Part 4: I Am Being Continually Renewed

Here we are in week four, of this five-part series, answering the question, Am I Enough? And so far we've gone through: Chosen Personality, Complete Change, Changeless Love, and now today — Continual Renewal. What a beautiful truth this is — all day long, every single moment, He is renewing you. 

So, although you're completely changed, the best you is still emerging. 

Isn’t that amazing?! You're getting healthier. Not because you've made a list, or tried, or promised you're going to do something — He, behind the scenes when you sleep, is doing this beautifully all the time. 

2 Corinthians tells us, “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NASB) 

Our outer man is decaying. But our inner man is the place where all the action is. It’s where the life is. Where the best you comes out. 

It’s where the humor comes out, the compassion, the ability to love others deeply — all that pours out from the inner man. Paul tells us, that’s not happening with stuff from outside; it's from all you were born again with. When you came to Christ, you got everything you are ever going to have. You don't get some new stuff from outside. Whatever this is that we're talking about, it's from what exists. 

The best analogy I have for it is this: Imagine complete, perfectly nutrient-enriched soil, but maybe in some areas it’s lying there dormant. And so, God takes a shovel and gently turns over this perfectly nutrient-enriched soil so that it can get oxygen and light. And now it can bear fruit. Now it can break through generational stuff that you thought was never going to be transformed, never going to be healed or free. Wow! 

So, in answering the question, “am I enough?”, not only are those things true, but you haven't even seen the real me at my best yet because He's doing that work. 

For all of these points, keep asking the question, even as you're teaching them to others, “What difference do these truths make?” We're not going from the outside in, we're talking about life from the inside out. Christ in us — remember Galatians 2:20? 

This new life of Christ in me — I live it in this skin by trusting that He is doing these things. This is what makes the change in me. 

This is what causes — as Romans 6:14 tells us — to sin less and to love more. So I'm wanting to ask, “So what? What difference is it that He's renewing me every day?” Well, as I go in to apologize to my kids for having hurt their hearts on something, I can tell them, “Your dad loves you, and God is healing me and maturing me even right now.” And they'll sometimes be able to say, “Dad, we see it.” 

This is great, great stuff. We've got one more week — Continual Forgiveness — don’t miss it!

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