Devotionals by Jill Briscoe

A time to tear down and a time to rebuild. - Ecclesiastes 3:3

How can a Christian know what it is to rise triumphant unless she has first fallen down, defeated? “The way to up is down, and the way to down is up,” someone has said. I do believe that the way to up is down. It’s a matter of taking time to let the master builder demolish the old building so a new structure can rise on the old site!

Have you ever gazed in awe as a massive wrecking ball cracked the walls of a condemned apartment house and flung the bricks in the air, sending the structure to destruction in a cloud of choking dust? Have you ever wondered what could take the place of that familiar old building? Then you pass that way in a little time and see the modern replacement, which often makes the memory of the old distasteful.

It takes time to build the new in the place of the old. Therefore, “those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God can demolish the old life. Some of us need to be broken. He will have to use a very big wrecking ball on some of us! Not until that happens will there be the possibility of being built up again—a new house, a habitation fit for the Lord!

For Further Study: Ecclesiastes 3:1-3

Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.

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