Are You Ready for a New Way of Life?

Matthew 3:1–2 (ESV)

“In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

This call to Germany was a call to a different kind of life. That simply goes with moving from one country and culture to another.  Let me share some examples – living far from most of our kids yet closer to Jon than in years; shopping for groceries every other day not every other week; taking public transportation or walking rather than driving; taking the train rather than the plane or car; pastoring a small congregation rather than a large one; pastoring people from many nations rather than one or two; learning a new language and having to use it; in the US “how are you” is a greeting, here it’s an invitation to a serious conversation; the pace of life is slower here but always with a purpose; Linda and I have more time with each other; the Germans don’t have what I call “Italian sausage” on their Pizza; going out to eat is a three hour experience, not 45 minutes; the road signs and the rules of the road are different… I could go on. Now I want you to know, I love the life we had in America and I love the life God is giving us here.  We needed many of these changes.  However if someone had asked me 15 months ago, “Are you ready for a new way of life?” I would have said yes, indeed I did but I didn’t know what that meant.

Advent asks you the same question. Are you ready for a new way of life?  That is what God is offering you.  That is what John the Baptist invites us to.  “Repent,” He says, “For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”   How is this new life different?  Let me give you some examples from God’s own words –

·         That you “might not perish but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16)

·         that you might “have life and have it abundantly…”  (John 10:10)

·         you are given “treasure in heaven that moth and rust cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal.”  (Matthew 6:20)

·         You are “born anew into a living hope…” (1 Peter 1:3)  …”a hope that does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5)

·         Where we “no longer live for ourselves but for Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:15)

·         Where “if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

·         Where it “is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God…”  (Galatians 2:20)

I could keep going but you get the point.  That’s the new life God offers you.  That’s the new life Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again to win for you and me.  Are you ready for a new way of life?

That new life is yours through repentance and faith.  That new life is given to you freely as you are buried with Christ by baptism into death and are raised with to new life.  That new life is yours for free as by daily confessing your sins you again and again drown the old greedy, selfish you so that every day God might bring forth a new man to live before Him.  But, you object, repentance is not so easy.  Sometimes when you or I say we’re sorry, we’re just going through the motions.  We’re saying but we don’t really mean it.  Sometime we’re only saying I am sorry because we got caught.  There are also times when you and I really do mean it.  Most often we really do want to change the way we live.  We even promise to change, try to change.  But then again and again, we fall back into the same old trap… commit the same sin over again.  Like Paul, “I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, that I keep on doing… O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?”  Can I ever be ready for this new way of life?

Yes.  But you need to remember that in this life the new life is not yet complete.  We have that new life but we are not yet in heaven. We have victory over sin and yet we still daily struggle with sin.  We are forgiven, but not yet in perfect.  Our whole life this side of heaven is lived between the already and the not yet.  Our whole life is thus about learning to live the new life God has given and is giving us in Christ.  Repentance is not simply a one-time event.  Turning from sin and back to God is the daily moment by moment life of a Christian… adjusting, changing, dying and rising again are all about learning to live the new life of faith.  That’s the way it’s been here in Germany.  When we came we were told that adjusting to life in a new culture would take at least 18 months. It takes up to five or more years to really feel at home.  Learning to live the new life in Christ takes a lifetime – a lifetime of repentance, of forgiveness, of discovering that you really can trust God’s promises, that God really does love you, that the hope you have is real, that you do have a treasure in heaven that cannot be taken away.  Are you ready for a new way of life?    More and more each day… learning that new life each day…  With God’s help, by His grace, He is in the process of moving you from the culture of this world to the culture of His kingdom… getting you ready for the day when He says to you, “Come inherit the kingdom prepared for you...”  So you are ready but also not yet… for that life is now yours but at the same time not yet….