You Are a Fixer-Upper and He Is at Work
“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” Revelation 21:5
I’m not a huge TV watcher, but if I am watching TV, there’s a 99 percent chance that I’m flipping between my two favorite channels — ESPN and HGTV. ESPN because televised sports (especially football) are totally my thing, and HGTV because it has one of my favorite shows — Property Brothers.
If you’ve never seen Property Brothers, the host will take a family who is looking for a house to a dream house — the exact one they want. They then explain that the house is way out of the family’s price range and take them to some pretty gross houses that are in their price range. They promise that they can make the old, grimy houses be exactly what the families want.
The families are, unsurprisingly, pretty skeptical that the beat-up, dirty houses can ever be like the more expensive homes they wanted so badly. Cut to the end of the show and the Property Brothers have succeeded into turning the old houses into dream homes.
If I’m being honest, sometimes I feel the same way about following Jesus. Because I love Jesus, I want to become more and more like Him every day. When I take a closer look at myself though, I’m just an imperfect human being who makes countless mistakes every day. If Jesus is the house with the beautiful kitchen and hardwood floors, I’m the house with the green shag carpet. It doesn’t seem like I can ever resemble my Savior!
So what now? Do I try my hardest to make myself a better Christian? Do I come up with a list of things I can do to turn myself from messy fixer-upper to an obedient, Christ-like person? Sometimes following Jesus can look like a checklist, but Jesus would tell us that it’s more like an adventure. He tells us that we can’t earn his love- that He already loves us!
Becoming more like Jesus is not about what we’re doing at all — it’s about what He is doing in our hearts! Because He loves us and calls us His children, He is at work making our hearts more like His every day, even when we can’t see it. In Revelation 21:5 He promises that He is the one who makes all things new, and we can count that He is at work to do just that to our hearts.
Even though we can’t always see how Jesus can make us more like Himself — how He can turn our messy hearts into hearts that are all about Him — we can be confident that He is at work in our lives even now! We can be confident that He is making us into a new creation every day, and that we can’t do that work ourselves.