How to Leave a Legacy - Psalm 127

What will we do in this world that will be important when we die? Little will be left to mark most of our existence. Even tombstones disappear eventually. Our names will be forgotten on the earth not long after our passing.

There is only one thing of value that will survive our death—our legacy.

It’s not what we build that we leave behind, but the legacy we leave in others that really marks our passing.

What is a legacy? Webster gives two definitions for legacy.

“1. a gift by will especially of money or other personal property:

“2. something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.”

Wealthy families work very hard at leaving behind a physical legacy. Poor families don’t expect to leave behind much of material value. But whether we are rich or poor, we need to think about our legacy. What are we giving our children? Are we helping them to survive in life?

When my children were young, I determined before they left the house that I would give them three things—my three “c’s”—college, car, and computer. It might not be an ivy league college, the computer may be an old Windows XP, and the car might not have a radio or air conditioning, but I wanted them to have all three. Mostly I achieved that.  That was their physical legacy.

But in the end, physical legacies don’t matter much. They can use them to get started, but after that they are on their own. It’s the spiritual legacy we leave behind that really matters. Our spiritual legacy are the values, faith, and ethics that we want to pass down. These are the all-important part of our lives that will live on after them. 

Most of what we know will be of no use to our children. Much of what I learned as a child is not obsolete. But the values that I learned as a child is still valuable. I may not need to know how to balance a checkbook or to fix a carburetor, but I still need to know who to worship. 

The problem with many parents is that they are investing their time, money, and effort into building the wrong legacy for their children. They are giving them a legacy of unimportant values and things, and not investing in a legacy that is important.  We are investing ourselves into things that will please them now, instead of what will guide them later. 

We want them to have material things. Did you know that the mortgage debt in the United States is more than eight trillion dollars? It would be a lot less if we didn’t have bigger houses than anyone else in the world. Yet we think that we must have big houses, to give our children more space to live. Our student loan debt is more than two trillion dollars.  Yet we think we must borrow this in order to be successful. Yet big houses and more education has not made us happy—if anything, it has made us less happy. The legacy we are leaving our children are massive debts and household upkeep expenses. 

The psalmist says it is in vain. We work hard to get ahead, but it doesn’t make us happy. We leave behind legacies for our children to squander.  The only value to our labor is the love we put into it.  There’s no sense trying to claim our service as necessary. “Vanity of vanities” said the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity.”

All our planning and saving will guarantee that we will leave anything behind. But if we invest in our children’s spiritual upbringing now, then we will leave behind people who influence the future on our behalf. 

The biggest part of building our legacy is having a relationship with them. The psalmist declares: “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.”

The singer tells us that “children” are our true legacy. “Children” may also refer to those we have trained and discipled for Him. We will not all produce physical children, but we can leave a legacy of people we touch. They are the ones we influence, mentor, and coach along the way. They are the keepers of our legacy when we are gone. The line of people we touch is the temple we leave for God. The greatest churches are like matchstick houses compared to the beauty of God’s grace in a single heart.

Worship and reverence are caught, not taught. Our children catch it from us when they see us behaving as if God is important. What we teach may be forgotten, but our love and character will be remembered.

The psalmist compares children to arrows. Arrows projectile weapons. They extend our power over a long distance. Our children are the arrows of our legacy. They can extend our influence over decades, and to the ends of the earth. That’s why we need to be intentional about raising them. It requires our utmost care and attention.

Here are three things to keep in mind when raising children in the faith.

First—aim them well. Intentionally attempt to influence your children in the right path from their earliest age. I don’t mean just correct and rebuke them. That may change how the child acts on the outside, but it doesn’t build a lasting legacy unless we also change their inside. Honesty, genuineness and love are more important to shaping the inner child than curfews and restrictions. We want them to want to copy our behavior.

When you aim an arrow, you don’t just learn how to point it. You first have to check your stance.  You aim with your head, feet, and torso, as well as your arms and eyes. In archery, the way you stand is most of the game. 

The same thing with aiming children. If we want our children to do right, we must do right. They are more likely to follow what we do than what we say they should do. 

Teach your children to trust the Lord by demonstrating it. If you don’t want your children to be worriers, learn to overcome your own worries, and show them how. We do not cause them to be afraid, overcome your own fears. Don’t just take a child to church, learn to pray for your children. Don’t just buy children a Bible; read it with them and in front of them, and discuss what you read. Our children need to know we practice what we preach.

