A Word for Our Arbor Family
When we were young, we were so rough on our clothes. We were 1980’s kids and we played HARD outside! When we wore holes in our clothes, my mom had some pretty creative ways to patch them up. One of my favorites was the pair of bright red sweatpants my little bro loved to wear. When he shredded the knees, my mom trimmed the red sweatpants to get ready for patches. Then she took another pair of teal colored sweat pants, cut two strips from them and used them to patch the red ones. The result was pretty ... unique.
It seems that Christians have this same response to our broken areas. We say, “I’ll seek God’s Word and apply His methods to this very broken place in my life.” But we don’t allow God’s Word to completely reshape us. We end up mixing our old nature with our new nature. God wants us to trade in our former lives and be completely transformed into new creations. We say, “You get to be Lord of this part, but I’m still lord of this other part." We don’t completely surrender to living in a new Kingdom. Instead, we pick and choose until we are a hodgepodge of surrender, looking more like Frankenstein’s Monster than the Bride of Christ. We love that He gave us a blank slate through Salvation, but Christ’s death on the cross is about more than just washing away our sins. It is an invitation to a whole new way of living and being. We aren’t just going through a car wash; we are offered a whole new car! I’ll share with you the verse that resonated so strong with me:
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” Mark 2:22
It seems that Christians have this same response to our broken areas. We say, “I’ll seek God’s Word and apply His methods to this very broken place in my life.” But we don’t allow God’s Word to completely reshape us. We end up mixing our old nature with our new nature. God wants us to trade in our former lives and be completely transformed into new creations. We say, “You get to be Lord of this part, but I’m still lord of this other part." We don’t completely surrender to living in a new Kingdom. Instead, we pick and choose until we are a hodgepodge of surrender, looking more like Frankenstein’s Monster than the Bride of Christ. We love that He gave us a blank slate through Salvation, but Christ’s death on the cross is about more than just washing away our sins. It is an invitation to a whole new way of living and being. We aren’t just going through a car wash; we are offered a whole new car! I’ll share with you the verse that resonated so strong with me:
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” Mark 2:22