Devotions For Different Occupations

The Nephrologist

II Cor 5;17  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, [he is] a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

My training has given me ways to treat kidney diseases.  Many times the disease destroys the kidney to the degree that it cannot function enough to sustain life.  In our lifetime we have been privileged to be able to put our patients on a life support called kidney dialysis. The patient is put on a machine for 4-6 hours on several days a week.

One day while reading Ezekiel 36: 26-27 about God giving us a new heart, I was reminded of the great joy our patients experience when kidney transplants became available. It is a wonderful analogy of the Old Testament sacrifices and temporary cleansing being like a dialysis machine and the contrast we have in the New Testament of God giving us a new heart being like a new kidney with a onetime placement of internal continual cleansing...free from a machine or continual animal blood sacrifices.

Just as the donor of a kidney (living or dead) offers a onetime sacrifice for the patient’s internal cleansing, Christ offered Himself for our continual internal cleansing.

Heb 7: 26  For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;  27  who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the [sins] of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

NEW WARDROBE

Col:12  And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;  13  bearing with one another, and forgiving each other.

My dear friend has lost a considerable amount of weight and her old clothes don’t fit her any longer. She has to shop for a complete new wardrobe with a much trimmer look.

Jesus tells us to “put off” many old characteristics which don’t fit us anymore as Christians.

But like my friend as she went through her old wardrobe, we may be reluctant to part with our old favorites or garments that cost us greatly.  But with a fresh new look and a healthy new life style before her, she is doing just that.  She is also not settling for just any new garment, but choosing ones that enhance her new look and feeling about herself.

Christ tells us to put on the very qualities He wears and walk among others with a new heart and harmony in our relationships with others: family co-workers and other relationships.

Just as she adds tops, dresses, slacks, underwear, and even pajamas to her shopping list, we have to add compassion, kindness, humility, patience, gentleness, and love to our moral wardrobe. This new underwear will not be seen by others, just as our some of our new characteristics and attitudes from the Holy Spirit may not be seen by others, but they are the foundation on which we build our new wardrobe to be worn at home, at work, everywhere we goes and our new characteristics will be “worn” as we walk before all the people in our lives.

 Eph 4:23  and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,  24  and put on the new self, which in [the likeness of] God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

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