By Sandra Bost
I have been thinking a lot about my little iPhone 12 mini lately. Mostly because it overheats every single day, and won’t hold a charge worth a toot. It is a renewed one I bought three years ago–already a few generations behind when I got it.
The phone itself was first released back in November 2020, and yet here we are in 2026 and it’s still ticking–between hot flashes. It came loaded with iOS 17 when I bought it, but now it’s prompting me to update to iOS 26.2.1.
There’s only one problem: I don’t have enough storage to download it. But that’s beside the point.
The point is, my phone keeps getting newer on the inside even as the outside grows older. The hardware ages. The body shows the nicks from being dropped at least twice a day. The battery isn’t what it used to be. But the operating system–the part that actually shapes how the phone functions–keeps getting refreshed. Version after version, update after update, silently rewriting what the device can do.
And the other day, it occurred to me: that’s us! That’s the Christian life.
While the outside keeps aging, the inside–the spirit, the heart, the character–is being renewed, as 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “day by day.”
That thought stayed with me, because a few days later, I found myself replaying a moment in my mind, the way we all do sometimes. You know those internal “rehearsals”—going over the things that were said, how we could have responded differently, how maybe we should have responded better.
In the middle of that mental rerun, I heard myself say, almost out loud, “Well, the old me would have…”
And I stopped.
Because in the situation I was replaying, by the grace of Jesus, I had responded well—patiently, calmly, kindly. Far better than a previous version of myself would have handled it. On any normal day, I might not have noticed. But in that moment, I realized something profound:
As Christians, the longer we walk with the Lord, the newer we become.
We talk often about being “a new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), and sometimes we treat it as a one‑time event—something that happened the moment we gave our lives to Jesus. And yes, in that moment, something definitive did happen. God changed our spiritual address. He took us from death to life, from darkness to light, from lost to found.
But while our salvation is instant, our transformation is ongoing.
Ephesians 4:22–24 urges believers to “put off your old self… and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God.” What’s fascinating is that Paul writes this to Christians who already belong to Jesus. Meaning? Even believers who are saved still have an old self trying to rise up—and a new self that still needs to be put on daily.
Not because Christ’s work is incomplete, but because God is continually shaping us into Christ’s image.
Sanctification is not a snap of the fingers. It’s a thousand small choices, a thousand Holy Spirit nudges, a thousand moments of responding differently than the “old me” would have.
And often, we don’t see it happening in real time.
We notice it the way children grow: slowly, invisibly, subtly… until suddenly you look at them and think, “When did you get so tall?”
Similarly, we look at our own reactions and think, “When did Jesus change me like that?”
When you responded with patience where anger used to live—
when you chose grace where bitterness once felt natural—
when you breathed deeply instead of lashing out—
when you walked away from gossip you once would have entertained—
that’s not personality or maturity alone. That’s Jesus.
That’s the new creation taking shape.
And here’s the beautiful part; every time you notice that the “old me” would have done something different, it’s not a sign of how far you still have to go. It’s evidence of how far God has already brought you. You are not who you were. And you’re not yet who you will be. But Jesus is faithfully guiding every step in between.
You are being remade in the quiet places–in thought patterns no one hears, in attitudes no one sees, in split-second decisions that look small on the outside but are miraculous on the inside. It’s sanctification in real time. It’s the slow, steady miracle of becoming more like Jesus.
And the good news is this: He’s not finished with you. Not even close. The old you is becoming the new you, and the new you will soon become an even newer you, all by the work of Jesus.
And if my little 12 mini can keep running on updates it barely has space for, imagine what God can do with you!
