Today: A New Beginning!

The length of time we have formally followed Christ is a source of pride for some.  I wonder, dear professing follower of Christ, if you are closer to Him now than you were at the first?  Has your love and passion for Him grown?  Or has your love become familiar and cold?  Are you as excited now to pray as you once were?  Do you have an almost ravenous desire to consume the Word of God like at the beginning when you know you knew nothing?  Have you become cynical about church and Christianity because of some bruises you've experienced over the years?  This line of thought will not apply to all, but it certainly applies to some.

Are you willing to admit that up until now you have really played at Christianity?  Are you willing to sacrifice your honorable badge of years following Jesus to say that you have never known Him as you ought?  Are you ready to disown all works previous to now as done in the power of your flesh?  Are you willing to say that today is the day of your true conversion, when you were filled with the Holy Spirit for the first time through faith and total abandonment to Christ because God loves you, you love Him, and trust Him completely? Consider a quote from G. Campbell Morgan which rings true:

You have been for years on the confines of Emmanuel's land.  You are familiar with all the songs, but you cannot sing them and feel the rapture of them.  You are familiar with all the phrasing of Christianity, but it has never become the phrasing which beats your heart into infinite music.  You need that faith which abandons itself absolutely and wholly, not to an ideal you would like to realize, but to a Person who will realize in you every ideal after which your heart is seeking.  In order to receive the Holy Ghost we have to add to our conviction, confidence; to our repentance, faith; to our hope, appropriation, and all these things in relation to Jesus Christ.  The living Christ has come.  The Spirit has been poured out.  Westminster Chapel, London, tonight is as full in every part of the Holy Spirit of God as was the upper room on the day of Pentecost.  The mistake you have been making for years is that you have been waiting for Him to come in nights of prayer and lonely vigil, in speculative inquiry; waiting while you have been attending conventions and reading books about the Holy Ghost.  The Spirit has come.  He is here.  Every man, woman, and little child in this house is surrendered by the beneficent Spirit of God, waiting to come in, waiting to teach you the deeper music of life, its vision and glory.  "How is it that I do not feel the thrill and do not see the light?" you ask.  Because you have never believed in Jesus Christ.  Convinced of the perfection of His ideal, put confidence in Him, and rank yourself by His side and under His banner.  Repenting of sin, changing your mind about it, trust Him to give you victory in every department of life.  Hoping for a better day, appropriate the day that has come.  Wishing that you could be delivered, be delivered now by trusting Jesus Christ.  Just where you sit, hoping, wishing, wondering, cast yourself upon Jesus Christ and say, "Here I am, now, just as I am."  The Spirit of God will bring the living Christ into your own inner experience.  That will end your infidelity, your skepticism, your wonder.  You will pass into the realm of life, and all the signs following will be granted to you." (The Westminster Chapel, Morgan, Vol. 1, pages 236-237)

It is not until we are wearied and utterly finished with a knock-off brand of Christianity devoid of all power, strength, victory, and new life before we can taste the real thing.  Some have never known Christ, some only think they know Christ, and some truly know Him.  No matter where you stand, meet and follow Jesus today for the first time!