Begin Again (India)

Congratulations! We have made it to the year 2022.

The last time I visited was 2018. I hoped to come sooner but it was not possible.

The last two years have been difficult times.

We have a world-wide pandemic with many restrictions.

The US has had a very difficult and divisive election.

Our US economy is lagging with inflation and very high gas and food prices.

People are more divided in their beliefs and opinions than ever.

Almost everyone I know has someone in their family who is not talking to them because of political differences.

Many people thought that if we comply and do as we are told, things will eventually go back to normal.

I now suspect that things will never go back to the way that they were.

There will always be another variant of COVID, or flu or monkey pox - even if it isn’t that strong, the media will make us afraid of it.

People are afraid in ways that they were not before.

As a pastor I have been very concerned, not just with peoples physical health, but with their mental, emotional and spiritual health.

It is not good for people to be locked in their houses without talking to their friends and neighbors.

There are women who are being abused who are trapped in the house with their abuser and cannot talk to anyone else.

Many people who had tendency toward addiction became worse during the pandemic.

And we have also seen an increase in suicide.

But some good things have happened as well.

People are using this opportunity to make the changes that they desired to make but lacked the courage or the opportunity.

Our job market is wide open, people are quitting the jobs that they didn’t like and trying for better ones.

A lot of people are going back to school online, because more classes are available now online.

Also, People are leaving more populated areas like New York City and Southern California with higher taxes and tougher restrictions for more open states like Texas or Florida with less dense populations and more natural settings.

A few months ago, as I was seeking the Lord for where to go and what to do next, I heard the words, “begin again.”

The words “Begin again” say to me that we need to accept that some things are changing and make the most of this opportunity.

On one hand it sound like, “start over” as if to mean, “scrap everything and just begin again.”

When we go through changes, at least we bring with us the knowledge and experience that we have gained from previous seasons of our lives.

What are the lessons that we have learned?

What skills have we gained?

How are we better for the challenges that we have faced?

Now take all of that and begin again.

Don’t just give up; but start over.

Begin to do what you know you need to do.

It’s a new day, so make a new start.

But begin with fresh vision, fresh energy and fresh perspective.

Philippians 3:12–14 ESV

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

How to we begin again?

We do what we were created to do: live, love and dream.

Begin to live again

Live life with vision.

We should not just be going through our days with no thought to the purpose for which we are created.

God has redeemed us and that means we have purpose!

The Bible is full of new beginnings.

How many times do we see in the scriptures that God helped mankind start over?

After the fall.

After the flood.

God called Abraham out of Ur after the Babel incident.

God brought Joseph to Egypt to save Jacobs family from famine.

Then He brought the Israelites back out of Egypt.

He brought them from the wilderness into the Promised Land.

He took them out of the promised land into exile.

And he brought them out of exile again.

Each time God begins again, there is a challenge, a problem a struggle.

The challenge provides opportunity to learn something about God and about ourselves.

Overcoming the challenge means that there are changes that need to be made.

As people, we are broken, but God makes a way for the broken to be mended by beginning again.

God invites us to begin again.

You may wonder, “what right to I have to start over?’

You have God’s invitation.

God knows that you can not continue in your broken state, so He invites you to start over.

Jesus had this conversation with a member of the Pharisees, the elite religious sect of Judaism.

John 3:1–8 ESV

1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

I don’t think that Nicodemus disliked the idea of starting over; he just thought it to be impossible.

And in the natural, it is impossible!

You don’t get to go back and enter the world again.

But there is a spiritual world all around us that we fail to live in when we only live in the natural.

Begin to live on a new level.

So Jesus uses terms like “born again” and “born of the spirit.” What does he mean?

When God created man, He breathed into him His own breath.

Genesis 2:7 AMP

7 Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living being.

So we have physical life - that part belongs to the dust.

Jesus calls it flesh - the merely physical part of our being.

But what about the spiritual part - do we even pay attention to it?

Jesus says that unless we are born of water and the spirit, we don’t perceive the Kingdom of God, the spiritual part of life.

Water would be symbolic of baptism or cleansing.

But a baby born into the world also comes through water.

Water is the environment in which we are formed.

Being formed in water prepares us to live and breath the air.

This physical life is also a formation stage for our spiritual eternity with God.

You can experience all of the good things that life has to offer.

But until you begin to realize that you are a spiritual being, meant to breath the air of life with God, then you haven’t begun to live.

This earthly life is a womb - it is a formative stage for the life that we are really mean to live.

The brokenness and failures that we all experience in life are meant to teach us that there is something more.

We are going to keep on repeating our failures until we figure out that there is a life beyond what we know.

The good news is that we retain those lessons each time we begin again.

How many times are we going to start over in our own strength and determination until we learn that it’s not about that?

We will have to repeat our lessons until we learn what we need to learn and what we need to learn is to love.

Begin to love again

Put your energy into loving God and others.

If we just learn how to love, and to do that well, so many other things will fall into place.

So when we begin again, maybe we put more of our energy into loving well?

Love is the greatest commandment.

Jesus brought the same insight to those who were trying to live by following the law.

Jesus reduced all of the commandments down to two.

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

So that’s it - Love God and love people.

That should be pretty simple.

Except that other people are broken just like we are.

Loving people is going to require understanding.

Loving people is going to require our forgiveness.

Loving people is going to require patience, because it is going to happen over and over again.

Other people are not going too learn their lesson until we learn ours.

That’s why there are two commandments.

You won’t be able to do the second, or at least not very well, until you do the first.

Loving well means loving God first.

So what does it mean to love God?

God is our creator.

He is our source of life.

He is the source of love.

