Happy New YOU

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”  

– 2 Corinthians 5:17

I have found it interesting to start this blog. Many of you have not seen this spiritual side of me, well…ever. Some of you in this past year alone have seen me act as anything BUT a man of faith.

I started my journey over ten years ago, when my father died. If ever there was a Peter who ran the other way when the God “thing” came full circle, or a doubting Thomas who needed to poke and prod the wounds of Christ, it was me…it took seven years of poking and prodding to finally take the plunge and be baptized three years ago. Since then I’ve come to realize that being a Christian ain’t no walk in the park. I don’t wear Birkenstocks and I haven’t let my hair grow long and I now know that the Christians running around trying to condemn people to hell are the weakest Christians of all. Judge not, lest you be judged, and all that.  I’d rather believe in people than judge them.

But that doesn’t mean I get to lead two lives. Lord knows I’ve tried, and this blog in many ways is my confession of that. It doesn’t work. As a man I very much respect in my men’s group said of a story I confessed, “Tony…how many people in this church are struggling with their faith? Which of them looks up to you without you even realizing it? What if one of them was there and saw the way you acted? What would they think?”  I didn’t know how to answer him then but I do now: they would have thought “hypocrite”, plain and simple. But God forgives and reminds me with love that I have work to do on myself and in this world and I intend to get to it, one day and one prayer at a time.

The journey of faith is not easy but it’s also not as hard as some people make it out to be. God is right there, next to you, waiting for you to reach that point in your life where you simply don’t want to go it alone anymore or when you realize, at long last, that you never really were alone to begin with. It's at this special moment in our lives that we begin to take off our old selves, and put on the new.

So as we head into the New Year I just wanted to say “Happy New YOU!!!”

God Bless.