Introduction

Good evening. I was a bit short of things to say tonight, so I thought I’d start by telling you a story about Alex and Anne Scott. Once upon a time, when spring was in the air and the world seemed full of promise, Alex proposed to Anne and they got married. Or at least, I assume it went something like that. Anyway, being wonderful people they got lots of wedding presents. Among their presents was a very nice steel cutlery set, all new and shiny. However, as the years went by and children came along, they found the teaspoons kept disappearing. The rest of the cutlery seemed as new and shiny as ever, so they decided to see if they could order a new set of teaspoons to match it. It turned out that indeed they could, and in due course the teaspoons came. Imagine then their surprise when they unwrapped them and put them in the drawer with the rest of the set, to find that suddenly all the old pieces looked rather dull and tarnished. They’d thought they were still as new as ever; but they’d forgotten quite how shiny and splendid they’d first looked.

Well, I don’t know about you but I think that’s often what life is like. Take this, for example. When we moved into our house 15 years ago it had a nice new sitting room carpet. It looked like this, all fluffy and pink and blue¬. In parts it still does – this is the bit under the sofa… But most of it doesn’t. People have walked on it, played on it, even wee-d on it. And most of it now looks like this¬; or even like this…¬

Everywhere around us things wear out, things decay. It’s a law of the universe; the universe itself is wearing out. Within 5000m years it will either have condensed into black holes or fallen into a big crunch. Or, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, and the earth will wear out like a garment. Scientists call it the second law of thermodynamics: all of life moves towards decay.

And this is the world we live in. A world where things wear out. A world where we get old, and tired. This kind of a world: a world where solid, timeless things like brick walls soften and weaken…¬ A world where ancient buildings fall into decay…¬ and shoddy modern ones have to be demolished…¬ A world where our faces wrinkle and our shoes wear out, ¬ and where sometimes however hard we try to push in the other direction, it all just seems too much… ¬

And yet we believe in a God of life, a God of new beginnings, a God of the future. What then does this God have to offer us, in the context of a world which is falling apart?

The process of renewal

Well, the Bible recognises the problem. The apostle Paul said the world is in bondage to decay, and that we are inevitably caught up in that process. But he talks too about renewal. We had a reading from Isaiah. The world grows faint and weary, and so do we; but God does not. He gives strength to the weary, and power to the weak. Even young people will faint and be weary, and teenagers will become exhausted. But those, he says, who wait for the Lord will renew their strength, mount up with wings like eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint…¬ The whole point of our faith is that while the world is in a process of decay, God is a God of life, a God of energy, a God of new beginnings. He is a God who makes us new like the new teaspoons, who teaches us to soar above our difficulties like the eagle. Still the teaspoons will become tarnished, and still the eagle’s feathers will become worn; but God is a God of new things, a God of new life, a God of good news. He is the Creator God, and he has not stopped creating; he is able to recreate us each day, until one day he will recreate the whole world, and it will stop groaning, and be released from its bondage to decay.

Renewal in the Old Testament

It’s been fascinating for me to do a Bible study on the concept of renewal, asking myself what it is that is made new, and how. Reading the pages of the Old Testament we find that renewal is built into the God’s relationship with the universe. As fast as it decays, God renews it. Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses. And Moses points to the grass on the ground, which in the morning flourishes and is renewed, and in the evening fades and withers, only to be renewed again by God in the morning…¬ In Deuteronomy he talks about gentle rain refreshing the grass, showers falling on new growth, and says this is how it is for us when we receive God’s word. So here it is, the grass renewed in the morning, beads of dew winking on each blade.

What other signs of newness do we find in this decaying world? The first thing that God created out of darkness was light, the light of the sun, and each day the sun rises again as the sign of a new dawn. ¬ It was at dawn that Jesus rose from the tomb, and at dawn that human beings are supposed to wake and go about their business. I used to sleep sometimes in a tent in the Cambridgeshire fens, and every morning we’d wake to an orange glow and the song of a hundred reed warblers bursting from the marshes. Dawn is the perfect sign of new life.

