New Creations {A Journal Entry}

Lord, I haven’t been consistent lately in my time with you. Vacations and being on the go isn’t good for me. I always think I can run on fumes, but that isn’t true. I always think that since I have been a Christian this long my days shouldn’t need to be as dependent upon you as they seem to be. But, again and again I prove to myself that I am a desolate wasteland without you.

Hmmm. I have never thought about it that way before.

Without you, I am a barren place, full of only sand, dirt and tumbleweed. Blown along by the wind, evidence of desertion.

Funny, the word “desert” and “desertion” and “deserted” all have the same root word. Things that have been left alone become deserts.

Wow. What a picture. I suppose even the fact that you would take something or someone who starts as a barren wasteland and make it lush into a garden or a growing soul is a proclamation of your greatness. Goodness. You are unable to do anything apart from your glory and the declaring of it. And I love it. A life changed by Jesus is a telling of your glory. A telling of your love.

Before you created everything, I imagine it was desolate.

Doesn’t it say it was formless, void, and empty? It does.
But then you spoke and it teemed with life and vegetation and light and moving things.
You created us, in that glorious arena, and we, too, teemed with life and light and moving parts.

But then we chose to sin.

And you gave us what we wanted.

And we became again desolate.

We became again as we were before you spoke. Void. Formless. Empty. Spirit hovering over, but no longer IN.
We went back to the prior state- rendering us as if you had never spoken at all.

As if you had never touched.

As if you had left us alone the whole time.

When we sinned in that garden, in essence we asked you to leave.

And you did. Sort of. You made us back into what we were-when all was without you-VOID. DESOLATE. EMPTY. Because we asked you.
We asked you to remove your touch, your presence from our lives. And we were returned to whence we came.

See, what we didn’t realize is that YOU are the life and light and vegetation and moving things. In you we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). So if we ask you to go, all of that leaves with you.

With you gone, all is desolate, void, and empty. Life ceases to exist.

We live on a deserted planet. Because we asked you to leave.

But again, you didn’t leave us alone. You saw our emptiness, the void in our eyes, the agonies of parched lands, and you came. AGAIN.

As I John says so poignantly: THE LIFE APPEARED.
This time when you came you spoke again and said to us, “I will make you a new creation again.”

But this time you didn’t have to start from scratch, you came to give us the opportunity of the Garden again, of life again, of light again, of growth again. You came to undo what we did, as much as could be undone.

When we sinned in that Garden, all was subjected to the curse of sin (Romans 8:18-22). Every flower and light ray and moving being. All was crushed. We all walk maimed now because of it. Every human being now has the need to be remade.

You being hung on that cross said for the second time, “let there be light” (I John 1:5-10). The Spirit will come back IN, now no longer just hovering over.

We can give you our curse! This time, rather than you giving us what we wanted, you will give us what we need.

II Cor. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.

Wow! All of the sudden that verse holds so much more meaning!

We are not a new creation, as if "new" means something that was just made right now; that just popped up for the first time. But a creation, as in the Creation account---AGAIN.

Jesus came to give us a re-do. About our choice that asked him to leave he came to ask, "Think you're ready to change your mind yet?"

We know the void. We know the “deserted” we asked for.

He came to reconcile that. The lost relationship. That we asked for.

He came to save us from that. The eternal separation. That we asked for.
He came to recreate that. The you and me with life in it. That we told him we didn’t want in us anymore.

THAT is what “new creation” means. Life before the first “mess-up” because every “mess-up” after that was just a murmur of the first.

 No wonder the devil hates the creation account! No wonder he pushes his “evolution” agenda so forcefully! Because without creation, Christians have nothing.

We can place no value in New Covenants (Noah, Abraham, David, Christ) because we had no original covenant. We have no concept of being a “new creation” because we had no first creation! Jesus’ coming, his SPEAKING on the cross. Speaking life into people, HAS NO MEANING, no restoration quality, no hope to it without creation. It is no fulfillment of promises without initial creation and the initial loss.

We talk about reconciliation and being reconciled to God all the time; it’s what Christians proclaim, but without creation, and without our Fall, what is there to reconcile?

If God didn’t back out because we asked him to, taking all of his life and light with him, then what is there to reconcile, to bring to life again, to make a new again?
Nothing.
Evolution says that Jesus didn’t make anything right by dying on that cross, by being raised again to life- the firstborn of new creations; the ones who have overcome death, who are no longer under that curse.

Wolfies, if you are a creation-again, put value in that fact. All the earth was waiting in expectation for you to be made new (Romans 8:19).