To Be Better.

I want to be better.  A common thought, wouldn't you say?  As a Christian I am acutely aware of my need for improvement and of my current failings.  I look into the box that is me and see a lot of things, most of them old and broken, many of them dirty, some of them dangerous.  Again and again I revisit the old familiar sins and my hands and my mind move to the rhythm of music I wish I didn't know.  Again and again I wake up later with my newly purchased regret and wonder why I didn't just...not.  I want to be better.

Actually...I don't.

I'm tired of trying to be better.  I'm tired of trying to improve, to renovate, to renew.  Worst of all I cannot help but deny the single obvious truth that better isn't good enough.  Better just means I've pumped some air into the same punctured tires, oiled the kinked chain, and tightened the broken pedals as if that will do anything to really improve the machine.  I don't want to be better.

I want to be new.

Better is a fresh coat of paint, new is a whole other house.  Better is a set of replacement tires, new is an entirely different car.  Better is a patch-job, new is new.  When Adam tasted sin and cursed us all we started to break, getting more and more run down, moving farther and farther from what we were; I don't want to be a better broken thing.  I want to be a new creation.  I don't want to be a zombie, an old carcass propped up so it can shamble around, I want to be remade.  And thank God that's exactly what He promises.

I read my Bible and I see that we aren't promised better, we're promised new.  We're promised a new robe that swallows up and absorbs the old tattered clothing and leaves us decked out as kings.

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him"
(2 Corinthians 5:1-9)

This house we now inhabit -this body- is that run down crack-house at the end of the block, the one with the peeling paint and shutters that hang on by one nail each.  Yes it functions as a house but only just.  One day that house is going to collapse but I don't worry about death so much because I'll just be moving out, moving up (cue The Jefferson's Theme).  God has a whole new house waiting for me, waiting for us, and it's greater than we can imagine.

Even now I know that I don't have to suffer the way I have before, I don't have to live the way I used to.  I may have to live in this old house for a bit longer but I don't have to live like this house.  You see I've got a new landlord.  He bought the property and in exchange for my new lease on life He expects me to mow the lawn and paint the walls and fix the roof, but He also pays for it.

My strength isn't enough to do new, it's not even enough for better.  God saves us yes, but He also empowers us.  We are free, free to follow Him, free to turn our backs on the sin we  always followed, free to face the evil that kept us down, free to grab the whip from the enemies hand and stand in defiance because our Father is standing beside us!  Free, I want free.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

So I don't want to be better.  I don't want to settle for better.  I want new.

I have fallen, fallen so many times I sometimes forget what it's like to stand.  Yet I press on.  I have not, am not, will not ever give up!  I will walk this narrow road through the power of God in me because I know what lies in the ditch that runs on either side.  I know the man I am apart from God, and there is no way that man could ever drum up enough better to even be worth the attention it would require for God to damn me.

Forget better.

I'm going to be new.