And then there is the pattern of the seasons, the pattern of life and death and growth. Look at this.. ¬ It’s a blue tit, it’s a pulsating scrap of new life. It’s only a few days old, and it hasn’t even got its eyes open, but it’s thrusting upwards for food. Or look at this, this image of a flower opening itself to the life-bearing visit of a summer bee. ¬ These are images of renewal, images which are meant to speak to us of God, the God who makes all things new, and who wants to do the same for us in all our tiredness and wornness. We are meant to be like the blue tit craning upwards for food, and like the flower opening itself to the bee.

The Old Testament teaches us that God offers this renewal not just to the plants and animals of the world he has made, but also to his people. He makes a covenant with his people, who break it with the regularity of the seasons themselves; and yet repeatedly he is there to rebuke, to renew his promises, to begin again his relationship with us. He promises to do new things, to make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give his people a new name, to make with them a new covenant. David asks for a new spirit, and Ezekiel promises a new heart. Zephaniah promises that God will renew his people in his love. These promises are for the individuals who received them, and for those to whom they declared them, and they point forward to Jesus and to the spiritual renewal of all those who turn to him. Meanwhile the people of God respond with new things of their own. They sing new songs, make new offerings, and perform new dedications.

Renewal in the New Testament

Then Jesus came. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the Spirit hovered over the world he made. Now Jesus comes, and his disciple John says he had been there in the beginning when that physical creation took place. And Jesus comes to bring a new creation, not this time a physical one but a spiritual one. Jesus comes to bring us new life, a life which renews us not physically but spiritually. He invites us to turn to him and, in the words of Paul’s letter to Titus, to be reborn, to be renewed through the power of the Holy Spirit – that same Spirit who hovered over the world at the beginning of time, when life was first created.

So a pattern is completed. Just as in the beginning we received physical life from God, so now we receive spiritual life. It’s still a life which is subject to decay, because we live in a world which is subject to decay. But just as the Old Testament teaches so clearly that God is working daily to bring renewal to the physical creation, so the New Testament is equally insistent that he is working daily to bring renewal to our minds and spirits.

Often Jesus taught about this new spiritual life by comparing it to the physical life of the created world. The good news is like a seed, he said, sown by a farmer, which lands in our souls and grows. But in some cases the soil is better than in others. Sometimes weeds come and choke the new plants. Sometimes the sun scorches them. Sometimes they grow strong and tall.

How about you? Probably you are here because the good news of spiritual renewal has grown in the soil of your life. But maybe you too have become worn down since that seed was first planted. Maybe you have grown weary, tarnished like Alex and Anne’s cutlery - maybe without realising it. Perhaps you are anxious about things. Perhaps you aren’t able to trust God with your circumstances and your needs. Then Jesus tells you to look at the created world, because it is in the renewal of the world of plants and birds that you will find a model for the renewal of your soul. Consider, he said, the flowers of the field…¬ If God clothes them so beautifully each day, will he not clothe you, will he not meet your needs? Or how about the birds of the air?.. ¬ If God looks after them each day, will he not look after you? Paul told the Ephesians to be filled continuously with the Holy Spirit, to receive daily from God. And that is what we must do, just as the grass and the flowers, the birds and the bees receive daily from God.

It’s always struck me as interesting that Jesus used so many examples from the created world when he was trying to get people to understand about the realitities of the spiritual world. Often I think we assume it’s just because that’s what was there, just as we use illustrations from television or from computers, from the modern urban world we live in. But I think that actually it’s more profound than that. It’s because the principles are the same. The God who brings renewal to the world out there is the same God who brings renewal to the world in here, to our inner being, and he does it through his same Holy Spirit. Physical life and spiritual life are just different forms of the same life, rooted in the same God, the God who is himself life, who creates it and sustains it.

Renewal for me and for you

Continuing then with my Bible study, I looked up all the instances of the word ‘new’ and the word ‘renew’ in the New Testament. What is it exactly that God wants to make new for us? It’s easy to see with the teaspoons, but what about with our inner selves? ¬

Well, these are some of the things God promises to make new in us, not just once but repeatedly, daily.. He brings us new birth and a new life. He makes us from something old into something new - a new creation. ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; everything old has passed away; everything has become new!’ (2 Cor. 5.17). Part of the responsibility for what happens then is ours, because we have to respond, we have to take deliberate steps to make sure that the seed of life which has been sown within us grows into a plant which bears leaves and fruits – both in our own lives and in the lives of others as we share what we have received and what we have become with them.

