The Principles of Prayer XIII

 A new creation is precisely that. It’s not a retread of the old man, cleaned up and put in a suit, or someone enslaved to the same sins except for the two hours they spend in church every other week. A new creation has new desires, a new purpose, new goals, and new pursuits, and they all come together in the person of Jesus Christ. It is no longer we who live, but He who lives in us.

If you put a Ferrari sticker on a Pinto, it’s still a Pinto. If you throw in some Christian lingo while remaining shackled to the sin that has kept you prisoner for as long as you can remember, you’re still a slave to sin; you’ve just added Christianese to your repertoire. The dead in sin remain dead until they are born into Christ. Once that occurs, then the evidentiary fruit of that rebirth becomes evident and irrefutable. It’s not Jesus in addition to everything else you’ve been carrying; it’s Jesus in lieu of everything, replacing everything, doing away with everything that once kept you empty, alone, and at the whims of sin.

I’m as far away from tech-savvy as you can get without being Amish, but even I know that there’s a difference between rebooting a computer and reformatting it. When you reboot it, all the previously existing files still exist; you just powered it down and started it up again. When you reformat it, everything is returned to factory settings, all the files are wiped, expunged, and erased, and you begin anew. When we are born again, we are not rebooted; we are reformatted. Once we are reformatted, it is our responsibility to make sure we don’t click on the link from the Nigerian prince who wants to bless us with a million dollars, because we know what happened last time we did.

If people took the time to remember the pain their sin caused, and not just the momentary pleasure, far fewer would be returning to the pit of despair and misery with such regularity. God knows where the road of sin will lead. The ruin, the heartache, the pain, and the emptiness aren’t just probable; they are certain to occur.

In His infinite love, He offers men an exit ramp from the inevitable destruction their sin will incur, with not only the promise, but the ability to forgive all that has been, were they to repent and be washed clean in the blood of His Son. It’s no small thing. It’s something only God can offer, and something only He can carry out. None other in the universe, or other unseen realm, can make the same claim and have the wherewithal to back it up.

God’s omnipotence also underscores His sovereignty. Because He is omnipotent, all-powerful, and nothing is outside of His sphere of influence, His sovereignty is likewise absolute, unquestioned, and unshakeable.

Another attribute exclusive to God is omnipresence, being everywhere at once, whether in time or space, or outside of them. God knows the end from the beginning, not because He intuits them or guesses at what the next handful of years will look like, but because He is not constrained by time itself, being outside of both it and the space to which we are tethered. God has seen the entirety of human existence from creation to the point that the earth and everything in it are done away with, before Adam breathed his first breath. In that infinite, whether infinite possibilities or eventualities, He foresaw you and me, and the meticulousness with which He knows us is beyond anything we can know of ourselves.

He told Jeremiah as much when He informed him that He knew him before He formed him in his mother’s womb. If you’ve ever thought that God has lost sight of you, or does not know you, take heart, He does, and has from before He formed you in your mother’s womb.

The intimacy with which God knows us is beyond compare. When was the last time you counted the hairs on your head? If you have, you have far too much free time and should put it to better use, but God keeps an accurate count, never caught unaware. Some among us even try to trip Him up, getting hair plugs, or individual hair transplanted to their balding scalps, and even then, God knows. Whether He counts them as originals, or dismisses them because their origin was not on one’s head but some other place is one of those burning questions I have yet to receive an answer for.

God loves us. God knows us. In His goodness, He has laid out the blueprint of how we can fellowship with Him, grow in Him, and know Him as He knows us. That in itself is mind-blowing to me. By all accounts, God is amazing at multitasking. Just because a million things are going on in the world, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t have the time, or desire to fellowship with you. His schedule is never too packed, His plate is never too full, and He is never so distracted that you would cry out to Him and He would ignore you. God doesn’t check His phone first to see who is calling, then ignores it altogether because He is not in the mood to talk. He will not abandon those who cling to Him, and whose desire is to grow in Him.

The absolute knowledge of these truths should give you heart, no matter the trial or hardship you may be going through. I beseech Him, and He hears. I cry out, and He answers. It may not be the answer I want, but then again, He is sovereign, He knows best, and the faith that I’ve grown and built up gives me the assurance that His will is perfect.

Revelation 19:6, “And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thundering, saying, ‘Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!”’

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Posted on 28 April 2025 | 11:31 am