Life Of IntegritySample

"Isaiah and the New Thing"

I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t like the smell of a new car. When you sit in a new car, you just want to take a deep breath and enjoy it. New shoes, new books, and new clothes – they just smell different. They smell, well, new. There is something vibrant and alive about something new. There is often something stagnant about something old. Go ahead, take off your old shoe and give it a smell. See what I mean? When I think about the activities of the Lord in my life, He is looking to do something new. Something far from personally manufactured, but something where He is clearly the Creator.

The prophet Isaiah gives us a picture of the new things that God can do. He invites us to forget the smell of something old and take a breath of something new. God is in the business of doing “new” things. It is often difficult to see, but we can learn to be attentive to the workings of the Holy Spirit. God can make a way where we can’t see it. He can make a path in the wilderness and a river in the desert. Not only does God have something new for us, we are made new when we are found in Him. He takes away that rotten smell of our old self and makes us new.

One of the ways that I can discern what God is doing in my life is by taking some simple spiritual inventory. Does my spiritual life reek of stagnation and duplication of past highlights? Or is there a freshness to the new thing that God is doing? When I allow my walk with the Lord to enter into unchartered territories, there is a heightened expectation and adventure. Take a moment and invite God to do something new in your life. Get ready to breathe in something full of hope, promise and wonder.