For our morning devotional, we welcome Reverend Scott Bauer, Church on the Way, Van Nuys.
As we start our day together today, I'd like to tell you a story about a little boy, three
years old, who came steaming down the center aisle of our church.
As he got about two-thirds of the way to the pulpit, I tackled him, and we jostled together
and laughed.
And I noticed that he was working something over in his mouth pretty furiously, and I
said, what have you got there?
And he said, gum.
I said, where'd you get it?
He said, with a smile that you would guess that he found the ultimate place in the universe
for gum.
He said, the trash.
And as soon as he said that, I fell over backwards with laughter, but recognized that there was
an illustration for my own life in the things that he had said.
The number of things that I carry are just trash that I think are so important, my fears,
my smallness of heart, unforgiveness, bitterness, things that I work over all the time but are
not worthy of a person who has been created for more than that.
In the Bible it says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, and old things are passed
away and all things are made new.
And today, if you need to have something made new, old things to pass away, simply need
to say, Lord, I've got things that are trash, but I want you to make them new things.
I want you to redeem and to free me from things out of my past so that today, a new day would
start, and a new creation begin inside of me.
And as we come to a point of acknowledging our need of him, he comes in and he makes
us to be exactly that, a new creation in him.