Falling Shedding and Renewing
Looking at the trees outside my bedroom window, I’m impressed by the beauty of different colored leaves. I want to enjoy the beauty now because within weeks the trees will have shed virtually all their leaves, and the leaves of 2021 will fall, dry up, and disintegrate to be replaced by new ones in the spring of 2022.
Like trees naturally shedding their leaves, so the body undergoes its own natural shedding. Scientists tell us the average person loses about a million skin cells per day. About a month later, new cells will have grown to the epidermis, replacing the old. Thus many of the skin cells you see on your hand today will be replaced by new ones next month. So trees shed leaves and humans shed skin. All about us, the natural world is continuously changing and being renewed. Paul, the apostle, wrote “…though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” Spiritually, God desires us to be renewed in Him and by Him daily. Jeremiah, the prophet, reminds us, “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
As we grow in God, we come to realize He has purposed for us to shed the nonproductive old and be fruitful and productively renewed. Christ taught “Every branch that bears fruit, God purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” I must admit the purging process is not always easy. In fact, it can be downright painful, but it allows God to shed us of old hurts, wrong thinking, unhealthy habits, and toxic relationships to replace them with the joy of healing, the mind of faith, habits of praise, and healthy relationships because some things need to fall from us so we can be fruitful with newness of purpose and life. Refreshingly God sheds from us for our good. So, let us allow Him to shed, rid, and cleanse us from the old toxins that hold us back and to replace them with new purpose that moves us forward to greater than can be imagined . Affirmation: Being confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: Philippians 1:6