I grew up in the ATARI to the Nintendo Entertainment System generation. Pong, Tank, Mario Brothers, or Contra were probably on our tv screens almost daily. Pac-Man on ATARI was awesome. I can probably still pull off the pattern which was almost unstoppable. And we can’t leave out NES Track and Field. I had the control with the automatic button where my character could run the 100 meters in 6 seconds. Then SEGA introduced us to Sonic the Hedgehog. Collecting those rings became our goal in life. Now there’s SONY PlayStation where your characters are almost lifelike. Video games have definitely came a long way.
One of the greatest parts about the home systems is the “RESET” button. If your game isn’t going your way, you simply push the “RESET” button. You can start over. A fresh start. A clean start. Another chance to set the 100 meters record or to collect the rings you missed on the previous try. Just as we can try our games over with one push with our finger, we have a RESET for our lives. Jesus! Jesus is our button to start over. When we ask him into our hearts, we begin again. We start over. Isn’t that awesome!!!
In the Bible, we read about becoming a “new self” the moment we take Christ into our hearts. In God’s eyes, our past is in our past. He erased our worldly and sinful natures. With Jesus…we begin a-new. We shed our old habits and work on new ones. We cleanse our hearts so we can serve him appropriately. Now this doesn’t mean we might forget our past. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have wrongs that just go away. It means we are no longer “slaves” to those. It means we can move forward with a strength to heal from our sins. Guilt can become powerless. Anxiety can be overcome. Hate can be released. It means we now have hope. We have hope because God loves us. He always has. He always will.
