What Now?

So everything is going along fine.  Life seems to be going good.  No big problems.  No big worries.  Then, BAM!  All of a sudden everything begins to spiral downhill, faster and faster and you feel like things are out of control.

For a time you were walking  along just fine - at peace and content with your new life.  Why now all of a sudden things changed?  It's a time in your life when you say to yourself, "What now??"

After becoming a Christian and life seems like it just can't get any better, you might think that nothing would ever get in the way of your intimacy with God.  You might feel that following Jesus is pretty easy to do. Resisting sin is easy. Reading the Bible isn't a chore.  It's something you long to do frequently.

So, what now?  What has happened?  The simple answer is "life".  Life happens.  Life around you doesn't stop after you become a Christian, though in some aspects you and I might rather it stop.  Life is sometimes painful.  Life is sometimes difficult.  Temptations sometimes come back in full force.  Sometimes you and I find it hard to resist.

It's at those pivotal moments that you have a choice to make:  You can either continue in your new walk and walk with total and complete faith and trust in God, or you can try to make it on our own - forgetting about that intimate relationship you have with Him and give in to your sinful, old life.

When you and I fail - and we all do - God is ready, willing, and able to forgive us. However, God's gift of grace and mercy should not cause you and I to want to keep sinning - rather our love for Him should make us want to live a holy and righteous life.

Because Christ's blood cleansed you from sin and will continue to cleanse you, you should want to live your life for Him.  As you will see in the following passage, baptism into Christ is like being baptized into his death.  (For an illustration of this, click this post) Then you, too, are resurrected, just as He was resurrected.  You are now dead to sin and alive in Christ!  You are walking in a new life!

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.  For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—  because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.  The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

  In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.  Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.  For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. 

Romans 6:1-14