Second, let them go. What good is an arrow if it stays on the bow? Children need to have adventures. Encourage them to seek their own path. Encourage them to seek God’s will for their own lives, without dictating what we think it ought to be.  We cannot always know what they will do. Our job is to build God’s character in them, not to dictate the precise path our children will take. Christians do not have to be told that the world is a dangerous place for children. We see the news daily. There are dangerous temptations everywhere. It is a mistake, however, to hold our children too closely. God did not give us a spirit of fear.[1] If God protects and guides us, it stands to reason that He will also protect and guide our children. Controlling their lives will not protect them from the world nearly as well as praying for them and trusting Christ to protect them.

Parents ought to love their children: and children their parents. But to place the parent-child relationship above our relationship with God is idolatry. When our desire to hold our children impedes their opportunity to be independent servants of God, we have done nothing to help them or ourselves.

When the arrow is gone, get another one.  “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” The Pilgrims recorded that when they first met the Indians, each warrior carried a quiver of fifty arrows!  If we had a quiver full of children, that would be a lot of kids!

If you want to leave a legacy, get some more! I don’t mean physical children, but children of the faith. Those we lead to and disciple in Christ are just as much as physical children are. Once our children have been launched, we can still raise up the children of faith.

We can mentor youth. We can evangelize. We can work with the disadvantaged. These children are just as much our legacy as our physical children.

Before we can leave a legacy, though, we must receive a legacy. The legacy we have received is through God through Jesus.  He has given us the legacy of eternal life. Do not neglect to receive what God has given, the gift of eternal life in Him. That same legacy is the most important thing we can leave for others, and the most important thing we may receive before we die. 

---

[1]

How to Leave a Legacy - Psalm 127

What will we do in this world that will be important when we die? Little will be left to mark most of our existence. Even tombstones disappear eventually. Our names will be forgotten on the earth not long after our passing.

There is only one thing of value that will survive our death—our legacy.

It’s not what we build that we leave behind, but the legacy we leave in others that really marks our passing.

What is a legacy? Webster gives two definitions for legacy.

“1. a gift by will especially of money or other personal property:

“2. something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.”

Wealthy families work very hard at leaving behind a physical legacy. Poor families don’t expect to leave behind much of material value. But whether we are rich or poor, we need to think about our legacy. What are we giving our children? Are we helping them to survive in life?

When my children were young, I determined before they left the house that I would give them three things—my three “c’s”—college, car, and computer. It might not be an ivy league college, the computer may be an old Windows XP, and the car might not have a radio or air conditioning, but I wanted them to have all three. Mostly I achieved that.  That was their physical legacy.

But in the end, physical legacies don’t matter much. They can use them to get started, but after that they are on their own. It’s the spiritual legacy we leave behind that really matters. Our spiritual legacy are the values, faith, and ethics that we want to pass down. These are the all-important part of our lives that will live on after them. 

Most of what we know will be of no use to our children. Much of what I learned as a child is not obsolete. But the values that I learned as a child is still valuable. I may not need to know how to balance a checkbook or to fix a carburetor, but I still need to know who to worship. 

The problem with many parents is that they are investing their time, money, and effort into building the wrong legacy for their children. They are giving them a legacy of unimportant values and things, and not investing in a legacy that is important.  We are investing ourselves into things that will please them now, instead of what will guide them later. 

We want them to have material things. Did you know that the mortgage debt in the United States is more than eight trillion dollars? It would be a lot less if we didn’t have bigger houses than anyone else in the world. Yet we think that we must have big houses, to give our children more space to live. Our student loan debt is more than two trillion dollars.  Yet we think we must borrow this in order to be successful. Yet big houses and more education has not made us happy—if anything, it has made us less happy. The legacy we are leaving our children are massive debts and household upkeep expenses. 

The psalmist says it is in vain. We work hard to get ahead, but it doesn’t make us happy. We leave behind legacies for our children to squander.  The only value to our labor is the love we put into it.  There’s no sense trying to claim our service as necessary. “Vanity of vanities” said the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity.”

All our planning and saving will guarantee that we will leave anything behind. But if we invest in our children’s spiritual upbringing now, then we will leave behind people who influence the future on our behalf. 

