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 victorious conqueror of the sin man could not overcome alone. New. He came to make all things new.
Jesus is the way in the wilderness. He is the stream in the wasteland. He is the way when there is no way.
When you feel broken over your sin, trapped in addictions you can’t escape, overwhelmed by temptation, or frustrated by failure, you don’t need to try harder. You need to be made new. You need a way out. You need Him.
Today, you can be made new by Jesus. You don’t have to wait. You don’t have to try to cleanse yourself of your sin. Your transformation can begin today—and it begins with Jesus.
“And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not. And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself. The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine. Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said. And when he had thus spoken, one ...