“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new Creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

How wonderful it is to know who you are. So many people are lost because they simply do not know who they really are, or what could be theirs. They do things that hurt themselves, and hurt those they are connected to. When we accept Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, and mean it, we get to find out who we are. We become a new Creation, and we know it.

My own experience was profound and I’d like to share it with you again. When I accepted Christ, I had no idea I was going to. I went to Church that day with my wife and daughter to join it, but little did I know what would happen. I only went because my wife asked me to because she wanted our young child to hear about Jesus. I thought joining the church would be good for business. We had just moved to Temple from Arlington a couple of months prior to that for me to manage the Firestone Store there and I saw “the church,” whose message I had no real use for, as a way into the local community. The surprise was on me when it turned out the Lord used our life circumstances to place me there to hear the Good News for the first time in a long time… and to give me a chance to say “Yes” to Him again.

I’d made a profession of faith when I was 14, but let the men of the Baptist Church in the small town where I first said “yes” to Christ, drive me away. They would come into the Service Station where I worked, use profanity, and tell stories that a boy wanting to understand Jesus should not hear. My family weren’t church goers. I’d found God when I was invited to a Revival by someone who felt I needed Christ. I did but Ieft the Church almost immediately, thinking it was a non-real entity because of the hypocrisy my impressionable young self had witnessed.

I was 29 that day in the Temple Church. It was the first time in 15 years I’d been back in any Church except to attend a funeral, or “visit” for some other reason. I never changed my mind that it wasn’t for me. But the day “circumstance” led me to another pew, as that Pastor preached the Good News, I heard him. I believed what he said. He’d visited us in our home before and knew where I was with my belief. There is no doubt in my heart he preached the message for me that day.

We only went to join this good man’s Church as far as my wife knew. She was raised Methodist and knew she’d have to be baptized officially into the Baptist congregation, but she was ready to do that for our little Sweetheart Girl. So as we went forward that day at the invitation to join the Church, she didn’t know I was ready to give my life to our Lord, and, honestly, neither did I. When the Pastor asked “how we were coming,” she told him her story and, when he asked me, I intended to simply tell him I was coming to move my letter but, as I started to speak the words that came out of my mouth were, “I come to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior.”

I started to cry, then sat down and cried until the Service was over. That cry was wonderful. A literal shedding of the old me. I knew I wanted Christ in my life. I asked Him to be my Savior and genuinely gave my heart to Him forever. He became my Lord in those moments. My life with Him started right then and I could feel the beginning of the new Creation He would make of me. The old was gone by the time I walked out of that church. The new has been evolving every day since. That is an ongoing process for us all. I love Him dearly and He loves me. I am His child. As are you. That is our identity. We are children of the Most High God. Take time to consider that and all that it implies.

May an experience this powerful be so for each of you, blessed Friends. May we all come to realize who we are.  I love you Dearly. So does He.

Poppa B.