The biggest part of building our legacy is having a relationship with them. The psalmist declares: “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.”

The singer tells us that “children” are our true legacy. “Children” may also refer to those we have trained and discipled for Him. We will not all produce physical children, but we can leave a legacy of people we touch. They are the ones we influence, mentor, and coach along the way. They are the keepers of our legacy when we are gone. The line of people we touch is the temple we leave for God. The greatest churches are like matchstick houses compared to the beauty of God’s grace in a single heart.

Worship and reverence are caught, not taught. Our children catch it from us when they see us behaving as if God is important. What we teach may be forgotten, but our love and character will be remembered.

The psalmist compares children to arrows. Arrows projectile weapons. They extend our power over a long distance. Our children are the arrows of our legacy. They can extend our influence over decades, and to the ends of the earth. That’s why we need to be intentional about raising them. It requires our utmost care and attention.

Here are three things to keep in mind when raising children in the faith.

First—aim them well. Intentionally attempt to influence your children in the right path from their earliest age. I don’t mean just correct and rebuke them. That may change how the child acts on the outside, but it doesn’t build a lasting legacy unless we also change their inside. Honesty, genuineness and love are more important to shaping the inner child than curfews and restrictions. We want them to want to copy our behavior.

When you aim an arrow, you don’t just learn how to point it. You first have to check your stance.  You aim with your head, feet, and torso, as well as your arms and eyes. In archery, the way you stand is most of the game. 

The same thing with aiming children. If we want our children to do right, we must do right. They are more likely to follow what we do than what we say they should do. 

Teach your children to trust the Lord by demonstrating it. If you don’t want your children to be worriers, learn to overcome your own worries, and show them how. We do not cause them to be afraid, overcome your own fears. Don’t just take a child to church, learn to pray for your children. Don’t just buy children a Bible; read it with them and in front of them, and discuss what you read. Our children need to know we practice what we preach.

Second, let them go. What good is an arrow if it stays on the bow? Children need to have adventures. Encourage them to seek their own path. Encourage them to seek God’s will for their own lives, without dictating what we think it ought to be.  We cannot always know what they will do. Our job is to build God’s character in them, not to dictate the precise path our children will take. Christians do not have to be told that the world is a dangerous place for children. We see the news daily. There are dangerous temptations everywhere. It is a mistake, however, to hold our children too closely. God did not give us a spirit of fear.[1] If God protects and guides us, it stands to reason that He will also protect and guide our children. Controlling their lives will not protect them from the world nearly as well as praying for them and trusting Christ to protect them.

Parents ought to love their children: and children their parents. But to place the parent-child relationship above our relationship with God is idolatry. When our desire to hold our children impedes their opportunity to be independent servants of God, we have done nothing to help them or ourselves.

When the arrow is gone, get another one.  “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” The Pilgrims recorded that when they first met the Indians, each warrior carried a quiver of fifty arrows!  If we had a quiver full of children, that would be a lot of kids!

If you want to leave a legacy, get some more! I don’t mean physical children, but children of the faith. Those we lead to and disciple in Christ are just as much as physical children are. Once our children have been launched, we can still raise up the children of faith.

We can mentor youth. We can evangelize. We can work with the disadvantaged. These children are just as much our legacy as our physical children.

Before we can leave a legacy, though, we must receive a legacy. The legacy we have received is through God through Jesus.  He has given us the legacy of eternal life. Do not neglect to receive what God has given, the gift of eternal life in Him. That same legacy is the most important thing we can leave for others, and the most important thing we may receive before we die. 

---

[1]

Walking in the Spirit - Romans 8: 1-8

I came to Christ full of doubts and questions. It took years for some of those doubts to be answered, and decades later some of them still return. I’m far from a perfect Christian. Nevertheless, God has only gradually helped me to grasp the assurances and promises that keep me going and growing. Many things in the Bible are still a puzzle to me. Many things I now understand have come only after years of thought and study. 

One of the ideas that has always puzzled me is the idea of “Walking in the Spirit.” What does it mean to walk in the Spirit?  There are a lot of misconceptions about this.

Walking in the Spirit is not being perfect. When I was in college, I was exposed to the doctrine of “Christian perfection” or “crisis sanctification”. This is the belief that after you are born again you should experience a second crisis moment called “the filling” or “baptism” in the Holy Spirit.” After this experience, you are “perfect”--you don’t walk in the flesh but in the Spirit. In a moment, your faith is perfected.

