirely new! His desire is to renew you, make completely new! We have to let go of the old! We get to choose. Take the grace. Own it. It’s free!
Those old, dry, crusty, areas of our life, he takes time to soften, make pliable, literally reform into new life for the new. Grace. Completely regenerated, if we allow Him the place and decide we want what He has to offer.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Ephesians 4:24 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Put on that new self, the new garment. Live in it, get used to it. Let it become your second skin. See yourself like He sees you.
Look in the mirror.
2Corinthians 3:16-18 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed(you can see). Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
You are changing day by day. I see Him in you. Do you see Him in you? It’s a perfect fit!