by Michael J Klassen
Years ago, while I was working fulltime as a freelance writer, I purchased a Compaq laptop that I loved. In fact, the first 14 months, I wore out two keyboards.
The only problem with the computer was that it rebooted at random times during the day. Back in the day, software wasn’t near as adept at automatically backing up our files on the hard drive. So, I could lose an hour or two of work if I hadn’t typed “control s” regularly enough. At times, I would be adding the finishing touches on a sentence or paragraph that, I was convinced, was a work of art in its own right, when suddenly the screen would go blank and the computer would start all things new. On more than one occasion, I nearly threw my beloved laptop into the concrete wall in my basement office.
Yet, other times when my computer would start slowing down, rebooting was the answer to my problems.
New Year’s Day is all about rebooting. Many people make resolutions this time of the year. “I don’t make resolutions, I make goals,” someone commented to me earlier this week. But what’s the difference?
The packed gyms in my community this first week of the year prove that more people than me make a commitment to reboot their lives and start losing weight. But by the end of the month, the number of people in the gym revert to pre-New Year’s Day figures.
All of us are wired with the deep desire for new creation. Movies like Groundhog Day and 50 First Dates call out to that deep desire. Countless times growing up, I wished I could start over on the semester at school. I just wanted to reboot my backlog of homework.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could truly reboot our lives whenever we wanted, just like we can reboot our computers?
The good news for all of us is this: God is all about rebooting. “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23). Every morning, God pours out his love and forgiveness on us.
And here’s further evidence of the God who reboots: Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Not only does God pour out his love on us every day, but we also live every day as a new creation.
So what does it mean to live the “rebooted” life?
It means that God’s forgiveness of us is complete. The sins of our past have been completely erased by the blood of Jesus. Our past no longer needs to haunt us. We get to start over!
When we give our lives to Jesus, we get to start over every day! Reboot.
Conversation Starter
- Share a time when you got a chance to reboot.
- What does the rebooted life look like to you?
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Michael co-pastors The Neighborhood Church with Eugene Scott in Littleton, Colorado.
The Neighborhood Café 
I have always wanted to forgive and forget …like God did…and always found it impossible to forget. and then I learnt that God didn’t forget my sins but He did not meditate on it,( rehashing it every day over and over and over again). That’s what it means when the Bible says God does not think about my sins anymore. God allows me to ‘reboot’ every morning and whenever I confess my sins. But He doesn’t keep on thinking on my mistakes because He knows I am only human and made of dust.
I need to do that with my enemies and my repented sin. I need to forgive my enemies because they are only human and made of dust (like me) and to stop meditating on their ‘sins’ against me. To use the metaphor..we all have glitches and bugs :))
What helps me forgive people of their sin is remembering the many sins God has forgiven of me. It’s hard for me to justify my unforgiveness when I constantly remember my own need for forgiveness. For that reason, the belief in total depravity forms the basis of forgiveness.
I am struck by the words of an old hymn, “O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing” that has the verse: “He breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the sinner free…” What power canceled sin has! Whether it is sin we have committed and can’t forget, or some sin against us that we forgive but can’t stop rehearsing. So we keep giving sin power. We reboot but some virus is still there waiting to attack. I think the “cure” is to seek the mind of Christ who lived such humility that he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but became one of us. Pride created our sense of being violated and feeds our sense of self disguist that we have failed. Humility permits us to be honest with our condition and then receive grace.
Mike
Mike, what a great insight–that our canceled sin has power. Never thought about it like that before. And, I like your idea about the role pride and humility play in our ability to reboot. Pride is nothing more than absorption with self.