Right around the corner from me, another 100 year-old house is getting a “face-lift.” We live in a historical district and it is a wonderful sight to see these mammoth-sized memorials being restored.

As Jen and I were walking the other day, we took an investigative snoop of this particular home’s progress. The roof is finished. New windows have been installed. The outside has been scraped and painted.

Everything is moving along. But as we looked through the window, we saw there was quite a bit more work to be done before this house could be considered “renewed.”

Then it hit me. Here lives a picture for those of us who have been raised with Christ. We have been born again. Now the old self must be renovated and regenerated. The process is tedious, time-consuming, and often tiring.

But not only does it save the “house” and add worth to it, it positively affects the “whole neighborhood.” And so, the new you “in-Christ” will add value to every life in your path. It’s time to roll up your sleeves, and start “pulling off the wallpaper” of evil practices and fleshly ideas.

With the help of the Holy Spirit, we will patch any holes we find and paint those walls with behavior that heaven can back up with applause.

Jen talked to the man responsible for much of the restoration going on in our area yesterday. She mentioned how our family thought he was much like “superman,” flying from house to house with a “magic” paintbrush.

He laughed as he explained his intermittent feelings of despair along with triumph. He saw his progress as sometimes painfully slow.

Don’t be discouraged by your pace as you go. Strap on your tool belt and lace up those work boots. Let’s start stripping off the old and let’s being putting on the NEW YOU!

 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Colossians 3:9-10

Biblical Meditation: 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!