Cultivating The New Life
My family arrived in Rolla in August of 2017. Of course the move was saturated with the excitement of many new things: a new home, new culture, and new possibilities. However, one of the things that excited me the most was the new garden I looked forward to planting.
I chose the piece of ground that sat on the west side of the house. When spring of 2018 arrived, I anxiously went to work. I planted corn, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, basil, and many other things. My children were very small at the time and were filled with amazement as they watched the sprouts shoot up and then develop into plants that finally gave their harvest. It was amazing!
Then, the next year, the harvest came in again but it wasn’t quite as good. By the third year, the shoots barely came out of the ground. As it turns out, my neighborhood is built on a pile of fill dirt. It makes a decent foundation for a home but it contains precious little of the nutrients required to produce and sustain life. If I ever wanted a harvest moving forward, I would have to carefully cultivate the ground.
This is not so different from the establishment of the Christian life. Though we have all been created by God, the curse of sin has laid ruin to the viability of our heart. The world is filled with many wonders and science and innovation bring new possibilities to life every day. Still, we are continually frustrated in our search for peace and satisfaction.
Often, this is even the case for those who profess a belief in God and attend a church. We learn all the right stores and memorize all the right verses. We play Christian music in our cars and have the Bible app ever handy on our phone. Yet, we continue to struggle to resist the siren call to sin. Contentment and peace remain tantalizingly just beyond our reach.
The Apostle Paul diagnosed this problem long ago when he wrote Ephesians 4:17-32. He pointed out the futility to adopting Christianity as a “tips and tricks” approach to acquiring a satisfying life. It is an approach that tries to maintain the frame of our old life by interspersing it with some Christian habits and philosophies. This is not Christianity.
True Christianity is an entirely new life transformed by Jesus Christ. It requires fully embracing our Savior and systematically deconstructing our old life and habits through His grace as we put on the new that he freely offers.
Join us the next four weeks as we examine “Cultivating The New Life” in Ephesians 4:17-32.
February 16 – The Failures Of The Old Life – Ephesians 4:17-19
February 23 – Knowledge Of God Is Never Neutral – Ephesians 4:20-24
March 02 – Change Goes Deeper Than The Surface – Ephesians 4:25-29
March 09 – Be A Good Patient – Ephesians 4:30-32