By itself, the heart is full of deceit and evil intentions (Ref. Jeremiah 17:9). Through Messiah Yeshua, God gives us a “new heart” in place of the old one. He replaces the heart of stone with a heart of flesh. That “new heart” gives us a new desire to serve God and results in new affections where once we only desired to please ourselves.
The new creation results in a new way of seeing (Ref. Ephesians 4:23).
Your heart has eyes that can be open or closed. When the eyes of your heart are closed to the light of God, you stumble blindly through life, making one dumb choice after another. You fall into sinful patterns, you break God’s laws, you make the same mistakes over and over again, and you enter one dead-end relationship after another. When the eyes of your heart are shut, you lack moral vision because the light of God is shut out of your life. That means you can see and be blind at the same time. There are lots of people like that in the world. Physically, they can see, but spiritually they are blind.
But when you come to Messiah, you have eyes to see what you never saw before.
So we ought to pray, “Lord, thank you for making me a brand-new creation. Help me to live like one who has been made new from the inside out. Amen.”
We are new but not completely new all at once
All of us come into the world spiritually blind. But the kicker is, we don’t know it, which is why we continually do dumb things that hurt ourselves and those around us. We lie, we break our promises, we sin in the darkness, we harbor bitterness, and we pretend to be better than we are. Even after we come to Messiah, some of those patterns of sin stay with us. That explains why Believers struggle in so many ways.
Here is part of what I wrote to the woman who felt her faith was weak:
The issue is not how strongly we believe, because our faith wavers and our feelings change. The great question is this: Do you believe Yeshua did enough to save you completely? When he died on the cross for your sins and when he rose from the dead to give you new life, was that enough? Or do you need to add anything to what Yeshua did?
I pray you already know the answers. Yeshua is enough! His death is so vast, so great, so amazing that there is nothing that you or I could ever do to add to the value of what he did for us. If Yeshua is enough, then you and I can sleep well tonight.
God answers our weakness with the strength of his Son. If we are “in Messiah,” we are new creations. Crippling fear belongs to the “old things” that have passed away.
Messiah came to set us free. We shortchange the gospel when we apply those words only to unbelievers. Even the strongest believers (whoever they are) battle sin daily. If we say we don’t, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
We all need a pilot!
If we live in fear, we need a new perspective.
If we judge others according to the flesh, we need a new perspective.
If we stop praying, we need a new perspective.
It’s not wrong to pray, “Lord Yeshua, You have made me a new creation. Help me to live like it today.” That’s a prayer God will hear and answer. It means you believe 2 Corinthians 5:17 is true.
We all need a pilot. Thank God, we have one!
God help us to live like new creations because Messiah makes all things new.
Yes! In Yeshua’s Name. Amen.
