Years ago, we patronized a bakery outlet that sold day-old bread at a discount, and we’d stock our freezer with it, to feed our dozens of children. (OK, there were only six of them, but it seemed like a lot.) One day I got the mother of our hungry horde a bread-making machine. Which bread do you think tasted better—the day-old, freezer-burned variety, or what wafted hot and fresh in our kitchen? Fresh is better.
Consider this intriguing statement from Oswald Chambers*:
Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual, and eternal beginning; a freshness all the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God.
(He went on to suggest that any believer with a stale existence has become disconnected from the life of God and needs to rekindle that relationship.)
As I read and pondered that interesting sentence, the Holy Spirit breathed life into it. I envisioned a new kind of day, one characterized by moment-by-moment freshness. I recalled Revelation 21:4-5 “The former things have passed away … Behold I make all things new.” While the context here in Revelation is the new Jerusalem, these words align closely with 2 Corinthians 5:17 describing an ongoing (and often unseized) opportunity for the believer: “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
God doesn’t do stale. He’s not a fan of lukewarm living. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly! (John 10:10) Jesus talked about new (fresh) wine and the necessity of new wineskins to contain it. God has fresh, life-giving ideas for us, but we have to position ourselves to receive them; we must choose to walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). I found myself fascinated with this idea of feeding on fresh insights all the time, “a continual surprise of the life of God.”
Wherever the river flows, it will bring life Ezekiel 47:9b (GWT)
A river carries new water constantly—it is not stale or stagnant–ever! I don’t know about you, but I want to open myself up to fresh life in the Spirit, to exit dead ways of thinking and to embrace the vitality of His thoughts and perspectives.
It’s not in the spiritual context that we need to work at manifesting our new nature, but in our ordinary day-to-day tasks and life situations. So the next morning at work, I made a real effort.
Reading an email about a process change I was required to start using, I immediately protested in my mind: “Don’t change things, don’t make me prepare more, don’t make me do things differently!” Recognizing my stale thinking offered the first chance of the day to embrace something fresh, another way to perceive and respond, in the Holy Spirit. “Why not roll with it? It might be better than the old way!” Throughout the day I asked God for new ideas, new ways of perceiving and responding, bringing Him into everything (Proverbs 3:5-6). I’ve decided I like life fresh, and I bet you will, too!
* Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, p 20
