Holy Thursday: Looking to the new creation

In the Christian world, today is Holy Thursday, the first day of the Triduum, the three days preceding Easter Sunday. It's one of my favorite weeks of the church year. It also brings to a close the season of Lent (yeah for the return of my couch!), a season of repentance. Which brings me to today's guest post by Rachel of The Lazy Christian. 

When I'm offered a guest post opportunity on someone else's blog (like the one belonging to the fabulous Amy here), my first thought is:

Is there something I don't want to tell my regular readers that I can put on this guest blog?

No joke.

I'm pretty honest on my blog, but there are always some embarrassing things that I don't want to put on there. Things I struggle with that are embarrassing to tell people I know and love, or people who look to me to have it all together.

But you know what? My blog is called The Lazy Christian. I don't have it all together. That's kind of the point.

It's human nature to want to hide things that embarrass us. Lousy pictures that make us look fat or show our hideous fashion choices during the 80s. Things from our past. Stories about that time we accidentally flashed our backsides during a school musical performance.

Oh. Was that only me?

And then, there's one thing that we all want to hide -- from our friends, from ourselves, and, stupidly enough, from God:

Sin.

When we become Christians, we become reborn. We get baptized and receive the Holy Spirit, and it changes who we are. It has to. If you're trying to "spruce up" your old life by adding good deeds or showing up to church, that doesn't cut it. You need a whole new life. You need to allow God to do an extreme makeover on your soul.

The other day, I was thinking of something from my "past life;" the girl I was before I was living my life for God. I started to feel guilty. I was ashamed of how I'd behaved and the things I'd done and said. My heart started feeling really heavy. Then this verse popped into my head:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Now, I'm not great at memorizing scripture. I didn't even know where that verse was located at the time -- just that I'd heard it or read it before. But God placed it in my head -- and in my heart -- to remind me that I'm not who I was. That lousy Rachel is gone; God has made a new Rachel. I don't have to be ashamed of that stuff anymore. It's not me. That person doesn't exist anymore.

It's amazing how much sin in my life is starting to bother me. Little things I wouldn't have even considered sin before are now glaring inconsistencies in my life. Compared to who I was 10 years ago, the sin in my life now is pretty tame. Chump change, as it were. But that's God at work in me. We've changed the big things, and now he's getting picky. He's working to make me the woman he needs me to be to do what he needs me to do.

And that's nothing to be embarrassed of.