New Creation

"We're coming clean, we're born again, our hopeful lungs can breathe again"- Burn the ships by For King and Country. How timely that that song came on as I was writing this post.

I was raised in a Christian household and believed in God my whole life. But my love for God was superficial and lukewarm. My relationship with God was selfish and transactional. I rarely prayed until I needed something. I believed in God, I believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, I believed in heaven and hell. But what I deeply lacked was a relationship with God.

January 19, 2020, I recommitted my life to Jesus, got baptized and I have never been the same.

I began to develop a deep and intimate relationship with God after. I began to truly understand the intense sacrifice God made in handing over His only son, and the intense love Jesus had for us to hang on that cross. I began to really understand the blood Jesus shed for us and why it was so important for our salvation. These are things I knew before logically, but not things I so easily applied to myself.

With this new deep love that I felt for God and this new relationship we were building together, came the realization of the new person I was. One that is cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Blinders came off, and I began to be awake to a lot of things. A lot of who I was didn't make sense anymore and didn't add up to who I knew God wanted me to be, who I wanted to be for Him.

I had to relearn that when you are born again, you are a new person, a new creation. The old sinful ways you once knew and maybe even try to hold onto must go. Out with the old in with the new. Even though life with Jesus is more fulfilling and better than anything, often times it's not always understood by those around you and integrating back into your life can be difficult. I had to talk with other Christians and pastors to sort through some of what I was feeling and accept who I now was.

I share this to say that if you are struggling with your relationship with God, or you've recently given your life to Christ and who you were is clashing with who you are now, I get it. One of the best things I did was seek counseling through church. But it also helped me to repeat to myself verses that remind me that I have been made new. That I AM a new creation. That reminder helped when I heard that voice that reminded me of who I once was and the things I once did.

I am not that person anymore. When I went down in that water, the old me was washed away and I was made new.

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"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Galatians 2:20 NIV