Renewed, Not Repaired

Welcome to Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. Devotions designed to inspire you on your daily walk with God. Here's your host, Ken Gurley.

Hey, it doesn't seem possible, but good Friday morning to each and every one of you. And grateful, grateful for the opportunity just to share with you and to be a part of your life and your day. And I can't get to August 29th without remembering my little sister is no longer with us. And, um, Teresa was born today. She was a year younger than me. All of us were a year apart. My two big brothers, uh, each one and two years older than me. Um, Mike and Vaughn. And all three brothers miss their little sister today. Praying for mom. Praying for mom during this time. I don't know. Just on my heart. Always is. August 29th. Wrapping up a great month. Looking forward to being back home this weekend ministering Perland and, um, this great series, "Until Houston Looks Like Heaven." I'm away this week and so I can't see your names flying by. I don't have all the equipment that I need to do that. But I'm happy you're here and I'm blessed that you're here. Pivotal needs go by in our family and our church family and our daily devotion family. And I, I so, I'm so grateful, um, that there are people lifting up one another. I wish there were more hours in a day. I wish there was a, there was a way to do all that I want to do, need to do, require to do. I just can't find enough time. And that's where it's so nice to have an assortment of a family that we just lift up one another.

What a great subject today. Renewed, not repaired. I want to begin with the ending and then I'm going to do something that Tessy always likes when I do this. And, um, I, I like to put Bible characters in the first person. So I want to do that in just a moment here. But before I do, let me just read the scripture. Revelation 21:5. "And he that sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" The next to the last chapter of the Bible, we're looking at a newness, a brand newness. And I don't know, it's, it's just something. It's just something that is the hope of every heart of ours.

I was listening to a podcast. Somebody sent it to me the other day and I was listening to a podcast and, uh, it talks about people that had tremendous trials, tremendous failures, very spectacular public failures. And they said the temptation is to just gloss it over and make it look good. Sort of, uh, rebranding but not repenting. Oh, that's powerful. We need more than rebranding. We need true repentance. And it's in that same vein. I just want to talk about renewed, not repaired. Here we go. First person Bible character.

I was not born. I had no parents. I am without any brothers or sisters. I had no childhood. I entered this world. This world I entered fully full grown. That's how I entered. My name is Eve. God designed me for Adam so that he wouldn't be alone. He's just that way. He doesn't want people to feel alone. Adam was in existence before me on the sixth day of creation. And God superseded all of his previous works by making man scooped from the dust of the ground. God breathed into my husband and he became a living soul. God could have done the same for me, but he didn't. I was not made from the dust. I was made from Adam. God put Adam to sleep and performed the surgery. Took one of the ribs and from it God made me bone of bone, flesh of flesh. When I opened my eyes the first time, I saw color. I saw light. I felt loved, accepted, valued. And with Adam, I found fulfillment. I walked with God to meet Adam. He brought me to my husband. He married us. He placed us in paradise. The beauty of it still lingers in my mind. The fountains, the trees, the sunlit fields, the paths. Adam walked with me through the garden. He showed me the animals and the names he had given to each of them. He taught me our purpose to care for this beautiful garden in Eden. That, that was our goal. That was why we existed, to just care for this garden. He showed me two trees. One indicated the will of God for my life, the tree of life. He told me that God wanted me to live forever. The other tree was man's choice, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God's always a gentleman. Paradise wasn't prison. We were there by choice. If we wanted out, we were just one bite away. You know that I bit first. I listened to the enemy's lies and my own desires. And I ate from the wrong tree in the garden. And Adam shared my fate. And the second picture isn't nearly so happy as the first. In fact, they seem as discordant as light versus darkness, right versus wrong. We were evicted, expelled from the garden. The reason, if we had stayed, we could eat from the tree of life and live forever. But we would have eaten and lived forever as sinners. And God didn't want us that. So, we were expelled from the garden. God told Adam if we ate from that tree, we would die. And at that horrible moment that I felt guilt for the first time, I thought I would die right then. But even, even in judgment comes mercy. And God was so merciful. He allowed us to live. He let us live. He gave me the promise that I would be the mother of all living. He told me that one of my kids would crush the serpent who beguiled me. Crushed. But something within me was also crushed. I went from wholeness and newness to brokenness. I watched my kids born one after another. I saw Cain, the first murderer, and I felt crushed again by my own mistake. I saw Seth and I was thankful, but I didn't see the one to be born who would restore me. I wanted to get away from that second picture, the shame, the curse, the pain. I wanted to get back to what I had been brand new. Who could break the curse? Who would bring back the new?

