I can remember when I was a kid there being a young married couple in our church named Ray and Dorcas. They were good people. Ray and Dorcas were as sincere Christians as you could find. Yet, whenever my dad gave an invitation for people to receive Jesus as Lord, Ray and Dorcas were always first to respond. I learned later that they saw each altar call as an opportunity for a fresh start.
As an adult, I’ve wished many times for a fresh start. Not that my spiritual commitment or relationship has changed dramatically, but somehow things inside me get warped, twisted, hard, and dry. Bad habits develop. Negative ways of thinking, feeling and responding surface that do not fit with who or what I want to be. I’d like to wipe them out and start again, with a sense of freshness and restoration. I’d like to make a change.
Think about how Israel finally returned back to the promised land after years of exile and rebuilt the temple. God was faithfully doing new things among His people. Yet as time passed and the Messiah had not come, the old patterns of life, old values and materialism, crept in. God raised up a man named John the Baptist as a voice calling Israel to repent…to change.
One day as John was baptizing people, he spotted some Pharisees and Sadducees standing in the baptism line. He shouted at them,
”Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskin’s going to make any difference? It’s your life that must change, not your skin!” (Mt 3:7-9, The Message)
I know it sounds harsh, but fresh starts and newness in our lives is more than ceremony. It requires changes inwardly that affect our outward actions. This is what repentance is. The result is that God gives us newness of life that never goes away. Like Ray and Dorcas, you’ll come back again and again.
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