Prompt Response: Newness of Life 🆕🧬
with help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
Life has a number of definitions. From simple existence to abundant living to thriving, life can be lived with or without much pomp and circumstance. Some are happy just to breathe in and out while others require a steady stream of stimuli to feel as if they are truly alive.
For me, I’ve had some wonderful moments of feeling truly alive, like the day I married the love of my life 35+ years ago. And most of those moments followed a moment I felt truly alive; the moment my old life and sin was washed away in baptism, and I began to walk into a new life beside my Savior. Read that story on my July 17th post.
When Paul speaks to the Roman believers about baptism, he says…
“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 walk in newness of life.”
A few different translations use the words walk in a new life but most seem to agree with the Berean translation to walk in the newness of life. In other words, before that moment, it was not life even if you were existing and breathing in and out. So life from a God’s Word perspective means walking with our Creator and Lord.
That definition also works with the definitions of eternity that assign us to either eternal death or eternal life. Eternal death is the place where not even a worm dies and yet it’s called death, so it seems it’s the lack of the presence of Yahveh Almighty that makes it death. But that doesn’t have to be our eternity. We know from His own words that YahShua (Jesus) is Life.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
He also says that He is The Resurrection.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’”
In His Gethsemane prayer in John 17, YahShua says…
“Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”
And this is echoed by John the Revelator in 1 John 11-12…
“And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
Finally, in the spirit of the beautiful fall season now gracing the Northern Hemisphere, remember that real life is filled with color. The verdant leaves of spring and summer are basically putting their dinner plates out for the world to see what they’re eating: a diet of chlorophyll. But before they take their winter naps, the green gets fully digested to reveal the true colors that mark the life of each leaf.
🍁🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍁
And isn’t that just a beautiful glimpse of Heaven? There, our true colors will shine for eternity and glisten in the Light of His eternal grace! THAT must be the very definition of feeling truly alive.
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My 43rd Re-Birthday 🎂
It wasn’t my first baptism, but it was THE baptism that marked a total and complete change in my life. I was desperate to be saved and to have God’s perfect will as the driving force from that moment on.
My first baptism was with many people in a swimming pool. I was sincere, but I was 9 years old, so it wasn’t the kind of sincerity you have after you’ve lived through some of the rough coming-of-age moments that bring you from 9 to 19. In those moments, I had been to juvenile hall; been in foster care; moved around California, Nevada, and Arizona; overdosed; and lived on the streets for a while. I was really ready to stop doing things my own way and see if God’s way was better. (Spoiler alert: life is MUCH better with a loving Creator and Heavenly Father by your side.)
I’d also had a baptism at 14 when my high-school aged boyfriend said he was getting baptized. And since my first baptism was at a Pentecostal church, everyone suggested I needed a Baptist church baptism anyway. Again, I was sincere, and I did make lifestyle changes that followed the baptism. I went from getting suspended in school to being double honor roll and graduating 8th grade with honors.
But the event in 1983 was the significant life change that stuck for the rest of my life—up to and including now. So today, I celebrate 43 years as a new person. The old me was buried with Christ in baptism, and I rose out of the water to walk with Him in the newness of life. ✝️🧬
Romans 6:4 BSB
[4] 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 walk in newness of life.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/rom.6.4.BSB
Shabbat Shalom to all, and you are welcome to celebrate with me by sharing your own repentance and baptism stories in the comments. 🕊️
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