A New Creation
by Anonymous

I had always read in the Bible that when we received Christ we were a new creation and all things were made new, but after I experienced the forgiveness of my sins, it just didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t until I met Norman Grubb in 1970 that life began to make sense to me. I had been a fundamentalist, an evangelical and a charismatic, but I didn’t realize I was still in the "God" chair. One time God told me, "I’m not interested in your ox in your ditch, but when it gets to be my ox and my ditch, I’ll get interested."

When I first met Norman, I had a hard time under-standing what he was talking about. Finally it began to dawn on me that God was not just interested in being in us, but that He wanted to live through us as us. God had to take me through failure in the areas of feelings, thinking, doing and being before I was willing to let him run things in every area of my life. Then what Norman had been talking about began to make sense to me. Of course my plans wouldn’t work. I needed God’s plans before God could work them out. I needed a new consciousness of who I really was. I was not an alone "I" in the world trying to be my own God and trying to make everything fit, and trying to be responsible for everything. The person I am now is not just me. I am now a new creation consisting of Christ’s "I Am" and my "I am."

I had not realized that Satan had been running me to death for years under the lie that I was an independent self. What a relief to come into the consciousness of Galatians 2:20 and to know God was living my life for me and through me. God was not only a substitute for my sins, He was also a substitute for my trying to live an alone life. God would make everything new through me. God has subjected the Satan lie life to frustration and failure in order that we might be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Son of God (Romans 8:21). What a rest to know inside that every negative and every need is just an opportunity for God to man i–fest Jesus’ positive fullness in a new way through me. I’m finally at rest with a Gospel with no holes in it. I found the Gospel to be a person who lived the Law in me and not just a bunch of
Promises I couldn’t fulfill—and so adieu—God be in you as you.

James A. Alspaugh