I thought I had that experience. But it did not make me perfect. I still fell back into the old sins just as easily as I did before.

I will not criticize people who claim to have had this experience. There is no doubt that many of them show definite evidence of being touched by the Holy Spirit. But none of the Christians I know who claim this extraordinary experience show evidence of being perfect. They still get irritated. They still have moments of weakness. They still sin.  The idea of anyone achieving an experience can change a person so that they perfectly walk in the Spirit is misleading and untrue. We work towards Christian perfection, but we never achieve it in this life. We can be led by the Spirit, but we do not follow perfectly.

Paul begins this passage with good news for all us struggling saints. God has given us amnesty. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” As Christians we are not condemned when we fail--- Period! There is no sin so heinous that it is an exception to God’s forgiveness. You have been given full and complete amnesty from God because you have believed in His son Jesus and have chosen to follow Him. You don’t have to be perfect to be accepted by God. When you aren’t perfect, you are forgiven. Even on your worst days, God won’t cast you aside.

Walking in the Spirit is not acting Spiritual all the time. Sometimes I meet people who act more “Spiritual” than I do. They’re always talking about the Lord. Some of them speak as if every thought in the mind is Godly, and every word out of their mouth is an oracle of God. They would get dreams and visions all the time, and everything they did seemed to be divinely guided.

Frankly, people like this tend to get on other people’s nerves. Despite their claims of divine guidance, it soon becomes clear that they still can be wrong and make bad decisions. But every decision they make they think is a direct revelation from God.

Sometimes, their faith is genuine. There are people who are closer to God than I am. I am grateful for those people, and admire them. But often, people who are claiming constant divine guidance just sound unconvincing. They aren’t hypocrites, they are just operating under a misunderstanding of what walking in the Spirit means. Being spiritual is faking a smile, quoting scriptures or have a holy-sounding tone of voice. I get the feeling that many of these people are simply pretending, putting on a spiritual mask, because they think that’s what God expects. They have been told that the way to be holy is to fake it until you make it. They aren’t trying to convince everyone that they are spiritual giants—they are trying to convince themselves. Such people need to understand that God does not expect this of them. We don’t have to pretend to be holy to walk in the Spirit.

Walking in the Spirit is not a feeling. Some people believe that if they aren’t happy all the time, rejoicing in suffering, and feeling gushy love towards their persecutors, that they must not be spiritual.   They are convinced that God is a voice in their head, not an eternal Creator. They believe when they get that warm feeling inside it must be God. But we can get a warm feeling inside from a lot of things—jokes, friendship, and alcohol. That doesn’t make it God.  We also get bad feelings for a lot of reasons—sickness, disappointment, grief, or fatigue. That doesn’t mean God has abandoned us. Feelings can be a terrible idol when we confuse a feeling of God’s presence with God Himself. When people trust in feelings, they dare not admit to anything but holy feelings, or they feel they have lost God.

The Holy Spirit exists independently of our feelings. Even on our worst days when God seems farthest from us, He is still there. He exists outside of our heads, and when we are walking in the Spirit, God is with us even when we have doubts and frustrations.

Walking in the Spirit is not acting spiritual all the time. God is with us when we are sleeping, eating, laughing, paying bills, and working. He is not so jealous of us that we must be looking at Him. God is not codependent. God loves to look at us being ourselves.

Walking in the Spirit is not being right all the time in our choices, actions, or doctrine. Many still equate walking in the Spirit with political or doctrinal correctness. But Christians make mistakes and have differences about all kinds of things. That doesn’t make us unchristian.

Prior to the Civil War many Christians supported slavery. Looking back over time, it is difficult to believe they did, but they were deceived.  Many of my Christian ancestors saw nothing wrong with using and selling tobacco, or supporting racism and segregation. These were real Christians--they just happened to be wrong. 

