Two years ago, the walnut tree that shaded our backyard from the summer heat had to be cut down. The tree had become diseased. This year some of the walnuts that fell from that tree began to sprout and grow new walnut trees. They are all over our backyard spreading out and growing from where the original tree once grew.

Yesterday, I pulled out one of the sprouts from the ground. I was surprised to see a new sprout growing from a forgotten nut. As I held the new sprout in my hand, the Lord began to speak to me. 

Some of you have been living in a place of sorrow of what was once in your life but is now gone. You are feeling exposed to the spiritual elements wondering if your time has passed. But the Lord has another plan. Your original faith carried a life-giving potential you thought was lost. In God’s hands, it will sprout again and create something new. Like the many walnuts now sprouting all over our backyard, your original act of faith will birth new offspring that will grow in even more abundance than what happened when you planted your first act of faith.

After Paul wrote in Colossians about us being raised to new life in Christ, he said we need to set our spiritual vision upon on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. We need to think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth where the stump of what was is no longer giving life. That kind of heavenly sight allows us to look for the sprouts of new life that will come when a heavenly vision changes how we interpret the events of this earthly life.

Paul then said, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). In the places of death that we will all experience in this life, resurrection and a new birth is always present if we a looking with believing faith. Our act of original faith never dies. It is always alive and creating new life leading us to a place of a future harvest that will release new levels of hope and a renewed trust in God who is the author of all things new.