This Christmas Season I want to think about being renewed in a way that fills me up for more than one hour, or one day, or one week. Many of you who know me, know that over the past few years I have asked God to give me a word for the Christmas Season, a word that God wants me to claim, a word He wants me to experience. Renew is that word this year. I feel God is calling me to be made new this December. To be re-created, re-vamped, re-purposed. RENEWED in Christ.
I have found that for me, it is starting with allowing God deep within my heart. To challenge me to sweep out the clutter, and any spiderwebs that are catching sinful thoughts or unworthy musings. I am laying bare my soul to be filled with God and what He wants me to work on, what He wants me to know. I think of the verse in Psalm 51 which states, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and RENEW a steadfast spirit within me." This is in response to Davids sin with Bathsheba. In that spirit of repentance, we are renewed, because of our humility to confess sin to an all knowing God.
With nothing in the way, we can be made new again; raising our hands to a God who knows us, loves us, and desires us to be all that He wants us to be. When our hope is in Him and not in the things of this world we are free to experience His power in our lives to be made new everyday! Isaiah 40:31-"but those who hope in the Lord will RENEW their strength. They will soar on wings of eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." I pray this prayer for the women in Zambia. That whether or not they are old, faithful believers, or baby new Christians, they would experience renewal in dry places, hope in the darkness, and a heart that will carry on. I pray they experience a re-newed faith, a re-purposed life, and a re-freshed spirit of awe and reverence for the God who made them.
I want to be RENEWED this Season to see Jesus for not only the baby in a manger but for the awesome, holy, righteous, omniscient, powerful, loving, omnipresent, never changing, truthful, compassionate One, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
May God RENEW your heart to experience Him and see Him in fresh and powerful ways. That He and He alone would be enough to fill us up. That our hands and our hearts would be lifted to our Savior who sits at the right hand of God as if we have never raised them before. Let it all be new this Christmas!
All of us at Extending Hands wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Blessings!
