As a child I had a small record player and a plastic 45-rpm record I often played. It put the days of the week in song along with the duties of each day. My parents wisely planted it along with other disciplines at the proper age. Now at eighty, I barely recall the instructions for each day except for the ones with scratches. I remember those words well: This is the day we wash our clothes…and, This is the day we mend our clothes…etc…so early in the morning. The reason those days left such an impression on me was because of scratches that occurred and deepened at those particular spots. Eventually, the record became so interrupted that the words, wash our, kept repeating – wash our…wash our…wash our. I would bump the player and it would continue until it found the next scratch – mend our…mend our…mend our.

As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I often converse with people who can’t seem to shake an experience from the past. Such experiences can be quite deep, even interfering with their ability to forgive and peacefully relate to those around them. Replaying the incidents are like deep scratches sometimes producing anger and penetrating looks as though it was happening again. In my mind it is like holding onto that old plastic record and continuing to listen to it over and over. It is such an irritation that if allowed to continue, will rob a person of sleep and soundness of mind.

One might think that such a thing can be fixed without throwing the record away, and technology may provide some temporary way of preserving those old songs. But using common sense, I finally tossed it and started listening to something new. Profoundly speaking, that is what the Gospel teaches. We cannot patch up the old. Until that old man is crucified with Christ, he is a constant irritation and interference with a peaceful life. How we long to hang onto those old recordings, but they are nothing but trouble.

If any man is in Christ he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus want us to surrender that old sin-scratched record and accept the new record that is unscratchable. It is Christ within us. It is an exchanged life – the old for the new. The old stony heart must be removed. Jesus Himself wants to occupy, but the heart’s door must be opened to Him. Nights of unrest can be gloriously gone when the Prince of Peace enters in. A patch job of our own good works will not play on the Father’s recorder. Put the phonograph needle in the eternal track and start living a new joyful life in Jesus Christ.

John L. Owens and his family were full-time missionaries to the former USSR in the early 90's. He continues to write and minister to truck drivers from his home in Coastal Georgia. His website, www.TheNinthGeneration.com, with two published novels and latest book, AS YOU SEE THE DAY APPROACHING.