Leaves: Letting your true nature be seen.
- Steven DiIoia
- Oct 25, 2009
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Introduction
In case you were wondering we are about a quarter of the way in to the autumn season. For some of you that is good news because you enjoy fall. For others it is not so great because you don’t enjoy the season. For me fall is all about the leaves. I am obsessed with them. Why? Because they just keep falling.
No matter what I do to try to keep the lawn clear of leaves they just keep falling. I get the lawn clear and beautiful so it looks like a golf course, perfectly clean and green. Then I wake up the next morning and BAM, leaves everywhere! It is as if I didn’t even do anything the day before. Sometimes I find myself at the window just watching them fall, getting that little crazy tick going because I can almost sense that they are taunting me as they gently float back and forth to the ground.
I know, and this is what most people tell me, “Just wait until they all fall.” but I can’t. If it rains and there are too many leaves then you can’t get them up. And if I don’t stay on top of clearing them out, I will never get them picked up, there will be too many.
You see, I have 14 big mature trees. That may not seem like a lot but let me put it to you well from another perspective; in the perspective of leaves. The average tree is said to have about 200,000 leaves. I think that is a low estimate or perhaps I have super trees but I will go with the 200,000. Multiple that by the 14 trees and that is 2,800,000 leaves. Did you get that 2 million 800 thousand leaves? It is also said that 25,000 leaves that are dry are said to weigh less than 70 lbs. So just for the sake of making it easy, if we take the weight to be 70 lbs, my 2,800,000 leaves will weigh in at 7840 lbs. That is 3.92 tons. That’s equivalent to 2.16 Honda Elements. That’s what I drive.
You see I am pretty obsessed with leaves. I am not alone in this, well maybe to the extent that I have carried it, but most people that do the lawn work are obsessed with leaves this time of year. It is a battle to keep ahead of the falling leaves on the lawn. And we hope we win. If we don’t and the snow comes early then when spring comes … what a mess to clean up.
But I was reminded of something else about leaves this year … their beauty. Something that when I was growing up I always appreciated but in my battle to rake, mulch, and bag them to the street curb I had lost that appreciation. It was a conversation in our small group bible study on Thursday night that was about the color of the leaves. Digging back to elementary or junior high science class we talked about how the leaves change color. As some of you might know leaves don’t really change color but instead lose their green color. It is the green color is from the chemical chlorophyll which helps photosynthesis to occur which produces glucose for the tree to use to grow. As the days get shorter the process of photosynthesis shuts down and the chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the chlorophyll disappears the true color of the leaf begins to appear … the beautiful yellows, oranges, reds. The true color of the leaf was there the whole time, it was just covered over by the chlorophyll
Our true nature
What is your true color? Are you having a hard time because you think that your true color, your true nature, who you really are is not what people are seeing? Do you feel like you could be a better person or perhaps that there is a better person inside? That you want that better person to come out but everything you have tried has failed and you feel lost and hopeless?
Perhaps you even believe what you may have been told all your life by family, by friends, by people you love …You are who you are, you’ll never change, don’t fight it. You’ll never be any good. You won’t amount to anything. Your hopeless … worthless.
And yet there is something inside of you that spark, that little flicker of hope that says they are wrong. I know there is a spark for two reasons. One, you are here today. You have tried other things to improve yourself but that flicker has brought you here today
Two, and some of us are fortunate to know this already, we are by design and our true nature, is good.
All of us, everyone of us has inside of us a true nature that is good, that is kind, forgiving, merciful, loving and that is holy. How do I know? Because that is how God created us.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV)
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 (The Message)
God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature
We are created in His image. Not physical image but in His likeness, in His nature. God is mercy, He is full of grace, He is holy, forgiving, good, loving. We were created to reflect those traits, those qualities, those characteristics. That is God’s genetic code in us. It is our true nature. That is your true nature
So what went wrong? That maybe our true nature but it certainly isn’t how people live. it isn’t how people act. It isn’t how people appear.