Christians differ on many issues—baptism, predestination, church government, and the gifts of the Spirit. We can’t all be right. That is why we have so many different kinds of churches. But examining the lives and spirituality of Christians across the spectrum of Christian belief, any reasonable person would conclude that these differences seem to have little or no connection to the sincerity of efficacy on their belief. There is so little difference in the behaviors of Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Pentecostals and independents, that it becomes obvious that doctrinal correctness does not bring a greater connection to the Spirit, and the doctrinal error on minor issues is no impediment to walking in the Spirit. God hasn’t made everything clear to us, neither does He impose His will upon us by micromanaging our lives. He warns us about big mistakes, but leaves us to figure out the small stuff. 

So what is walking in the Spirit? Walking in the Spirit is having the imitation of Christ as our ultimate go concern. We want to follow Him in all ways.   

In 1896, Charles Sheldon wrote In His Steps--the biggest bestseller of his time next to the Bible. The book was about what it meant to imitate Christ in all in our many walks of life. In the Fourteenth Century, the bestselling book was Thomas AKempis’ The Imitation of Christ.  In the 1990’s people wore bracelets saying WWJD—“what would Jesus do?”  Walk in the Spirit for a Christian is seeking to think, act and feel like Jesus. 

Walking in the Spirit is being validated by the assurance of His love. A person who seeks Jesus’ approval does not need anyone else’s. No one can please everyone, but we needn’t try. But when we love someone above all others, then we care what they think and we work to please them.  We may not always know how to please Him, and we often fail to live up to our goals of pleasing him, but we try.

Walking in the Spirit is putting Him first. The first commandment of the Ten Commandments is “You shall have no other God’s before me”--which means “God comes first.” 

There are lots of ways we keep Him first.  Tithing is one--giving God first priority in our money, and Sabbath keeping is another. So is making a commitment to go first into God’s house. Daily devotions are another way of saying this. Put God at the top of your list of things to do in the morning. Start every way in His presence with prayer and Scripture reading. Religion is just a way of reminding ourselves that God comes first. 

Walking in the Spirit is a voluntary surrender to Him over and over in every day and action in our lives. It’s not about supporting the church and it’s not about getting blessings, but keeping Him at the top of our priority list, putting the adoration and imitation of Christ first above everything else. 

Walking in the Spirit really is a pretty heavy responsibility! But we can do it because whether we succeed or fail He continually loves us. Romans 5: 8 tell us “For God demonstrated His love to us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God loves us when we make mistakes, but also when we deliberately rebel against Him. Christ died for sinners and failures.

God’s primary way of thinking about us is through love. Someone said if God had a refrigerator, our pictures would be on it! He never forgets to love us. In fact, he paid the ultimate price to demonstrate that he loves.

God is patient with our imperfections. He is never abusive or harsh. He corrects us, but gently. His goal is always to make us happy. In John 10: 10 Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” Walking in the imitation of Jesus is not a burden, but a path to a happy life.

We can do it because God is strong enough to rule us. When we make God our Lord, then we are trusting in someone big enough to rule us. Bob Dylan sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” Our goal in life is to serve the person most capable of taking caring of us. That person is Jesus. He is the one who is most capable of providing all our needs.

That’s what it means to walk in the Spirit. However, it’s not all what it means. It also means having the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

But that power will have to be the subject of next week’s sermon. 

A New Beginning - Genesis 8

So far, the story of the flood has been a dark one. But now it gets better. The disaster is over in Genesis 8, and the rebuilding begins.

 We experience the same thing in the disasters of our lives. Suffering comes to all of us. When it does, it challenges everything we think or feel to be the truth. But then it passes, and we can see God’s grace again. We lose a job and find another one. A marriage breaks up, but we pick up the pieces and start over. We discover after the disaster that we really are resilient, and can start a new life.

Dr. H. Norman Wright wrote an excellent book called Recovering from the Losses of Life. In it, he describes the passing of a crisis like a trip through a valley. The downward slope is the beginning of the disaster, usually associated with a loss. The disaster may be of our own making, or it may happen through no fault of our own. Sometimes, it just happens. Think of it like falling off a cliff. At the bottom, it seems as if we will never get out. We try to fix things, but they just get worse. We usually experience depression, even despair. But in time, we usually gain hope, and start to take a few tentative steps into a new beginning. We fall back a few times. But with God’s help we can start to rise again. 

Genesis 6-8 is a model for this process.  Genesis 6 is the beginning of disaster as Noah prepares for it. Genesis 7 is the realization of the disaster as the floods come and all is destroyed. Genesis 8 marks the new beginning. Dry land appears, everyone comes out of the ark, and God marks the covenant with a rainbow.

