For the past few weeks, we have been working on creating a new website that is up-to-date and working to provide information about FUMC Mountain View to anyone who wants to learn more about our local church. This new website is a new creation: We have retired the old website and published a new one.

As such, the new website doesn’t work in the same way the old website did. That’s because it is entirely new. It really is a new creation.

A new creation does not operate in the same way its predecessor did.

In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul encourages them to “get rid” of the way they once conducted themselves because they have “clothed [themselves] with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:7-10). As the creator of our new website, I had to spend time designing the site to function in the way I intended it to function. Everything about the new design is aimed toward having the site provide certain types of information in certain ways. That’s how it was designed and created.

You and I are designed and created to glorify God by being who we were created to be. As disciples of Jesus Christ who have been raised with Christ and whose lives are hidden with Christ in God (3:1-3), we are being continually renewed by God’s sanctifying grace, renewed in the imago Dei – the image of God in which we were created – to bring glory to the Creator as new creations.

Renewal is a process that takes a lifetime.

I didn’t just get up one morning, drive to the church office, and sit down and throw up a website. It took time to design, create, and publish it. What we refer to in the Methodist tradition as entire sanctification, or sometimes Christian perfection – that is, being made perfect in love of God and neighbor by the sanctifying grace of God at work within us – does not happen overnight either. It is a process that lasts a lifetime. During that time, we are consistently growing in the grace and love of God, reflecting the image of God as new creatures justified by the righteousness of Christ our Lord. We are new creatures who are being continually renewed as we grow in the grace of God.

May we continue growing in the grace of God together, seeking first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, being made new each day by the power of the Holy Spirit.