As a child, I loved playdough. You could play for hours, squoosh it when you chose and start all over again.
As a teen, I spent a semester assisting a potter by prepping pieces for painting and glazing, learning how a color could go on muted and become brilliant after the heat of the kiln, and how each piece needs to be the right thickness for the task it is designed for.
It doesn’t matter in both cases (playdough or pottery) what the original state was, but that the work was done with the final design in mind.
Each stage in the creative process made the item NEW.
The same can be said about my love of dress-up as a child, and pretending to be someone new. I am not the same person within that I was when I first became a believer. God has been reshaping and molding me into who He wants me to become.
Fully His.
Yet He makes us new in such a way, He no longer sees the past mess we were. He sees us as new through Him!
The process may be uncomfortable at times, being shaped by the Potter. But His hands are loving as they clean, prepare, mold, heat and shape us anew.
I may appear unchanged on the outside to the human eye, yet God has freed me and done His wonders at making me new on the inside. Through Jesus’ blood, He sees me as clean, unblemished, whole and a new creation. Out with the old, and in with the new!
I love how this verse captures how He makes us new in Him:
“You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.” Colossians 3:9-11 MSG
“Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 3:10 NIV
May we toss off our old ill-fitting past and embrace the new wardrobe God wants to clothe us in!
#whoYousayiam #newcreation #hopefortheharddays
KARLA LEES 