Renewal Through God’s Presence
When I was a kid, I loved playing video games and I specifically remember the anxiety and fear that I would feel when my character’s “power” got low. I also vividly remember the freedom, confidence and security that I felt when my character would get a “new life” or have its “power” renewed because it jumped onto a magic mushroom (Super Mario Brothers) or ate a piece of fruit (Pac-Man). In the same way as we journey through the game of life, we need to get “powered up” by coming to God daily to receive grace as we pray and read His word. As we seek God’s presence, our hearts and minds are renewed because God created prayer as a means of grace to renew us and to help us to persevere.
Renewal happens in the presence of God.
“Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Often, when I pray, I ask God to change my situation and not to change me. In Psalm 51, the psalmist is aware that who he is (and not necessarily his circumstance) must change in order for repentance to occur. But how? “Create” (bara’) is a Hebrew verb that means to bring into existence what was not there before. It speaks of God’s saving action transforming what is already there so that what comes to be is different. And so, when the psalmist says, “create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me”, he’s not just asking for forgiveness, he’s asking God to re-create and renew him from the inside out. He asks God to cleanse HIM of the guilt and shame that prevents him from dwelling in the presence of a Holy God (v. 11). He knows that he needs to be completely renewed and that renewal must happen in the presence of God.
The ritual cleansing spoken of in Psalm 51 and the rest of the Old Testament foreshadows how the blood of Christ doesn’t just give believers a get out of hell free card, it also redeems us from the power/penalty of sin so we can draw near to God free from guilt and shame AND be renewed by the Holy Spirit. The truth of the matter is, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father and not seated next to me as I type these words. So how do we experience renewal in the presence of God? Well that’s where my favorite person of the trinity comes in. As part of the new covenant that Jesus inaugurates, the Holy Spirit is the promise of God the Father (Acts 1:4) who renews and transforms us so that we can live a NEW life of Spirit empowered obedience (Eze 36:27, Eze 37:14) towards God. The Holy Spirit is Jesus’ hype man (John 15:26) who dwells inside of us, and declares (John 16:14) and interprets God’s word to us as we read it (1 Cor 2:11-12).
But what does this look like practically?
In Ephesians 4:23-24 the apostle Paul says “put off your old self…and…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” And so, we’re new creations in Christ, but because we’re new “works in progress”, our new self still needs to be renewed DAILY (Col 3:9-10) after the image of Christ.
God has revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ who is the living word (John 1:14) and as we read and meditate on the word of God our minds are renewed in God’s presence. Babies learn words as they are consistently in the presence of people who read to them and speak to them. As they learn new words, in a very real sense their minds are renewed. My 2-year-old listens to everything my husband and I say in his presence. We know this because he repeats our business out loud at the most inopportune times. It’s annoying because we have to watch what we say around him, but it’s also amazing because we’re watching his vocabulary grow as his mind is literally renewed right before our eyes. And in the same way, God reveals himself to his children in His word, because He loves us and wants us to mature spiritually (Eph 4:13-14). In Psalm 51:10, the psalmist cries out for a steadfast spirit to be renewed in Him and as we live under the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit, our new self (resurrected with Christ) is renewed according to the image of Christ.
Lord, continue to renew and recreate me. Change my values and my affections and make them over in the image of Christ so that I can obey and walk in humility, holiness, love and righteousness. Amen.