PASTOR’S THOUGHTS
By Dennis Reed, First Southern Baptist Church, Norris City
Have you ever wanted to start all over again? Usually this feeling hits you when things are going wrong and the future looks dim. So you divorce your spouse, declare bankruptcy, quit your job, move to a different community, or even do all of the above, in order to start all over again, hoping that a new beginning will have a different ending. Then you find that, even though names, faces, and places are different, you have not changed. You have tried to start over, but you are still the same, and you are still making all the same wrong choices that you made before. You end up in the same situation as before, looking again for a way to start over.
You can spend your entire life in that never-ending cycle, always looking for that new beginning that will make a difference, but never realizing what the problem is. The problem is within you, and you carry it wherever you go. Changing mates, jobs, and locations really does not change what most needs to be changed—the person you are.
What really changed my life, and gave me a new beginning, was trusting in Jesus Christ as my Savior and giving Him my life. That choice made all the difference. When I chose Christ, Christ changed me. He truly gave me a new beginning. The Bible says it like this: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (I Corinthians 5:17).
In my experience that meant a new peace in my soul as one of the first things I noticed. My guilt was gone, because Jesus Christ had forgiven my sins. Now, things looked different, but the difference was in me. And the same old choices did not look the same any more. Suddenly, I realized that I was out of the cycle. I was truly free to live a new life, even though the people and places stayed the same. My life was different, because I was different. I was a new person in Christ Jesus. Are you looking for a new beginning? You can find it in Jesus Christ.
