Addisification

That's Amarenglish for renewal. Amerenglish is a mix of Amharic and English, in case you're wondering. I made it up. It's really helpful for those of us who can't actually communicate in Amharic. You just take one of the few words you know in Amharic (like Addis, which means new) and smush it together with part or all of an English word to get your point across. So, Addisification = Newification = Renewal.


Renewal is tough. It takes different forms at different times and it challenges us to think and act differently than the way we currently do. We've been exhorted to act in a lot of ways differently than how the world acts. When the world would complain, we might patiently rejoice. When the world would judge, we might show grace. When the world would get anxious, we might have peace. When the world would get greedy or fearful, we might be bold and generous. It's interesting to me to think that any time I have one of those “world oriented” feelings, I've been called by God to choose the better, life giving option. Not an easy thing to do; change how you feel just because you know you should feel the opposite of it? Now... if you look at it that way, it's kind of hard to logically make sense of the situation.


But He didn't ask us to slap a smile on when we're down, or do deep breathing exercises when we're having an anxiety attack. God is exhorting us to beat our “world oriented” feelings to the punch. I'm not peddling a gospel that says “if you have Jesus, you'll be happy”. Look at the list of “world oriented” feelings I gave above. Happiness is not the opposite of any of those.


I AM honestly starting to believe though, that we can have peace in all circumstances; that patient joyfulness ought to be our response when things don't go our way; that our job is to show grace and let God be the judge; that no matter what you think of the beggar asking you for money, or how badly the bills are piling up we can be bold and generous. But it doesn't happen by act of will. We can't walk through our day saying “I will be peaceful, I will be generous...”



Jesus said,

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”