Those mattress ads that show you all the creepy cooties that lurk in your mattress give me the shivers. The magnifying glass graphic hovers over the little dust mite beasties and a solemn voice intones, “Dust mites and shed skin cells accumulate in your mattress…blah, blah, blah.” I shudder, change the channel and try to think of something clean and new. Truth is, though, we do shed cells all the time.
“I’m not the woman I used to be.” Almost every cell in my body gets cycled to the trash, so to speak, so that what made me up physically the day I was born is long gone. The “real me” is still there… but somehow the “housing” keeps changing.
In the spiritual realm it is a little more complicated. My soul –the “real me”—exists. It IS. It doesn’t alter. When I was conceived, I was conceived in sin. The “real me” was born spiritually DEAD. The weight of Adam’s sinful rebellion had fallen on me just like it has on every human being since the Garden. I was on my way to bearing the wrath of God Almighty on my sin. But, God in His mercy chose to give me spiritual LIFE. He raised the “real” me from spiritual death to eternal life.
That action was His alone. He worked in me to know and see my sinful and hopeless condition. He gave me the faith to believe that Jesus-God in the Flesh- died in my place under His holy wrath. He gave me a “makeover.” (2 Corinthians 5:17- “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come.”) And that is where this week’s promise comes in.
God has covenanted—PROMISED—to make me know His law, to know His holiness. He has changed that old, dead “me” for an alive and new “me.”
Ezekiel 11: 19-20 explains this transaction so I can see that I really am new, not just “improved” or “revised.” It explains what being new gives me the power to do. Listen:
“And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people and I shall be their God.”
“I am not the woman I used to be.” I have a new heart. It is written on with the finger of God. (2 Corinthians 3:2-3) It enables me to do what pleases Him. I don’t have to live under the tyranny of my sinful “old self” or the torment of the enemy of our souls. I am ALIVE! I am FREE! I am God’s child! He is my God! He did this for me! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Question: Are you the woman or man you used to be? Or are you God’s person, with His holiness written on your heart?