Don’t Lose Heart
As we start getting older, our bodies begin to change.
Muscles might ache. Hair might gradually turn gray. Vision and hearing might eventually get less sharp. And we, or someone we love, might even struggle with significant or devastating health challenges.
The apostle Paul once offered some ageless wisdom to the believers in Corinth, Greece, which can still be helpful for us today:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV
Paul knew what it was like to face hard things; he’d been beaten, shipwrecked, snake bitten, and imprisoned.
Earlier in the letter, he’d said, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NIV)
The ripple effects of sin’s existence in the world might frustrate us physically, but it cannot touch us spiritually.
Whether you’re dealing with a serious diagnosis, physical shame, or are simply exhausted by the weight of everyday responsibilities, don’t give up. Your body might be aching, but God can still renew your spirit—day after day after day.
A New Beginning
New. What a beautiful word. Fresh. Something never discovered before. A beginning.
Is this what you are looking for? To be made new?
Isaiah 43:18-19 (NIV) says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
The prophet Isaiah wrote the book of Isaiah about 700 years before the coming of Jesus. This passage was written to the Hebrews held in captivity in Babylon, desperate to be set free. They were in physical captivity. They were also in spiritual captivity. Sin—the mistakes and wrongs that are the source of separation between man and God—was reigning over the hearts of man with no one to conquer it. But a way out was coming.
The last part of the passage says: “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
For a people lost in sin and separated from God, there was no way out on their own. But God made a way by sending His Son, Jesus, as the perfect sacrifice and ...