What went wrong was sin entered into the world almost as soon as it was created … almost as soon as we were created. We unfortunately have a sinful nature also and that is the nature we tend to gravitate. This world is not the world that God had planned. He allowed us the free will, the choice to sin and we took it. And the world continues to make the choice of sin. But the good news is our true nature that God gave us to be like Him is still there … unfortunately as with leaves that have their true color covered by green chlorophyll so is our true nature covered by our sinful nature.
We have another choice because of our free will. We have a choice to listen to that inner nature, that desires to be better, to be good, to be like the One that created us. And our God being a loving God gave us a way, actually he gave us The Way, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and gave us that second chance. It is God’s way of giving us a second chance to be who He created us to be. To be like Him … a reflection of Him. And knowing we could not do it on our own He gave us Jesus, his only Son not only to die for us but to show us, to give us the strength and power needed to overcome that sinful nature and let our true nature come through.
Conclusion
There are just a few small steps, ok for most they are big steps to make the choice to follow Jesus, not just to believe but to truly follow the way Jesus. So of course the first step is to believe, to declare that Jesus Christ die for your sins and accept Him as your personal savior. Next step … and this is even hard for a lot of Christians … you must live with Christ in your life; you must live in Christ and Christ in you.
You must give up your life to Christ …
Matthew 10:39 (New Living Translation)
39 If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.
Matthew 10:39 (The Message)
38-39"If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (New International Version)
17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
And part of that, which makes it difficult, is you must let go of your life, the worldly life. That life must die in order for the new life, actually the life the God intended all along to come out … to appear … to be seen.
You see I forgot one detail about the leaves. In order for their true colors to come out in autumn, the beauty that has been hidden all spring and summer in shades of green, in order to see the vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges … the leave must die. Just like the leaves we to must die to our old ways, our sinful ways, the ways of this world that we live by must die. We need to let go of that life and reach for the life that God meant for us to have. We need to reach for the life that Jesus has allowed us to have.
John 12:24-25 (New International Version)
24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
John 12:24-25 (The Message)
24-25"Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is, destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.
Believe me, this is the only way to change and become everything God wants you to become, that God meant you to become. This is coming from someone that held on to the worldly ways. Who was not sure about all of this bible stuff. Jesus was my savior but did I really need to live His way? I can control my own life. I am sure there are people from my past, especially my college years that would not believe that I am here right now preaching. Just ask my family, ask my wife how different I am from eighteen years ago. This isn’t anything I did, except follow Jesus and let the old worldly self die so what was truly on the inside come out and reflect the glory of God. I hope in another eighteen years I will look back and see more of the old self dead and more of the reflection of God through me.
No, this isn’t easy and no that doesn’t mean you will be perfect and sinless. It doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process that will continue on. Just as leaves on some trees turn right away and others turn slowly, it is a process. It does mean that if you truly let go of the old, let it die, that the world will start to see your true nature come out and that you will reflect the glory of God for others to see.
So what color are you? Are you still green, covered by the ways of the world so your true nature can’t be seen but you want to change? Are you starting to change … slowly allowing the old self to die? Are you already changed … the old is dying and the new is bursting forth? Can you allow more of the old to die off and more of the hidden colors to be seen reflecting the great beauty of God’s nature in you?
Whatever stage you are at if you want the true image of God to show through you, accept Jesus as your savior … truly accept him into your life, not partially but completely. Then ask Him to help you and that you are willing to let go of the worldly ways. Let go so that you are willing to die to the world so that you may live with Jesus … that you may live like Jesus.
Do you want this? Will you allow this?
My challenge to you is make it happen … ask for it from God … let it happen. What do you have to lose except a way of living, a life that isn’t working?
What do you have to gain … everything. If you accept this challenge, trust me, you won’t regret it.
I pray that you ask God for it to happen to you, that you will let you old self go, reckless in the love and in the trust of Jesus. That you will see yourself as the leaves of autumn allowing your current state, your current life to die so that the true image of God … his beauty that has always been there will be able to be seen by everyone, including you.