Newness That Does Not Feel New

She was expecting new and she got Tuesday.

That is not a joke and I am not going to make it into one, because the disappointment in that sentence is real and I have sat with a great many women in it. Last night she came to God about the thing, properly, out loud, and it was not performance and it was not a mood. She meant it in a way she has not managed in a long time.

And this morning is a Tuesday.

Same kitchen. Same knee that hurts on the stairs. Same three things she is behind on. Same interior weather, which is to say a bit tired and a bit flat, exactly like Monday.

Now here is what she was expecting, and it is worth being precise, because unnamed expectations do the most damage. She was expecting newness to arrive as a sensation. Something you would be able to notice. Some interior freshness, the way a room smells different after it has been aired, and she would have known it when she woke up, and it would have been the confirmation.

There is no sensation. And so, by nine o'clock, she has concluded that the newness did not come.

I want to say plainly, because I come from a tradition where this can be handled badly: nobody has failed here. She did not do it wrong. There is no technique she missed and there is nothing about her faith that needs auditing. She was given a word with a meaning, and she read the meaning wrongly, and the wrong reading is doing all the damage.

That is you at nine o'clock.

You were expecting an interior freshness that would tell you. And this morning has told you nothing, and you are reading that silence as an answer, and it is not an answer, it is a Tuesday.

The phrase describes a life walked in, not a feeling detected

Paul uses the phrase everybody quotes, and I want you to notice the verb attached to it, because the verb settles what kind of thing newness is.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.Romans 6:4

Walk in newness of life.

Walk. Not feel. Not sense. Not wake up detecting. The newness is described as something a person walks in, which makes it a sphere, a set of conditions, the ground under the feet, rather than a sensation registering somewhere behind the ribs.

That is a completely different kind of thing from what you were looking for. You can walk in a place and not feel it. In fact most of the walking anybody does anywhere is done without any awareness of the surface at all.

You are walking in newness this morning whether or not anything in you is registering it, and the verse gives a verb about the feet rather than about the chest, and I am not lowering anything: Romans 6:4 says walk in newness of life, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my volume who can get that to a woman at nine o'clock on a flat Tuesday.

And look at what the newness is compared to. Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. The comparison is to a resurrection, and a resurrection is not primarily a feeling either. It is a fact about a person's condition, established by God, and it would have been just as true of Christ in the tomb at the moment it happened whether or not anybody in Jerusalem noticed for another three hours.

You have a condition established by God rather than a sensation you have to verify, which is written into the comparison rather than into my encouragement, with the Spirit of God able to settle it where a morning of checking has only tightened things.

Now, my rooms are loud and I love them, and I will tell you honestly that we have sometimes taught this badly by accident. When the testimony is always about the moment somebody felt something, a woman with a flat Tuesday concludes she has nothing to say. She has plenty to say. She is walking in it. Walking is the verb in the verse and nobody stands up to testify about walking.

This is the ground under you today, in a kitchen that smells exactly like yesterday, because Scripture makes newness a thing walked in, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a midweek morning.