A businessman owned a warehouse which had sat empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and trash was everywhere inside the building.
The businessman showed a prospective buyer the property and took great pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage and clean out all the garbage.
“Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said. “When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different, something entirely new. I don’t want the building. I just want the site!”
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Compared with the renovation that God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping out a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When you become a Christian, the “old is passed away; the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You can’t keep your “old building” when you come to Jesus. He doesn’t want the building–but he does want the site. The site is the real you–the you that was created in the image of God. And the old building–with its dark rooms and bad habits–is demolished. You become a new creation in Christ Jesus.