“Don’t follow fashion. Buy something already out of date!” Until recently this was the slogan on the window of Pop Boutique, a vintage fashion shop in London’s Covent Garden. Vintage items have character and style, allowing you to create your own look, so you’re unlikely to find anyone wearing the same as you. The Pop Boutique stores and Rokit are just two of the many outlets for vintage clothing in the UK. You can also find vintage clothing in London’s Camden Market and at Afflecks in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, or just pop down to your nearest charity shop or thrift store.

Vintage clothing can be a lot of fun, and can give us a great new look, but sometimes the transformation we need is somewhat deeper. There comes a time for many of us, when we step back and look at our lives and decide that change is needed. We decide to get up earlier, not to drink as much, find a new job, improve our fitness, clean up our home, help the community, change our friends, quit smoking, read more etc., etc. So far so good, but although these things help, they don’t address the real problem, because the heart of the problem is the problem of the human heart. In other words it’s an inner change that’s needed. Good as they are, the changes listed above cannot heal the inner hurts, cure our bad habits or remove those things that are on our conscience.

Instead, because of His love for us, Jesus offers us a fresh start – a new beginning – the slate wiped clean. To avoid being seen, a man once came to see Jesus at night. He was a religious man, but he didn’t know the basics. Jesus told him that what he needed was to be born again. ‘How can someone be born when they are old?’ the man asked. ‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’ But what Jesus was talking about was a spiritual birth, not a physical one. He wants to give us a brand new start, making us clean inside. Not only that, but He wants to put His life within us, giving us power to live life differently, not going down the same old paths, but knowing a new quality of life. In other words, Jesus wants to make us supernaturally new!

“This means that anyone who belongs to Jesus has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

To find out more about the new life Jesus offers, go to our Transformation page.