The same thing happens to all of us when we go through the suffering phase of life. We try to anticipate the problems ahead, but we can never realize how bad they are until we are in the middle of it. But then the crisis passes and a new life begins. It is a continual pattern of destruction, growth and renewal. Here are some basic things to remember in a crisis.

First, be prepared. Disasters usually come without warning. Noah was warned about the approaching flood. I’m not talking about physical preparation, but spiritual preparation. Are we prepared for things to go differently from what we expect? We can avoid many, (but not all) disasters by simply obeying and keeping in touch with God.    

Second, realize that disasters always get worse before they get better. When things fall apart, the ramifications of the fall are felt for a long time, like ripples in a stream. There is the first crisis, then there is the effect of that crisis on everyone we know, and finally there is the second-guessing and questioning that goes on for a long time afterwards.

Third, things are usually longer and harder than we expect. God told Noah that the rain would last forty days and forty nights. He probably thought that on day forty-one, everything would return to normal. It didn’t. It was a hundred and fifty days before the floods subsided.

Fourth, you may not know that God is there, but He is. In the story of the flood, Noah hears God before the flood when he was told to get ready. He heard Him after the flood when he came out. But during the flood, there is no record of Noah hearing God. You would think that this was exactly the time Noah needed to hear God the most! But God is either silent, or Noah can’t hear Him through the noise.

Just because we don’t hear God at a particular moment doesn’t mean that God isn’t there. Trouble covers up the voice of God.

When we are going through a crisis, most of our emotional energy goes towards the crisis—worry, pain, fear, or hurt. That leaves very little emotional energy left over for anything positive, such as love, or feeling secure. Our feelings towards God and the people we love go to nothing. That doesn’t mean God isn’t there, or that our loved ones are not there. It just means that we are no longer able to experience them.

Noah was in the ark for five months without sunlight or fresh air. Imagine being locked in a box for months with animals! The sun is still above them in the sky, but they couldn’t see it.

God’s presence is the same way. He’s there, though we cannot see Him. We’ll see Him again when the clouds start to part. We have to get through our pain before we can begin to experience God’s love again. He never leaves, but the clouds make Him invisible.

Fifth, God’s assurances come first through small things, not big things. Noah and his family needed assurance that there was an end to this, so they sent out a raven. It returned home with nothing. A week later, they sent out a dove. It also returned. A week later, they sent out the dove again. This time, it came back with an olive branch. That little bird and tiny branch was a sign that there was still dry land.

An olive branch is small symbol and it came only after three weeks of trying. But it was enough to give them hope. 

Never give up hope. Never think the answer isn’t coming. God may take a long time to bring the answer, but the answer comes. Hold on to the little assurances and God will give you big ones.

Sixth, when we come through the crisis, it’s always into new world. When Noah’s ark finally landed, the world had changed.  Things were a mess. There was a lot to rebuild. But there was also hope. The world they were going to build was to be better than the last one. It wasn’t the same as the old.

Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that the world we live in is going to last forever. But don’t make the mistake, either of thinking that we won’t last forever. We will and we do. The world passes away, so that the new world can come. 

Sixth, God’ renews His covenant with us. At the end of it comes the rainbow. The rainbow is a sign of the new covenant that God makes with Noah, that He will never again flood the earth with water. It is a sign of renewal of life.

God leads us to the place where we must rely upon Him again. 

Have you ever told yourself that you are too old to start over?  I have. It’s human nature to want to hold onto the old. But God says in Revelation, “Behold, I make all things new!” God is constantly leading us into a new world.

Actually, God doesn’t give us a choice in the matter. We have to begin again, whether we like it or not. God takes away the old, so that we can begin new. But when we begin again, He renews His covenant with us, so that we can know He is still our God.

People who study the church tell us that Noah’s ark is one of the most common symbols in ancient Christianity. The flood represents the punishment that comes with sin. The hiding in the ark represents the hiding of the church in Christ. The waters symbolize the waters of baptism washing away the old. The emerging from the ark is a sign of resurrection and the start of a new beginning. 

Jesus’ death on the cross is like the sign of Noah to us. It is a sign that God makes all things new. By His death, He puts to death all the sins of the past and all the troubles of the past. He gives us a new, and ever-renewing life.