Have you ever wished you could go somewhere and start over? Go someplace where no one knows your past and its failures? A new identity offers a new start…
Let me tell you a story.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to help some friends prepare for a horse sale. The animals were delivered on a Sunday afternoon and were to be sold the following Saturday at an auction. Forty-three horses arrived but one in particular caught my eye. They were all frightened and unsettled from the fifteen-hundred-mile trip. Most were unfamiliar with human contact.
Up to this time, I had very little experience working with unbroke animals; in fact, I had none. On Tuesday morning, we began by bringing the yearlings out of their pens. This was the first time most of them had ever been on lead ropes or tied to a hitching rail. This one little colt was standing there shaking as I approached him; he was so scared.
I was a little nervous myself, so I began praying for him and myself. My prayers brought peace to both of us. I asked the Lord to help him understand that I wasn’t going to hurt him. As I brushed his coat and combed his mane and tail, he began to relax and his fear diminished.
Over the next few days, I worked with him and the other horses daily. There were six of us working those forty-three beauties but this one was my favorite. By the time sale day came he looked elegant. He was bathed and groomed that morning and ended up being the high price yearling of the sale.
He had a new identity and value.
As I watched him change and develop the Lord reminded me of the change that takes place in the life of a believer as we grow in Him. He’s ever changing us into His likeness. He wants us to look like Him, after all, we are called the Body of Christ.
Only God could take a sinful creature and completely birth us into someone new who becomes a part of the body of Christ. We are new, old things are dead.
“Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.” II Corinthians 5:17 CEV
When we become new creatures in Christ God takes one sinful person, covers our sins with the blood of Jesus and we begin a whole new life.
A new identity.
Jesus is the head and we are His body. When believers first started going out in the world and telling the Good News of Jesus, they were called Christians because they were behaving like “little Christ-like ones”. They were acting in the same way they had seen Christ act. They had a new identity.
“And because you belong to Christ you are complete, having everything you need. Christ is ruler over every other power and authority.” Colossians 2:10 ERV
When we come to Christ our past is removed, we become part of the body of Christ and our new identity is in Him. Don’t let your past rule your life – in Him everything is new!