Powerful story. If Adam and Eve were the parents of all the living, then the failure of she and Adam passed on to everyone born and their brokenness was passed from generation to generation. Each of us was born broken. Each of us was born with a predisposition to fail God. Some in one area or another. We were born broken. Born with a broken heart. It's a title of an inspirational book written by Crayola Pitman Cullen. As a child, she chopped cotton in the South and worked her way into a story-rich career. But along the way, she took the time to do battle with the sickness that struck all of the male newborn in her family. Hetaxi. Boys were born with broken hearts. It seems to be the fight down through the ages. We were born wrong. She fought that. She saw it in her children. That flies in the face of humanism. The belief that man is intrinsically good. The humanist manifesto printed over 50 years ago rejected religion. Its first affirmation starts with a denial of creation and the creator. Here's the first affirmation. "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." And from that premise, it steadily works down to rejecting God as the answer and painting the way for man to be the answer for everything. The 15th and last point of the manifesto, it says, "We assert in humanism will affirm life rather than deny it. B seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from them. C endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few. And by this positive morale and intention, humanism will be guided. From this perspective and alignment, the techniques and efforts of humanism will flow." But can I just say the positive morale of humanism denies something altogether basic. And we're not born good, we're born bad. Put two toddlers in a nursery, put one toy or piece of candy between them, and theories of positive morale will fade away quickly. We humans are born self-absorbed. Eve's fall in the garden was not just based on the enemy's lies, but her own desires. She saw the food was good to look upon, lust of the eye. She tasted the food, lust of the flesh. She believed she could be as God, the pride of life. And that failure was passed along to each of us. The apple never lands far from the tree. And that's us. That's us.

I remember years ago Tessy and I went to San Francisco and, uh, stayed along the waterfront there and, and if you've ever been there, you know sourdough bread is huge there. And you can go through the little museum or and where they tell you how sourdough bread was made from bacteria that infected dough and men developed a taste for sourdough bread. When the gold rush hit California, an entrepreneurial baker set up a shop in San Francisco using the bacteria in the climate, the atmosphere. He fashioned his own version. And while touring the sourdough museum in San Francisco, I read this placard. "Sourdough bread, still made with flour, salt, water, and a portion of the original mother dough that dates back to the very first loaf." Wow. Each loaf of bread since the gold rush has had a portion of the same mother dough or the starter dough in it. Was that 175 years ago? But that shouldn't surprise us. If the mother dough is sour, its offspring will be the same. And as Paul said in Galatians 5, "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Eve was affected and so are we. David said, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." In Romans 3, it's written, "There's none righteous. No, not one." We're born with broken hearts, born with broken spirits, born with jagged disconnection, disconnected pieces, born from the original mother dough, the sourdough, we know it. Every time we get jealous at somebody, every time we say something unkind and we wish we could get the words back, every time we lose our temper, every time we break a promise, we know there's nothing wrong outside of us. It's on the inside. Born wrong. Born wrong. And oh yes, yes. What we would seek is to rebrand, repair. We're looking for a quick fix, a thin veneer of respectability over the problem. But you allow a problem to hit, a major issue to hit, a catastrophe. What's beneath that thin veneer shows up? We're looking for quick fixes. Quick fixes. Every year in America, the sales of self-improvement and materials keeps climbing and climbing into the billions. One of the fastest growing sectors of publishing. People want better self-image. They want better vocabularies. They want better wardrobes. All as if these can fix the problem on the inside. But can you really fix a problem within by repairing the outside? Can cosmetics mask character? Can makeovers hide the mess within? Can money and power cover a broken heart? Can applause and fame transcend an inward shame? Can liquid spirits break down a broken spirit? If self is the source of sin, how can self-improvement rid us of that sin?

