All Things Can Become New

All Things Can Become New

Sunday, January 02, 2011 AM

By Pastor James May

Welcome to a brand new day – the first day of the rest of your life; and a great opportunity to make your life really count in the grand scheme of human history. That may seem like a statement that is a little over the top for some of us but let me remind you that if you are serving the Living God, and your steps are ordered by the Lord, then you can be assured that God is going to make your life count and that everything you do will make a difference that will last for eternity.

As I look around the congregation here this morning I see a lot of people are enjoying the presence of the Lord because at some point there was a stirring in your heart brought on by the Spirit of God. For that to some to past, somewhere in your path of life, God put a preacher. Maybe it was a preacher who does most of his preaching from behind this sacred desk called a pulpit. Or perhaps it was preacher that sat across from you at the table, one-on-one. But for that preacher to be there, God had orchestrated a whole series of events to occur.

I’m convinced that God loves you and I so much, that he does not leave our salvation to chance or fate, but that every move that we make is designed to bring us to that point in life where we will come face to face with the Cross of Christ; and there we are put in a position to change our eternal destiny.

Some of you may be way ahead of me concerning what I have just said, but just in case you don’t grasp what I’m saying, let me say it this way. Regardless of how you came to be in this service this morning, whether you live close or far away, whether you knew this day was coming, or it came seemingly by coincidence, you are here today by divine design from a Loving Father in Heaven who has directed your path.

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Let me give you a little scenario here. As a very small child of preschool age, I was sent to church by my parents, who at the time, weren’t attending church. Life has a way of making us busy, or distracting us from always being faithful and its easy to slip into the everyday order of business and just neglect being faithful to church or to serving the Lord. It’s not something we always intend to do; and in fact, most of the people I talk to always have the best of intentions to serve God.

I have to tell you that intentions alone aren’t good enough. You can intend to change the oil in your car, but if you put it off long enough, in time it just won’t matter. The engine will be wasted. You can intend to get your education, but put it off long enough and the day will come when you realize that it will never happen. We can intend to lose weight but if we don’t get it under some control, pretty soon the damage to our body is permanent. We can intend to serve the Lord, but there may also come a day when the Holy Spirit no longer deals with our hearts and then there is no hope. God’s patience with a man or woman, who continually rejects his offer of salvation, does have its limitations and I have known a few people who have stepped over the line and no longer feel the Holy Spirit moving in their hearts. Now don’t worry; if you were one of those, you probably wouldn’t be here this morning; and you wouldn’t care whether God spoke to you anymore or not.

Genesis 6:3, "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."

God created us all to live forever in this body, but because the heart of man is inherently evil, having gained a sinful nature at the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God had to, formulate a plan to redeem the soul of man from the sentence of death that hangs over every human being born into this world since Adam’s fall.

It was our God the Father that determined to build a bridge that man could use to regain eternal life; and that bridge was built by the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who gave his life for our sin, shed his blood to cleanse us from sin; and then rose from the grave to become our intercessor in Heaven.