Made New

The new year is finally here, and we all know what that means. Everyone is claiming things, speaking things, promising things, making resolutions and ultimately believing that this year is going to be different. “This will be your year.” I have heard that said to me so many times in the weird week between Christmas and New Years. That is what everyone says, but what is this year really going to be? The real question is what is God going to do this year in and with me?

Every year for the past several years, God has given me a word or a phrase around this time. Something He is doing in me at the time. I don’t really ask for it and I never sit and wait for it to come, but every year He whispers and He puts something in my heart. This year’s came a few days ago as I rested from the holidays. It started with some verses I had seen across a few days, and then when I sat down and opened my journal one day my heart just heard the words “Made New”.
I don’t know if this is just for me or if anyone else is getting the same message, so I am just going to share some of what this means to me. God is doing something new in me. He is going to make me new. He can and does make us new continually, if only we will let Him work. If we are willing to step aside and sit down and let Him take the controls for a while, He is going to do new things in us and through us. Not only does He make us new, He renews our strength and joy and life. He rebuilds what has been torn down, using the broken pieces to form a new and perfect whole. All this requires nothing of us but to sit down and rest in His work, surrendering to His will and trusting His wisdom to take care of us and fulfill His perfect plans for us. And when He does call on us to join in what He is doing, we simply obey.
The scripture has a lot to say about being made new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 carries the promise that “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old is gone and the new is here!” Because we are in Christ, we have already been made into new creations. That is part of our identity in Him. And just as He has started the process of renewing and transforming us, in the words of Paul we can be “confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on into completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). We are made new in Him, and yet we are still in process of fully becoming what God intends for us, and that process is what we experience day by day, year after year, until Christ returns. That is what I am holding on to for this coming year: the promise that He is going to do be doing new things in me.
I saw the verses Psalm 8:3-4 the other day, and was reminded of just how awesome God’s care for us is. The verses say, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” The same hands that formed the world, the same voice that spoke all of creation into existence, belong to the same God who chooses to care for me and to call me into His presence. Who better than the Creator of the universe to renew us and make us new?
As I thought about these things and read through several scriptures, another word that kept coming up was “restore”. Restoration is a big theme for God throughout history, so it should be no surprise that it is something He longs to do in our lives as well. Isaiah writes that “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31). Perhaps we haven’t fully received the fulfillment of that yet. Sometimes we still grow weary, and sometimes we still feel faint. I started off the first day of this year really struggling and not feeling like myself at all. The weight of the last several months, or perhaps even longer, sneaks up on me from time to time and overwhelms me, like when someone knocks the breath out of you. The medicines my body needs to heal and prepare for the future drag me down and make it hard to get up. Yet, He renews our strength. We may not get the total fulfillment of this promise here on earth, but we do get to experience times when He makes it possible for us to soar and to run when it shouldn’t be possible. Peter says in 1 Peter 5:10 “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
God also promised restoration to Israel, even in her unfaithfulness and punishment. He promised through Hosea 2: 14-15 that even though He would let them suffer for their rejection of Him, “But then I will win her back once again. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt.” The rest of that passage is a beautiful picture of God’s planned restoration of His people to Him, and I believe that He also does the same in us, whether our suffering is from our own choices or not. Restored. Made new. That is what my soul desperately needs this year, and that is the promise I will hold on to. That I can rest, and let Him care for me, let Him make me new and do new things in my life. That He will renew my strength and my peace, and remind me again of His love and care.