The church, well, the church is basically the survivors' meeting place. We get together and we testify that only God can do this. Only God can break the shackles. Only God. Only God. I don't seek to be repaired or rebranded. I need renewal. I need renewal. In Genesis, we see renewal. God gave a murderer a new lease on life. He gave an old man a newborn son. He gives a liar a new name and nature. He gives a nation a brand new hope. God doesn't repair. He makes things over again. He picks up the brokenness. Starts with them. He doesn't glue us back together. He refires us, remolds us, renews us. He does it from the inside out. After David had sinned horribly, he prayed this prayer. "Create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. Don't you take your Holy Spirit from me." Changing what I am begins with who is working on the inside of me. It's having the new wine and new wine skins. It's from within the newness come. You don't need a better marriage. You need a new marriage. A renewed marriage. You don't need a better life. You need a new life, a renewed life. You don't need repairing. You needed renewing.

When the 39 books of the Old Testament closed, the picture is bleak. God's people have turned their back on him. The law and the prophets failed to bring people to the newness. The law was broken, the prophets slain, and the light of Israel faded fast. And when it seemed that all hope was gone, God remembered his promise to Eve. And when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son made of woman, made under the law to redeem them who were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. Because you're sons. God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts crying, "Aba, Father." A divine intervention took place. When we couldn't get to God, God came to man. Donald Miller is author, branding expert, Christian thinker. I think he's based somewhere in Nashville now, but he's from Peril. He wrote a book, Blue Like Jazz, and he told the story of a group of Navy Seals who freed some long-held hostages. And when the would-be rescuers entered the compound, they found the prisoners huddled terrified in a corner. No amount of coaxing or cajoling or threatening could convince the hostages that their rescuers were indeed Americans. Finally, one of the SEALs removed his helmet, laid aside his weapons, walked into the midst of the hostages, and laid down with them. In his own way, he identified with the hostages. He condescended. And after a while, the hostages met his gaze. No captor had ever behaved this way with them. Maybe, just maybe, he's one of us. And the SEAL whispered to them that he and his comrades were indeed Americans and had come to save them. He then asked, "Will you follow us?" He stood to his feet and the hostages did the same and all began to follow. "Down from his glory, everliving story, my God and Savior came and Jesus was his name. Born in a manger to his own estranged. He condescended. He came down to my level. This one born of woman came down to a hostage of this world. What condescension bringing us redemption that in the dead of night not one faint hope in sight. God gracious, tender, laid aside his splendor and stooped to woo to win to save my soul." He laid down with the hostages and said, "Follow me." This son of Eve finally came and it's him who says, "I make all things new." All things old habits can become new habits. All things old ways can become new ways. All things old thoughts can become new thoughts. All things old lives can become new lives. All things. You see, that's his desire to bring back the new, to restore you into the person he meant for you to be. To rewind you to paradise, to bring back the peace and joy, and to restore health and wholeness, to restore the smoothness where there's been nothing but brokenness. He makes us over again. He entered the world. No one could stop him. But just as there were two trees in the garden, we have a choice today. You couldn't stop Jesus from entering into the world, but you can stop him from entering your heart. And you can stop him from starting over again in your life. But don't, don't into my heart. Into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Not looking for a quick fix. I want to be changed. I want to be renewed.

What a great week. What a great week on Daily Devotion. Thank you for being a part of this. Thank you for being a part of this. Check out kengurly.com. The resources there. Second Chance Ministry that supports all that we're doing here. And then like and follow Facebook. Subscribe YouTube. Share, share, share. See you on KYCC in just a few moments. Looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend. May God be with you. God with you. Go. Have an amazing Friday. God bless.

Thank you for sharing in Daily Devotion with Ken Gurley. We pray this ministry has been a source of encouragement and strength to you. Please be mindful that your financial support enables us to meet with you each day. To give a donation or connect with us, visit our website at kengurley.com. There you will also find the latest books, podcasts, and resources. "Blessed 90 Days to Change Your World" is Pastor Gurley's latest book. You can get your copy of this life-changing book at kengurley.com. May God's favor rest on you in every way. Until we meet again.