Updating Your Operating System

It’s happened again: my phone’s been updated.

Yours, too?

Stuff is improved, it says.

All we might notice is that the layout’s just enough different to be aggravating.

So we go ahead and tap here and swipe there and click this and download that.

And without really noticing when it happens, the new system becomes the familiar one and yeah wow things really are better.

Eventually we can’t remember how it used to be.

Works that way with our hearts and our minds and our lives, too. The early Methodists would call it the process of sanctification.

As in Psalm 51:10, Create in me a clean heart, O God.

And Ephesians 4:22-24, Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; be made new in the attitude of your minds; and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

At ordination, one of the historical questions we get asked is this: “Are you going on to perfection?” Good question for everybody!

The correct answer is, “By the grace of God, yes.”

In cell phone terms, we’re being updated.

Given a new operating system.

All by the grace of God.

Amen?