24 Aug September 1 Daily Devotional

A SERIES OF DEVOTIONS BASED ON PAUL’S LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

REHABBED FOR ETERNITY

Colossians 3:7-10  “You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 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.”

HGTV is currently a very popular channel.  Watching Ben and Erin or Chip and Joann show someone a dilapidated home, sometimes even sitting in weeds, telling them how it can be renovated, rehabbed, and restored into a modern, beautiful place to live captivates a large viewing audience.  I guess all of us love a good reclamation story.

Don’t you see in today’s devotional verses what occurs on HGTV?  God has taken you who at one time were filled with anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, lies,  sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed and renovated, rehabbed, and has given you a new heart, making you into a new person.   He has taken off your old self with its sinful, evil, and wicked practices and has recreated you into a new and holy person.  The old is gone, you are now new.  He has changed the character and quality of your heart and life.

Most important of all, is that the verb tense in verse 10 indicates what God has done is not a one-time occurrence.  It is His ongoing activity in your life through your hearing the gospel, receiving the Lord’s Supper and daily remembering your baptism.  It is God’s intent your heart will never again need to be rehabbed.  By the power of His Spirit through these means of grace God intends for His Spirit to keep you in the true faith to life everlasting.  (see Luther’s explanation to the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed)

Though Satan is always at work to destroy what God has done in you through His Son Jesus, it is through Jesus you are able to overcome the Devil’s efforts.  You are able to do all things that please God through Jesus who gives you the strength. (Philippians 4:13)

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, lead and guide me as a redeemed, renewed, renovated person to live my life to the glory and honor of Your Father who is my Father through You.  In Your name.  Amen.

Not what these hands have done Can save this guilty soul;

Not what this toiling flesh has borne Can make my spirit whole.

Not what I feel or do Can give me peace with God;

Not all my prayers and sighs and tears Can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, O Christ, Can ease this weight of sin;

Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, Can give me peace within.

Thy love to me, O God, Not mine, O Lord, to Thee,

Can rid me of this dark unrest And set my spirit free.

Thy grace alone, O God, To me can pardon speak;

Thy pow’r alone, O Son of God, Can this sore bondage break.

I bless the Christ of God, I rest on love Divine,

And with unfal’tring lip and heart I call this Savior mine.

(LSB 567)