Loving God means plugging in to the source of power, of life and of love.

We tend to look to other people for all of these things.

Or the modern voices tell us to look to ourselves.

It’s not yourself that you must look to, but your Creator.

The One who is love and the source of life.

It takes recognizing that I am not God, but God lives in and wants to love through me.

I can only love well when I love people as God loves me.

I can only forgive well, when I forgive as God forgave me.

I can only relate well, when I relate with the grace and courage that God has demonstrated to me in Jesus Christ.

Love is not something you get right the first time, or if you did, you got it wrong further down the line.

Love is God’s nature, not ours.

That’s why we begin again.

To begin again, return to your first love.

Revelation 2:3–5 ESV

3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

The problem with love is that it is too simple - we make it complicated.

At first, love is easy -we’re overtaken by the joy of knowing God.

Just like falling in love with that person who seems to fulfill our of our dreams.

Love is grand, when it’s innocent.

But then we start to have doubts.

We begin to take people for granted.

We begin to see the problems and the issues.

Even with God - God doesn’t have issues, but we project our issues on to God.

Somewhere along the line we begin to get defensive - we still try to love, but we feel the need to protect ourselves.

We still say that we love God and others, but we love from behind walls.

That’s when God says, “you have forsaken your first love.”

When I was married for the first time, the pastor told us at pre-marital counseling. You’re in love now and preoccupied with getting married and starting a life together. But come back and see me when things start to get tough, because they will!

Well, for us it was about two years until disillusionment set in. I went back to him with my complaints about how this was not the same person I married. Then he asked me if I was still doing the same things that I did at first? Obviously not!

All of the things that we did during courtship were to win the other’s favor. Now that we were married, all of that was over. But that’s when we realized that we needed to keep doing what we were doing it we wanted to keep the relationship alive and growing.

Begin again, for many of us simply means renewing our commitment to doing what we did at first.

It’s not starting over, but starting again because something stopped along the way.

Maybe its because you were putting so much of your own effort into it that it was difficult to maintain?

Loving God should be energizing, and gives us the ability to love others well.

The instruction is to repent - turn back to God as your source.

Recognize that you have been trying to do on your own what should come from God.

Love should flow from our being as our life flows from God.

Begin to dream again

Let your past experiences give you perspective for the future.

Dreams are the unconscious expression of our hopes, desires and aspirations.

Dreams are a form of communication.

In the Bible, dreams are believed to be significant.

It’s one of the ways that God communicates with people.

I believe that most of our dreams are simply helping us to know our own heart.

But some dreams are also prophetic to lead us into our destiny.

God may be speaking to you in your dreams.

You can expect that if you turn to God as your source of life and love, that He will begin to communicate with you.

Isaiah 55:8–9 NLT

8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Change, beginning again, means thinking in ways that we have not thought before.

Think about it - if you had known in the past what you know now, you would not have made some of the choices that you have made.

Now project that into the future - if you are going to make different choices than the ones you are making now, you are going to need to realize something beyond what you already know.

That should cause you to wonder - what is there that I don’t already know?

I hope that the thought unsettles you enough to break out of whatever pattern or cycle you are in and reach for something higher.

I want to always be learning.

I want to always be growing.

I want to always be reaching for higher things.

If you have stopped doing this - then begin again.

I believe God has more for us than what we have experience thus far.

And it’s the “more” that keeps me pressing into God to know Him more and to depend on Him more.

The “more” is what teaches us to dream.

Dreams are a kind of anticipation.

In the Telford church where I served for more than seventeen years. We went though a time where we faced several setbacks right in a row. It knocked the wind out of us. It seemed like all we were doing was putting out fires.

We went through a time where I dreaded our leadership meetings and I think everyone else did too. But we were committed to our assignments and we worked at relationship with God and with one another.

Eventually there came a time when we began to grow again as a congregation. In one of our meetings, instead of just troubleshooting problems, we were beginning to talk about future plans and expansion. Curt remarked, “I feel like we are beginning to dream again!”

Dreams are a kind of anticipation.

It is an expression of hope for the future.

Before anything happens in real life, someone has to imagine it.

When Israel was in exile, they almost lost hope.

I say almost, because they didn’t ever entirely lose it.

It just felt at times like they had.

It is at times like that when we need to begin again to hope and to dream.

God brought them back again to the land and Psalm 126 expresses what that felt like.

Psalm 126:1–6 ESV

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” 3 The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad. 4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! 5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! 6 He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

That’s called perspective.

It’s the ability to see beyond the present moment to know that something better is possible and that it is coming.

It’s knowing that just because you are going through a time of sorrow, you will rejoice again.

It’s knowing that just because you have fallen on hard times, you will prosper again.

It’s knowing that even thought the present moment is lonely, discouraging and dark, that you will flourish again.

The present is not all there is.

The present is no indication of the future.

The future is beyond our present knowledge.

And because we do not yet know what there is to know, there is always hope.

More than that, our hope and trust is in the goodness of God who holds the past, present and future in His hand.

Dreams are an expression of imagination.

I said that anything that happens is first imagined by someone.

That was true when God created the world.

He imagined it all and spoke it into being.

And God invites us to imagine the future with him.

God invites us to begin again.

He invites us to imagine with Him a different future from the present.

He invites us to use all of the knowledge and perspective that we have acquired from the past and imagine a possible future.

I don’t know what this year will hold.

But based on what I know from the past, I can envision a year of new beginnings.

“Begin again” is a command.

It means that I face this year with intentionality.

Yes, the past two years have been rough.

But I can use that experience to imagine a better future.

I want to begin to live again, love again and dream again.

And we are going to grow again, thrive again and prosper again.