Begin Again

by Tom Gilbert
Published January 2, 2006

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" (Revelations 21:5 – NIV)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 – NIV)

This is the time of year when people reflect on their lives and start making resolutions for the New Year. Resolutions are fashionable, and lets’ face it, they can be useful if practical. However, so many resolve at the start of the year to lose weight, eat healthier, do more good things in their lives and so forth, but then a few months go by and nothing much has changed.

I think the key may be to use the true spirit of Christmas as the starting point. Consider how God’s entry into our world through the humble beginning of the Messiah as a small and helpless little baby points to the importance of relying on God to renew us. If God Himself as flesh and blood – as one of us – had to rely on the help of others and God’s love and grace transmitted through loving parents, then all of us surely need it.

The Christ child grew, of course, and became an adult man with a life fully lived and a short three year ministry that gave us some radical and amazing teaching. This teaching includes instructions to live humbly, love others (especially the suffering and less fortunate), pursue the path of peace through non-violence, and to be blessed by recognizing our shortcomings and knowing that even so God loves us unconditionally. Jesus shared the Good News with others so that we would know we have a loving God interested in us. Jesus also tied together this message of the Father’s love with the importance of loving ourselves and others. You can’t separate the parts of the message; they work hand-in-hand.

The solution for each of us is to have the power of God working in our lives. We can resolve all we want to change our bad habits and to do things that are good for us and others, but it is impossible to do it successfully without God’s help. We can’t do it on our own; the needed power is not there. How God’s help comes to us when we are willing to receive it can be wonderfully surprising. We discover that it comes from other people who are living on the power of God’s love. This is why community and fellowship are so important. God works in, with and through us.

Becoming a new creation is another way of saying “Born again”. But it is not a one-time event. It is a process, a transformation, from living on our own willpower to relying on God’s power. When we make resolutions at the beginning of a year, no matter how genuine our resolve, we must change. Most of us are resistant to change and we have great difficulty mustering the willingness. Asking God for the willingness to change us for the better is an essential part of the surrender process. Surrender is the beginning of becoming something new. The old you must die and the new you rises to live in union with God.

On a practical level it helps when we learn to do simple things that lead us to this ongoing surrender. Daily prayer and meditation are important. We all need quiet time when our own concerns can be laid aside and God can speak to us in the stillness of our being. This contemplative practice is not enough, however. We must go forth into action and more action.

The best action we take each day that most helps us in our process of becoming the new being – the whole and holy being – is in our involvement with others. How we treat others, especially those who are hurting and in need of our help, our forgiveness, our mercy and our love, is the visible demonstration of who we are. People will know Christians by their love. For far too long the world has seen so-called Christians but not acts of love.

No one of us can be perfect in our actions. All of us fall short of that perfection, but we still strive towards the goal of perfect love. God’s love is perfect and Jesus Christ lived that love as a model and example. Yes, He is the savior because He is the Son of God and the fullness of God. But Jesus is also fully human and if you look closely at the way Jesus interacted with others you will see that He didn’t spend a lot of time condemning sinners. He looked for the willingness of people to discover and admit their shortcomings, forgave them and then instructed to “go and sin no more”.

This is the message for us: if we stumble in our resolutions then we need to recognize it, admit it and begin again. That’s a new way of thinking and acting and a worthwhile way to start the year…the day…this moment.

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