John Wagner is the pastor at the Pittsburg Baptist Church. I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and will have a blessed New Year. We are getting ready to go into another new year and many of you will be making New Year’s resolutions to change something in your life. You want to change something to give you a new beginning. There is a new beginning that has eternal effects for your life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Throughout my 38 plus years as a Christian and minister, I have seen many people come to an altar and have an emotional experience and claim Christ as their Savior. Many of these same people change a little for a few days, weeks or months and then fall back into the same lifestyle they had before their experience. I am not their judge but it really makes me wonder whether they are really in Christ or whether their experience was emotional and not spiritual. Coming to Christ is the greatest thing a person can do in their life. However, coming to Christ involves change in a person’s life. Jesus said in Luke 13:3, “I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Webster’s dictionary defines the word repent as “to be penitent for one’s sins and seek to change one’s life for the better.”

Every man that met God throughout the Bible had a life changing experience. Moses, Joseph, Isaiah, Elijah, and all of the other prophets of the Old Testament met God and their lives changed. In the New Testament, the apostles, Paul and many others had their lives changed by meeting Christ. The test of a true conversion is whether your life has been changed. There are those who are already living a decent life and their change is more subtle. However, there will be a change toward serving God. Then, there are those whose lives are in shambles, like mine was, whose change is more evident. The true test of a person who has truly had a heartfelt conversion is their life. Is Christ evident in their life? James 2:18 says, “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.”

Are you ready to make a commitment today to allow Christ to make you a new person? Will you use this time of new beginning to change your life in 2010? Do you claim to know Christ but your life has not changed? Allow him to change your life in this new year.