Becoming That New Creation in the Lord

Scott Williams had this post on his blog on June 24th.. I think it is the best article on what it means to become a new creation in God (2 Cor 5:17) when we make a commitment to follow the Lord. Each time I read it I get excited. It is long, but please read each word and let me know your thoughts.

Scott writes:

new beginnings - submitted

I Dare You To Move

“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (MSG)

A few summers ago, in the spirit of the family vacation, we all got in the car and headed out to the farm in Saskatchewan. We were nearing a small town in rural Alberta called Redcliffe when the fuel pump on the truck died. We coasted into the first little dive we could find and took a room at the local 5 star hotel. We knew it was a five star hotel because the stars were painted on the doors. There were four of us in a room that was, I kid you not, twelve feet by eight feet… for two days.

We soon learned all the wonderful benefits of a rural garage. They did not have any of our needed parts in stock. Jed, the mechanic with one good tooth in his head (and he wasn’t even taking very good care of that one!), explained to us the benefits of rural pricing and so we spent at least two hundreds dollars more than we would have had we had the repair done in a city. Finally, after more than two days of watching the wheat grow and chasing unknown arachnids around our hot hotel room, we begrudgingly paid our bill and were thankful to get on our way. We had done nothing but sit and stare and complain for what seemed like an eternity. No car, no entertainment, three channels on the television and Esso food for the first third of our vacation.

We no sooner cruised out of the garage and had gone only about 70 metres when we started down a steep hill... right into Medicine Hat. Travelodge’s, Canadian Tire Store, numerous full-service garages… the works. They had a Silver City Theatre, malls, pools... you can imagine it. Without a word of exaggeration, Red Cliff is right on the outskirts of Medicine Hat. We looked at each other and just started to laugh...

I often think of that experience and realize that it has several life lessons for me. The first and most obvious one is – bring a map! Only slightly less obvious than that lesson is the growing realization that many of us, myself included, often live on the edge of tomorrow and do not understand what is waiting for us just over the hill.

We settle for a life that we do not love and pine for a fresh start, but we do not actually get out of the hovel and start down the road into a fresh beginning. We are painfully aware that something is not right though we are unwilling to let go of the land we know and look forward to a shore we cannot see.

President Harry Truman used to tell the story of a man who was hit on the head and fell into a deep coma. He stayed there for along time. People thought he was dead so they sent him to a funeral home and stuck him in a coffin. At 2:00 a.m. all alone in this dimly lit room, he sat up and looked around. "Good night!" he said. "What’s going on? If I’m alive, why am I in a casket? And, if I’m dead, why do I have to pee?"

That story makes me laugh and it makes me think. How many times have I been unable or unwilling to understand what is going on? I have often become despondent because I can not understood God’s bigger plan for my life and feel shackled by the events of the past. Understanding that we can start fresh and be forgiven is a fact that many of us have a hard time ingesting. We constantly play the tapes of our past failures and convince ourselves that we are terminal. We lay in the casket and wonder if we can ever being truly alive again.

For many of us this is not just a platitude or a hypothetical problem. Like many of you, I live in a reality that I did not choose, and I’m regularly tempted to feel sorry for myself, blame someone else, or simply give up. The need for forgiveness and the belief for new beginnings gives many of us hope and help in a world that tends to condemn and pronounce judgment on us all the time.

Many years ago, as a white-water canoeing guide, I was often called upon to take groups across an infamous northern Saskatchewan lake called Nipew Lake. we always tried to get across Nipew Lake early in the morning before the waves got up. It’s a big lake and nasty from about nine in the morning until six at night everyday. It’s a long paddle. I’ve been stranded on the lake several times, taking refuge on islands or inlets.

We try to get on the lake by about six am. Usually that is evilly early but I have learned that if I sleep in, the price is too high. It is usually foggy on the lake and we are headed for a tiny inlet eleven kilometres away. I could not afford to make mistakes. I have learned how to read a compass. I know about things like declination and magnetic north vs. true north. My compass is worth several hundred dollars. When I’m in the fog and I have eleven canoes and twenty-two potentially dead people… I have learned to trust my compass, not my eyes. I don’t trust my ears; I don’t even trust my experience. I have tried to fake it in the past and gotten caught… a six hour detour.

If only I could trust gods promises like that… Not my eyes, not my ears, not even my experience…only his compass. Regardless of how I feel, regardless even of the past and my many failings, God forgives me. That forgiveness does not depend on whether or not I believe it, it just is. It does not matter how little I claim his grace, it is not dependent on anything I do, it is a simple fact. God gives me a fresh start. God forgives me. All I have to do is accept it… But often that is the hard part.

Lately I have been listening to a song called “I Dare You To Move” by Switchfoot. The words continue to challenge me and remind me that it is up to me whether or not I will grab hold of God’s promises of forgiveness and wholeness. Whenever I read or hear these words it stirs something deep within me…

Welcome to the planet, Welcome to existence. Everyone's here, Everyone's here. Everybody's watching you now, Everybody waits for you now…What happens next?

I dare you to move, I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move, I dare you to move
Like today never happened, Today never happened before

The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go? Salvation is here…

I dare you to move, I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move, I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before

When we were children there were few things more sacred than the “dare”. Like a Pavlovian dog I would stir to the challenge of the dare. If someone dared to me do anything, no matter how stupid, I felt compelled to rise to the call.

I dare you to move. I dare you.

I dare you to claim God’s promise of forgiveness and for once act like you are forgiven.

I dare you to start fresh right now. To live like you are truly alive. To stand up and let God give you the freedom of tomorrow, right now. I dare myself too.

I think the Rolling Stones said it well in their old song, “You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find, that you get what you need…”

Life isn’t perfect. In fact I’ve found it isn’t even fun for many of us. But the truth of scripture reminds me that God makes everything new. It’s up to us whether or not we want to live like that is true or not. I dare you to move.

When I read Scott's post it makes me think we have been emphasizing the wrong point for many years in the Evangelical Church. We continue to emphasize that accepting Jesus is the only way to heaven. We justify that belief by hammering the benefits of eternal salvation to people who attend our churches. I agree that Jesus is the only way to heaven, but I think we over emphasize the eternal benefits of salvation at the expense of the present benefits of a truly personal relationship with God. Heaven is important, it is our ultimate destination, but the journey to reach that destination happens today and only comes through our personal relationship with God each and every day. He is a God of second chances, and new beginnings. We just have to understand that it is our turn to act out on that each and every day of our lives.