Breaking Up With Nostalgia

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old (nostalgia). Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19

 Everyone wants to start new. Everyone wants to start over. Everyone wants to change. The problem is, most people are lying to themselves about all three of these statements. The truth is more like this: most people don’t want a new start or a do-over, or, most of all, to even change much at all! They want everything exactly the same, minus the mess! Nostalgia clings to us all.

So what stops us from changing? It is oddly simple, change, itself. Change means the old must go! The quandary is most people don’t want to let go of the old. We just want God to take away the pain we had “in the old ways,” but let us keep everything else. The truth is, we lived in our old ways because we loved our old ways. We spent our whole life building our old ways. We are actually quite proud of our old ways. We go to great lengths to convince ourselves, and others, that they are the best ways for us to live. Yet, in building our old ways, rarely did we ever stop and ask God if the ways we were building were actually His ways! Had we done so more often while engineering the infrastructure of “our ways,” He would have stopped us and told us, point blankly…

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

   neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

   so are my ways higher than your ways

   and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

   and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

   giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

   it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

   and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”[1]

We don’t like getting rained on, and most of us[2] don’t like snow. But it is the melting of the snow and pelting rain of the Spring that brings forth the harvest of life in the Fall that will feed you in the famines of life. We don’t like rain but water is the building block of life. The avoidance of pain, struggle, and facing your fear dead on, is the very reason we face spiritual droughts in the arid areas of life. God’s Word can only return void to us when we refuse to walk in the rain and fail to trust God that there is a reason we are getting wet, right now.

When life gets hard for us, we choose shortcuts that we design to get around the rain, and the snow, which are the very things we actually need to grow! We build life on our terms. It is grand, it is great, and it is ours, and we will not let anyone take it away from us. We just wish God would hurry up and fulfill his promise and fix all these annoying leaks in the beautiful shelter we built.

Today, I bring you the Gospel of Bad News. God is not going to fix your leaky shelter. God is not even into to fixing old things.

Today, I bring you the Gospel of Bad News. God is not going to fix your leaky shelter. God is not even into to fixing old things. Just stop it! Stop treating God like He is some craigslist handyman you call in for a discounted price to fix up your failed home improvement projects! Jesus is not coming to tack up your old falling- down self-improvements! Actually, the old ways, are never His ways. The old ways are, almost always, sin’s ways. God’s solution is not to fix your leaky shelter of a life but to TEAR IT DOWN! Guess what? The “life inspector,” came, and declared your life uninhabitable and condemned it! He has sent you to notice to vacate it before He comes to destroy it!

The hidden sin of nostalgia is being so in love with the dysfunctional old ways, that you begin to hate, resist, fight, and even go to war against the new things Jesus is attempting to do in your life, right now! There is no spiritual dualism in Jesus. You cannot love the good old days, and at the same time claim to be holding out for Paradise itself. No person will have true love for the Kingdom of God while insisting that their address remains in the Kingdom of Self. It is the sin of nostalgia to love the old over the new because Jesus never does old things in the lives of new creators.

It is the sin of nostalgia to love the old over the new because Jesus never does old things in the lives of new creators.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.[3]”

Did you really think you get to keep your old self and still get to cash in on the new things of regeneration?

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”[4]

New Life!

Which is it? Are you dead to nostalgia or alive to Christ? Do you want the new ways, or for God just to put in some handy patchwork on your old leaky life? Are you willing to get rained on, that you may eat of the good food and drink of the new wine? Can you accept a little pain in a fallen world? Allow yourself to be crucified with Christ, that you might be raised with Him into your Father’s true will?

Friends, I offer you but one promise today. I promise you, you will never enter into “that new thing” God is doing, while coveting and craving the old. Why should you be like Israel of old,– ungrateful, thankless, grumbling, of God’s new way of saving them from the Egyptians, all because they wholeheartedly held on to the hidden sin of nostalgia for the onions, leeks, and quail, of the old ways. Do you not know there is a land of Milk and Honey to be gained? Why? Why? Why? Do we insist, on forty more years in the desert just to avoid a little rain and snow that would give us life?

You cannot go into the Kingdom of God, loving the Kingdom of this world. Forget the past. Bury the past. Stop idolizing the past. God is not sending you to dwell in the past, but in the new thing that He is doing! And He is doing a new thing!!! So, if you want to change, stop fighting God, stop insisting on the old, stop running back to the old when you get scared. Behold, look, pay attention, stop being so blind! You don’t have to do a single thing to change, except let go of the old, because you notice the new that God is doing in you! He is doing it. Notice! Turn your eyes from nostalgia to JESUS!

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19

The Sermon Version

Footnotes

[1] Isaiah 55:8-11

[2] at least the sane ones… My apologies to you “Winter people!”

[3] 2 Corinthians 5:17

[4] Romans 6:6-11

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Parking The Potty Mouth

By Vinnie MacIsaac

Wayne and Garth from “Waynes World” are 90’s pop cultural icons.

