The Apostle Paul offers some wonderful words of encouragement to the Corinthians that still apply today in our sometime chaotic environment. The Apostle acknowledges that while we are still in our earthly forms, we will face temptation. His words do indeed encourage us to develop an eternal viewpoint, which will change our desires. But it doesn’t eliminate the reality of struggle while we are still in our earthly forms.
Often our thoughts gravitate towards the desire to start life anew. We say to ourselves, “If I could start life all over again, I would do things differently.” However, in reality, we cannot begin a new life. We must accept what we have in the present moment and find a measure of contentment with past experiences.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians that “if a person is in the Christ, he is a new creation; the old previous moral and spiritual condition, has passed away.” He goes on and writes “Behold, the fresh and new has come.” He was relaying to the believer that anyone who is joined to the Lord by faith is transformed into a new person, and their old life and habits are gone.
The phrase implies that a person undergoes a complete renewal in character and is a new creation with a new relationship with God. So, we must put to rest any notion about starting life anew without the engrafting of the Lord. In other words, as Paul writes “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.”
Paul’s message reveals that we can sometimes have desires that are different to God’s will. So, we need to submit every desire to him and allow God to change us. Every day, we need to pray for God to redirect the desires of our heart, just as Paul said he did. We may never become perfect at it in this life, but that should be our continual desire.
The soul singer Tyrone Davis famously sang “Turn Back the Hands of Time.” His implication was that he was lonely without his darling. So, he sang, “if I had the chance to start all over, I would be wishing today on a four-leaf clover. And leaving would be the last thing on his mind.” Well, none of us can start our lives over again, but we can become a new creation through the engrafting of the Lord. So be blessed and Never Give Up! Never Give Up! Never Give Up!
Dr. Walter Ghosten
