Monday, January 16, 2017
531 - When Christ is New
Spirituality
Column No. 531
January 17, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
January 17, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
When Christ is New
By
Bob Walters
Fifteen
years ago I couldn’t have predicted how I’d feel, now, a decade and a half into
a life with Christ. At least I couldn’t
have predicted this. I had no idea.
And
here is what surprises me: it’s still all new, every day, this life with
Christ. I’m more interested in Jesus now
than I was 15 years ago on that November Sunday evening in 2001 when East 91st
Street Christian Church pastor Dave Faust in Indianapolis so graciously spent extra time after our final Walking with Christ class in leading our
group to the E91 sanctuary baptistery where three of us buried our sins and
came alive in Christ.
Coming
up out of the water, with the peace and joy of salvation washing over me and a
sense of the adventure before me, is so very vividly and forever in my memory. I can still feel the moment; I can see it.
Yet
today I have so much more.
What
I have now is assuredness in Jesus, in the Bible and in the fellowship of
believers I’ve been so blessed to come to know, trust, lean on, learn from and
love. In the baptismal pool there was
the blossoming bud of faith and the expectant sapling of curiosity, but no way
could I anticipate the life-altering depth of the journey ahead.
And
that depth is the depth of Jesus. What a
world-confining mistake it is to think our lives consist of our daily routines,
successes, failures and challenges; our “overcomings” and our
“underwhelmings.” The life-altering nature
of Christ is in realizing real life only exists in Him.
I’ve
heard “change” preached from pulpits in the profane sense of changing our daily
habits and “being a better person.” When
Christ altered my life, it has shown itself over the years in having blown the
lid entirely off of what I thought “life” was all about in the finite realm of
the daily habits of this world.
Through
Christ we taste the mind of God, not the mere appetites of this physical
world. We encounter this life’s delights
and comforts, its sorrows and distresses, and the vagaries attendant to fear
and desire. And Paul tells us they all
mean precisely nothing compared to a life in Christ. Fifteen years ago – even in the hope and
promise of baptism – I had no idea what that meant or why I’d want it or if I
could even understand it. But now … I
get it. And I know the more of it I get,
the more God is glorified in the continuously expanding love of even one sinner
like me who happily entertains every personal doubt of worldly being while
reflexively trusting the doubtless goodness, faithfulness and love of the
Father, Son and Spirit.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) adapted this column from his 2016 thank you, faith inventory
and update letter he writes to Faust every year marking the November 18 anniversary
of Dave baptizing him in 2001. Jesus is eternally new; Walters had no idea.
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