So how do we do it? Paul says to both the Colossians and the Ephesians that it’s like taking off an old coat and putting on a new one. The old coat is all the things that we used to do and that we see people around us doing. It’s a life which is about wanting things you can’t have, about deceiving one another, about losing our temper with one another, about being selfish and looking after ourselves at the expense of others. And the new coat is all the things we’d like to find inside us if only we knew how - the capacity to love, to forgive, to speak well of one another and be kind to one another; the things we do when we’re on our best behaviour, the things we want to be and to feel, but which often we can’t manage.

We demonstrate this when we go to Africa. We get a very old coat, usually one of Woolmer’s, which by the time he’s acted out various teaching points which involve lying in the dust and jumping up and down is fairly filthy, and someone takes it off and put on a clean, freshly pressed one. It makes the point.

So, to go back to the list, we get a new self. We find within us a new heart, a new spirit, a renewed mind. ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your minds’, Paul tells the Romans; ‘be renewed in the spirit of your minds’, he tells the Ephesians. We get a new ministry, we cast out demons and speak, Jesus said, in new tongues. We become a new people, members of a new family. We find new hope within us, and new songs on our lips. We live according to a new commandment, the commandment to love one another; and we receive new gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We are being renewed on the inside even when we are wasting away on the outside, renewed in knowledge, renewed above all in love. This is the good news which comes to us in Jesus Christ; and new it is indeed.

So is this renewal something which comes once, then, when we first hear that good news, or is it something which comes repeatedly, as the dew and the rain come repeatedly to renew the grass? Well, both is the answer. It comes once, at the moment of our new birth, when first we receive the Holy Spirit and this whole process begins. And yet it comes repeatedly too, because it takes time to make something new, and because always there is the dust of daily living which clings to us and wears us down. Be continuously filled with the Spirit, Paul told the Ephesians. God’s mercies are new every morning, just as the dew is new every morning on the grass, Jeremiah wrote in his Lamentations – which really is an extended plea for renewal. We need a daily dose of renewal to keep us fresh and alive, until one day we will be living not here in this world of decay but in a new heaven and a new earth, where water will run in the rivers, fruits grow all the year round on the trees, and the sun never go down.

I met this guy the other day called Richard from Solihull. Richard told us his story. He was brought up by a drug addict mother and an alcoholic father. He too got into drugs, and ended up in Swansea prison. There he first came across the Bible; there was one in every cell. The prisoners relied on it – to roll up their cigarettes in. Apparently the fine paper it was printed on made it ideal for the job. So there he was, smoking his way through the Bible, until one day he came to the gospel of John. And as he looked at the words of the first chapter of John, something struck him. Maybe here was the life he was missing. So he went to the chapel to ask the chaplain about it. Yes, said the chaplain. Why don’t you come to the service on Sunday. So he did, and the chaplain gave him a white robe and asked him to swing the censer. Richard said the minute the white robe was put on him he felt totally different; clean all over, completely renewed. He felt a bit odd though, as he began to follow the chaplain and swing the censer; a bit like a handbag on fire, he said it was. Then he noticed it smelt good. Remember, he was on drugs. A drug addict will try anything once, he explained. So he lifted it up and inhaled deeply. He spent the next 3 weeks in hospital with respiratory damage. But when he came out he went back to the chapel. And there he had a vision of Jesus on the cross. And Jesus said to him, I love you. I did this for you. For the first time in his life Richard discovered what it felt like to know that he was loved. It changed his life. He’s now a pastor in Solihull; God has told him he’s to work there as an assistant to the senior pastor for 15 years, and to wait for the ministry God has prepared for him.

