a fleeting, yet significant, moment.

Driving my car this morning, I had a moment. I mean, for a second, I just...got what "being made new" in Jesus means. Not that I totally grasped every aspect of the concept, or that I will ever be able to articulate the understanding to anyone again, but I just had a moment.

Have you ever had one of those? When everything about what is happening aligns perfectly... the song you're listening to, the activity you're doing... it's all perfect so that God can use it to help you just... get something.

Well this morning, I was driving my car--

this is the first thing that set the stage for the moment.

I crashed my car two and a half weeks ago.

The front end was almost unrecognizable... crunched metal,

broken plastic, parts jostled around under the hood, pieces leaking...

it was a mess.

But here I was this morning, driving a car that looked like nothing had happened.

Brand new headlights, all the parts were where they were supposed to be,

with a shiny, fresh coat of paint.

I was driving a car that had been made new.

So this morning, I was driving my car to school, listening to Andrew Peterson's song, "All Things New"--

here's the second part of the moment.

If you really want to feel like you were there,

you can click on this and hear the song.

But the main thing is that

"My Jesus makes all things new"

is repeated throughout this song.

So this morning, I was driving my car to school, listening to Andrew Peterson's song, "All Things New". I had been thinking about re-creation and redemption... and then the combination of hearing "My Jesus makes all things new" repeated while driving my car that had been made new just made things click. I had a tangible example of something being made new, something that had been re-created.

In that same way, Jesus takes us as we are broken and makes us new. We can be as broken, crushed, and useless as my car after I had crashed it... but Jesus still takes us. He can mend what's broken, fix what's wrong, replace what's missing... and He'll set us back on course with a new hope, a right thinking, forgiven sin, a Lord that we can trust.

"And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." -Revelation 21:5a

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." -2 Corinthians 5:17

Hebrews

So I'm (slowly) studying Hebrews.

One of my favorite things about studying through a book of the Bible is noticing patterns. So far in studying Hebrews I've noticed the "Jesus is better than..." pattern, which is pretty awesome. Jesus is superior than the angels, He is greater than Moses, etc. Pretty sweet.

But another thing I've started noticing is that the author of Hebrews seems to be emphasizing the idea of doing in order to not do.

One place I see it is in 2:1: "Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it." The author is urging the readers to give special attention and concern to the gospel message that they have heard, more than simply acknowledging this. Otherwise, they will drift away from the gospel. They cannot be passive; they must do something ["pay much closer attention"] in order to not do something ["drift away from (the gospel)"].

And again, in 3:12-14: "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

Reading the author's train of thought, I picture this in my head:

sin --> hardened believer --> evil, unbelieving heart --> fall away from God

But he offers exhorting one another every day as the preventative for being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin... it cuts this whole thing off at the start. Exhorting one another daily seems to only happen in fellowship and community with other believers, an open and honest kind of community. So in this instruction, the author is urging his readers to be in fellowship with and exhort one another (do) in order to not get deceived by sin which (in time) leads to falling away from God (not do).

So often I'm tempted to think that it's to just not do things. "Well of course I'm not going to forget the gospel." "Fall away from God? That won't happen." I take a passive approach. But it's exactly that passive approach that is the danger. It's by getting lazy in our Christian walks that will lead us down the wrong path. The author of Hebrews sets up as an active, offensive approach that we must take. By being passive, these things [sin, forgetting the gospel, hardened hearts, etc.] will happen, so we must be on the offense... we must be actively pursuing the opposite of these things, in order to not do them. We must pursue fellowship, we must be in community and be exhorting one another, we must be paying close attention--studying the message, understanding the message, letting it change us.

We must do in order to not do.

Justin Taylor's Holy Week series

Last week, Justin Taylor did a series on week leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection. He arranged all the accounts of Holy Week in a day-by-day format. I thought it was really helpful, and I know that Easter was last week... but it's never a bad time to reflect on what happened that week--that Jesus died for our sins and rose again.

Here are the links to the blog posts:

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sunday

putting all of my eggs in one basket

"What kind of demeanor/character would you expect to see in someone who has fully yielded to Christ's lordship? How will this affect, for example, a person's happiness? His ambitiousness? Her peacefulness? What will this kind of person be like? What will be the effect on others?"

This was one of the application questions asked of this past Sunday's sermon preached on Matthew 12:1-14.

First of all, if you know me well, you know that I'm not a big fan of questions. I'm even less of a fan of questions that I think are "cheesy". But... I think questions (even cheesy ones) are an important part of growing spiritually--they make me think, and reflect, and even humble myself to respond with cheesy answers--so I'm trying to get better at enjoying questions.

This brings me to Monday, when I had printed out the sermon application questions, and was working through them in my quiet time. I came to this one. I deemed it "cheesy", decided to answer it quickly, and move on. But in processing the answer, I decided it was not a cheesy question at all, but rather an important one.

I started writing what I thought was a picture of a person fully yielded to Christ, and I ended up using the using the phrase "placing all of their eggs in one basket". At first I laughed a little (who the heck writes that?!) but then I thought about it, and realized it was actually pretty acturate, and actually beautiful.

A person fully yielded to Christ is placing all of themself in Christ. They are placing their hopes, desires, weaknesses, future, plans, etc. into Christ's hands, and trusting HIM with them. They are not saying "I'll hang out with Christ, and together we'll work towards my goal of becoming successful." They're saying "All I want is Christ, and He alone is in charge of my life. What He wills is what becomes." They are putting everything into His hands; trusting Him with everything.

Normally, "placing all your eggs in one basket" is considered bad advice; it's risky. But here, in this context, it's the least risky thing. It's freeing, even. You are putting everything into the hands of the only stable One in the universe. Essentially, you are putting all of your eggs into the only basket that won't break. And you are surrendering all of your worry about those eggs.

What's more freeing than that?