Have you ever wanted a reset button? A chance to rewind a moment, undo a decision, take back a comment…? I remember one time when I really wished I had a reset button. We were on a family holiday in Cambodia, our son was walking by the pool and accidentally dropped his Kindle into the water, he jumped in to retrieve it only to realise that he had his phone in his pocket. Needless to say, we were grateful for travel insurance that day, both were beyond repair. Thank God, that’s not the case when it comes to our lives!
A long time ago, a man made some really bad choices, he had fallen in love with another man’s wife and arranged to have her husband killed so he could have her for himself. That man was David and he also happened to be the King of Israel. A prophet called Nathan called him out on his behaviour. David realised he couldn’t undo the damage he had caused to so many people. He knew that the problem was actually inside him, a software issue, and that his only hope was a full factory reset, a total reboot of his heart. David desperately called out to God, the only one who could fix this problem. In this prayer in Psalm 51 he cries out ‘Create in me a clean heart God, put a new and right Spirit in me’. In other words; ‘God, do a complete makeover, plug in that new software, make me new from the inside out’.
There’s nothing too bad that God can’t deal with. And Jesus showed us just that on the cross-that nothing could get in the way of his love. On Easter Sunday, Jesus’s resurrection was God’s reboot, a reset of the whole creation. The empty tomb totally reverses the damage, death gives way to life, forgiveness replaces punishment, mercy and grace the new operating system. And that resurrection reset becomes your personal software update. In baptism, we are joined to Christ’s death, so we share his resurrection (Romans 6:4).
That gift of a daily reset comes with a lifetime guarantee. It doesn’t mean that we can just abuse that gift and just live anyway we choose with no accountability. But knowing I’m baptised empowers me each day to step out, knowing that sure, I’m bound to make mistakes, but that they don’t define me. So, plug in, power up and step out with confidence in God’s promise to always go with you.
David Spike