So, being made new can be very sudden and dramatic. For me, it’s been much less dramatic than that, a gradual process. There have been times when my life has felt like a very dark and dusty evening. But there have been others too when it’s felt like a new dawn, with birds singing and everything fresh and new. The image I like to use for it is the one we have adopted at ReSource, which is the organisation I work for now. This is it. It’s an image of how the Holy Spirit works in us. ¬

o landing like drop in the centre of our lives

o spreading out over the surface, gradually changing us

This process has a definite beginning, but no definite ending. It begins when our relationship with Jesus begins. The details are different for everyone, but the process is the same. For Richard it was sudden, and the drop landed with a splash in the middle of his life. For others it’s much more gradual, more a question of allowing the ripples of life to spread across the water of the soul, changing, cleansing, making us new in different ways at different times. And for each of us it will be different. Being made new will depend on the ways in which we have become worn. For some it will mean a healing of the barriers which separate us from God, barriers of accusation or rejection. For some it will mean knowing God’s forgiveness or God’s love in a new way. For some it will mean a new dimension in ministry, a receiving of new gifts. For all it means a continuous process of being filled daily with the Spirit, of allowing his power to flow through our prayers and his fruits to develop in our lives, of growing in the knowledge that we are loved and in our capacity to love others. What does it mean for you? What are the ways you need to be renewed today?

What do we have to do to be renewed?

But perhaps you say that’s all very well, but I have asked for this before. I have asked for the gifts of the Spirit in my ministry, but I do not experience them. I have asked for the love of God to fill my heart, but I am full of doubts and insecurities. I have asked for forgiveness, to be cleansed from my past, but I don’t know whether I have been or not. What then?

Well, I suppose there are no push-button answers. I remember I was totally confused once. I’d been born again all right, I’d had a hello kind of conversation with God on my knees one day, and I’d got up to find the whole world looked new, not just me. But I was still full of anger and inadequacy. We were on holiday and we went to what turned out to be a healing service in a Methodist chapel in Wales. Everyone there was over 70, except us. I knelt at the rail with all these people with sticks and hearing aids, and the bewildered minister prayed for me. I asked for the renewing power of God’s Holy Spirit to come to me. It did. Several years later. But I date the process back to that prayer, and I understand now that there were things holding me back which I had to clear away first.

So come to God. There are only two ways to come to him: one is through scripture, where we read the words of life. The other is through prayer, where we connect with that life in repentance and faith, and where we open ourselves to God like the flower to the bee, to be visited in whatever way he chooses. In a moment there will be an opportunity for us all to do that. But let me summarise.

This is how the Secretary General to the World Council of Churches once defined personal renewal: ¬

Renewal is a process and not an event. It

• begins with an encounter between God & man, God taking the initiative [and we can come to him in prayer to ask him to do that – remember the story Jesus told about asking for the Holy Spirit to come being like a son asking his father for an egg – his father, Jesus said, wasn’t going to give him a scorpion. And so it is with us]

• is based on hearing the Bible afresh [and we can try to do that each time we meet in our cells, read it at home by ourselves, and listen to sermons]

• occurs only through the Holy Spirit [just as the daily renewal of the created world depends on the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit]

• is characterised by repentance [that means being honestly prepared to change, to think and act in new ways]

• restores true fellowship [that means the outcome is felt in your relationships with God and with others]

• means that the message of the gospel is proclaimed to both Church and world – and that this is the normal work of the Church [that means that when people who do not know God, people who are caught up in the pain and fatigue of a groaning world, look at us, they see something that they want]

In Paul’s terms, it means that we are being transformed step by step into the likeness of Christ, and that this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (2 Cor 3.18). I heard someone say recently, ‘I am a shadow of my future self’. I really liked that. And to turn the shadow into the reality I depend upon the Holy Spirit.

A time of prayer

So what we are going to do now is we are going to have a time of prayer. Maybe you need to be renewed in a particular way. Maybe you are like Richard. You have never come to God and asked him to make you new, to start you out on the process which will transform you into the likeness of Christ. Maybe you have been made new but it was a long time ago, and you need to feel the dew of the Holy Spirit’s presence on your tired and weary soul. Maybe there is something specific you need to talk to God about, to put right. Maybe you just want to offer yourself to his service, and to ask him to give you the gifts you need. Maybe you just want to be reminded that he loves you.

We are going to listen to a recording. Think of the Holy Spirit flowing like water, streams of living water, and allow yourself to be refreshed and washed, cleansed by the water of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, as Paul writes to Titus. Look at the images again, and talk to God. And know that he hears your prayer.

Amen.