Renewal

It was wonderful to be back in worship with you all yesterday. I am so hopeful and excited about what God is getting ready to do at Mountain View. I sensed it as I walked into the worship center. The music was rolling and hundreds of you were worshiping our God with abandonment. It was like a refreshing, renewing wind had blown into the building.

As many of you know, I have just experienced 6 weeks of renewal and refreshment in the Holy Spirit. Renewal is a vital part of our lives.
A term that Brasilian Christians often use is the equivalent to our word "renovate." It's used to describe the renewal a person experiences when being filled with the Holy Spirit. I've heard pastors and believers refer to how their ministry changed, or how their lives changed, after they were "renovated." It's similar to how we use the word "renewal", but I like their word better, because it implies a remaking, a restructuring of the heart, which is what we all need. It's a makeover, and every person is desperate for one. I'm more convinced than ever that we cannot be effective in ministry without this constant and never-ending, continuously ongoing renovative work of the Holy Spirit. We need to be made new, and we need to be made over; that can only be accomplished through the power of God's Spirit.

Paul said, "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16 NAS)

That renewal is in reality a renovation; it's the process of transformation that God works in us until we become like Jesus. How does it happen? In 2 Corinthians 4:18 Paul indicates that we have to look beyond what is seen, beyond the struggles and limitations of our earthen vessels, and set our eyes are the things that are not seen, the things that are eternal.

Everything we deal with day in and day out tempts us to focus on the temporary: money problems, health problems, relationship problems, and so on. But if we can look beyond these things, and focus instead on the presence of God, we can experience the renovating work of his Spirit.

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