Current of My Desires

2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us; Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

As I think of this verse it gives me great comfort, it excites me, but it also gives me pause. If the new is here in me, why do I still fall short? Why do I amaze myself by my broken ways? I know there is hope, thankfully I know there is grace, but how do we know if the new is truly here?

I have a very good friend and we have deep discussions. Early on in our conversations he inquired; “how do you know you are Christian?” I think that is a remarkable question, one that requires thought and prayer. Yet, I also believe it is a simple and straightforward question.

I really have come to believe that if anyone is in Christ the new is here and as such there is evidence. The evidence may be small traces, but nonetheless there. I recently came across a discussion of this in Tullian Tchividan’s book; “Do I know God”. Tullian states that one of the ways we know God is that how we live begins to look different; radically different in some ways. He points to the missionary Henry Martyn. A man born in 1781, who studied at Cambridge, and was a brilliant mathematician and a man skilled in languages, a man that intended to become a lawyer. A man who saw his life transformed and instead went to India as a chaplain in 1806. During his ministry, he translated the New Testament into Hindi and Persian.

Henry Martyn did amazing things and while that in and of itself is amazing, that is not the point. Martyn explains the new creation and new life of believers so well! He wrote to a friend;

“As I have this day been constrained to adore the mercy of God who hath saved me from recent snares, so will I now praise him for having turned me from a life of woe to the enjoyment of peace and hope. The work is real. I can no more doubt it than I can my own existence. The whole current of my desires is altered, I am walking in quite another way, though I am incessantly stumbling in that way…”

Martyn shows us that as we become a new creation in Christ our desires change and even though they change we stumble, we have set backs, but we also turn back to Christ! I love the imagery of the current of the river of our lives and as we plod along in the current, the bottom can be slippery, we can slip and fall, but by God’s grace,the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit we get back up.

Lord, we thank you that by your grace the current of our desires change; forgive us as we stumble and we praise you that through Christ the old has gone and the new is here! Amen.

Grace and Peace!