Hebrews 8:7-13 | What is the lesson for me today?

Unlike the original audience, I did not grow up under the Old Covenant. All I know is the New Covenant. I grew up in the church and have known about Jesus from the time I could remember. I made him my Lord at 12 years old and have been following Him faithfully. So how can this apply to me? In a similar exercise to what we did last Friday, we can look at the things I am actually believing about my life.

Old patterns of thought are no strangers to us. I have recently been spending a lot of time wrestling with old patterns of thought in comparison to what Scripture actually says. Have you ever discovered that Scripture teaches something completely different about you than you believed? I will give an example out of my own testimony.

I grew up as a very unlovable child, or at least what happened in my childhood made me believe that. I had an older brother and a younger sister. I felt like the runt of the litter. Many of the stereotypes of middle children rang true for me. My brother was a prodigy in the eyes of my father, my sister was his little buttercup. I was the disappointment. The oldest got privileges, the youngest got rewarded, I got punished. I was bullied at school. In fact, I didn't have any friends until I got to college. I grew up extremely isolated. There were many nights of tears spent between me and the Lord.

Fast forward to our modern day, and I find that those old patterns of thought and learned behavior really shaped a lot of what I believed about the Lord. I felt like I had to perform before God and if I messed that up, He would leave. My relationship with God felt extremely volatile as a response. His grace had very little to say in the matter as my own old pattern of thought ruled. I didn't have the opportunity to live in the new, simply because I neglected it. The saddest part of it is that I spent so many years so insecure in my relationship with God because of the old.

The enemy is crafty and knows how entrenched our thoughts can be. If he can get us to think in a channel like this, we will forever be restricted. Once I read the truth of what it means to be in the new and actually believed it everything changed. It changed how I approach ministry. I became concerned with believers like myself that claimed to believe the word of God but didn't actually. Because once we believe these truths truly, it changes everything in our lives. The old patterns of thought can become overthrown. It is not easy, but the result of entering the new is literally life changing.

What lesson are you taking from this passage?