As Wayne once said to Garth, “You kiss your mother this that mouth”?[1] It is an old expression that has even repeated by everyone from Austin Powers[2] to Nick Fury[3], but it is a lot more severe expression of that sentiment we find embedded in the original promulgation given to us.

“With the tongue, we praise our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” James 3:9-10 NIV

It’s not my fault; some people just are asking for it! A few weeks ago I was trying to get around the corner of a parking lot during the mad pre-Christmas shopping rush, and this moron was holding up 10-15 cars because she did not want to pull to the side as she rolled down her window to share Christmas greetings with someone she knew on the sidewalk. She held us all up just stopped in the middle of the roadway! I beeped my horn a few times and nothing! She pretended I was not even there! I confess my blood was boiling and I swear I was about to roll down my window and blast her when the car heading the other way beat me to it! The driver yelled at her with such pure and mighty rage; that I feared for her safety, and she did as well as it scared her into pulling over right away. Rarely in my whole life had I heard such a perfect production of profanity ever be performed as he did at that moment. I mean it was truly Oscars-worthy, but was I any better? Maybe I did not threaten to kill her, among other things (too crude to repeat), as he had, but the second I muttered to myself that she was a moron, I was just as guilty in the sight of God.

 Even if I can navigate around the annoying ones what in the world what do I do with the rude ones! It is the nasty and the mean ones that personally get under my skin! I just want to give them a piece of my mind! But that is the problem, what mind do I have? That is what the Holy Spirit keeps asking me every time I misstep with my tongue. Do you have the mind of Christ burning in you or the mind of Vinnie?

The Greek word Kenosis means to empty. Jesus emptied Himself of his own will and calls us to be like-minded. We have been called to think like Jesus just as Jesus thought like His Father.

In Philippians 2:5 The Apostle Paul is on point with the source of the change we need when he says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” and if that was not damning enough the Holman Christian Standard puts it this way, “Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus.” And leaving zero wiggle room the NIV nails me with, “in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” The bottom line is, I need less Vinnie and more Christ.

 Christ is holy. With our tounges, we lift up praises to Him who is Holy, perfect, and righteous and the powerful redeemer of our souls! Then we turn around and cast down into mud and humiliation and shame the very same people whom our good God redeems. We gladly receive from Him blessing and favor while we rob dignity from those whom He loves. James rightfully declares our actions as sin.

 According to James, the tongue has us under its control and not the other way around.

“If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.” (James 3:3-4 ESV)

The window of your maturity as a Christian is your mouth and how to talk to others with it. It is the metric best shows the condition of the heart.

Riding a horse is not only fun and exhilarating it is a spiritual event, but it is also a Bible lesson. The horse is going where you yank the reign because it is attached to the bit in his mouth. Likewise, the tongue is the steering wheel of your life. You might think you control it, you might think you tell it what to say and when to say it, but it just might be that your tongue rather controls you, and is taking you where it wills.  The problem with that is that according to Jesus the tongue is simply the slave to your heart. Jesus when speaking about the connection between the mouth and the heart told us, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” (Matthew 15:19 NIV) Think of it this way, you know those slips that just slip out, or that you mutter under your breath they are not slips at all but rather they are the seeping of the sewage in the heart up into your mouth you eventually end up vomiting out all over those around you. If the idea of sewage creeping up into your mouth and being spewed out on people around you does not gross you out then see it this way, according to the James you are setting people on fire with fire that directly comes from Hell (see James 3:6). You, therefore, are the Devil’s minions doing his deeds in this world.

 For this reasons James says,

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways…” (James 3:12b ESV)

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways…” (James 3:12b ESV)

I remember as a young new pastor in one of my first churches I attended a Bible study, and a question was asked by the teacher that morning, and a new believer in Christ spoke up and answered. And while her response was brilliant, she mistakenly cited Peter for a remark made by Paul. A much more senior and trained member brutally spoke up, pointing out her error and stressing the importance of Christians having their facts right least they lead someone astray. After class, I cornered that senior man and asked why he had done that. To which he replied, “Pastor, she was just wrong, and if you’re not going to tell her I am.” I remember walking away thinking; she may have been factually wrong, but in the sight of God he was morally wrong. I’ll take being factually wrong over spiritually wrong any day!

Nine-year-old Ralphie Parker, in the class movie, “A Christmas Story” had a potty mouth that got him in trouble. But a potty mouth is so much more than swearing.

 What I have come to understand is it is not just about teachers, though they bear a significant burden. I have come to realize that having a potty mouth is more than saying a cuss word, taking the Lord’s name in vain, or creatively stringing together crude and often sexually demeaning expressions together in a way to morally shame someone one. It is more simply the truth of where you are spiritually in regards to your fellow man.  And James has come to remind us, that God cares little for how you talk to him (praise) if how you talk to others (curse) is not right.

Business partners hands on top of each other symbolizing companionship

Related Articles:

Breaking Up With Nostalgia

The LIE Christians Tell About The Gospel

Related Short Story:

The Epic Senior Prank of ‘89

FOOTNOTES

[1] Wayne’s World

[2] Mike Myers character

[3] Marvel Comics Character

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