Push Out the Old
Hurricane Sandy is strutting her stuff and is going to try to blow us away. The dock umbrellas are down, the furniture stacked, my husband made a grocery run for non-perishable food that does not need cooking and we are praying for no trees to fall here at Shiloh. High wind gusts flipped a tractor trailer this morning, which was trying to make its way across the mountains on I-77.
Many trees have dropped their leaves. Some, like the crape myrtle in the photograph are shaking their brilliant tail feathers. Others leaves have turned brown but are still hanging on. We've often wondered about these trees and found our answer last week in a devotional. I believe it was written by Adrain Rogers.
Let Your New Life Push Out the Old!
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” - 2 Corinthians 5:17
Our eyes delight to see those trees in autumn which turn glorious colors, then drop their leaves one by one. But there are certain trees that hold their leaves until spring. They wither and turn brown, but they don’t drop. Not until spring do these trees lose their leaves—when the new leaves push out the old leaves.
That’s exactly what happens to our old habits and our old lives when we find the Lord Jesus. The new life pushes that old life off. It’s not a matter of plucking off this leaf and knocking off that leaf. The Christian life is not forged in that manner. Our new life replaces our old life when we are born again.
