Re-creation Focus

Re-creation Focus

The start of a new year is often filled with empty resolutions about how this year is going to be better than last year.  That a change we will make this week will carry us throughout the year.  But we cannot do it alone.  We need to recognize that God is with us.

It is true that we all need recreation in our lives.  We need to take time to allow for rest and diversion from the pressures of the daily grind.  We've heard the adage about all work and no play.  We've even heard that in the creation story in Genesis that on the 7^th day God rested.   But I would say to go a step further we don’t need recreation we need re-creation. 

Because God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purpose. Philippians 2:13 (GNB).

Re-creation allows God to continue creation’s story in us.  Creation has not stopped it is a continuous process.  Re-creation calls for us to submit to God’s will for our lives.  Re-creation allows us to refocus on God’s plan.

Too many people feel that they can simply rely on themselves for recreation, happiness, and joy.  These people have been caught up in the philosophies that the only one that they can rely on is themselves.  Willpower is not enough to change us.  Focusing in on self-centered ways and ideologies cannot revive us and can be akin to idolatry.  People subscribe to these approaches because God has been moved out of the center space that He should occupy. 

The only way to properly recharge and re-create is to plug into a source greater than yourself.  And that source is God alone.  When God changes you, it's going to hurt. You're going to have to let go of a few things, but it will make you stronger in Him.

Each of us will change. Life will not allow us to stay the same.  God is right, I am wrong, and he has the authority to shape and change me into whomever he wants me to be. 

22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4: 22-24 (NIV)).

We need to take time to allow God to work with us and re-create us.  Sometimes we need to have just a moment of silence and stillness to re-create.  Other ways to allow God to engage you in re-creation is through fasting.  The church my family and I attend has started today with a 21 day period of fasting and prayer.  The title “Awakening” has been given to this period.  Through fasting and prayer we allow God re-create us.  Re-creation challenges spiritual complacency.  “Fasting is a powerful way to let your flesh know that you are a Spirit-dominated person and your flesh must be submitted to God” (Pastor Alvin Thomas, 2014).

Through re-creation we do not settle for the status quo and we allow God’s revival to awaken us.  Creation was never to be a once and done event.  Through Christ we have been redeemed, recreated, renewed, revived, and given a future in a new life.   We need to pray for continued re-creation by God in our lives.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)).

Burn for You -- Toby Mac

Jesus is Life -- Stephen Curtis Chapman