A New Life

by Eric Elder

Happy Easter! As I was praying about what to write to you this Easter to help increase your faith in Christ, I felt God was saying to me, “Tell them what Christ has done for you.”

So I’d like to do just that. And what better day than Easter Sunday to talk about the New Life that Christ offers to those who put their faith in Him!

While some people are able to pinpoint the day they put their faith in Christ, others may point to a general season in their life when Christ became real to them. Still others would say that their faith in Christ has been part of their life for as long as they can remember.

For me, there was a split-second in time when I went from doubt to faith. It only took a moment, even though that moment was years in the making.

I was twenty-three at the time and had come to the point where I believed there was a God in general, but I wasn’t so sure about Jesus. I didn’t know if Jesus really lived and died and rose again, and I didn’t know what difference it would make in my life even if I believed it.

One day, I shared my doubts about Jesus with some people at my church. One of the men invited me to a Bible study that he led in his home with some other men, so I decided to come and learn what I could.

Although I had been in church all my life, this was the first time I had bought a Bible of my own and began to study it for myself as an adult. The more I read, the more I realized that if the Bible was true, I had made some big mistakes in my life. In particular, God was convicting me of my sexual sins.

At the risk of telling you more than you may want to know, I had been sexually intimate not only with women, but with men as well. I didn’t see anything wrong with sex before marriage. It was, for me, a natural extension of the loving relationships that I was in and out of over the years.

Unfortunately, since I wasn’t committed to any of these people for life, it often led to hurt and disappointment, whether for me or for the other person. Even more unfortunately, with the rise of AIDS at the time, I realized that if I continued in these types of relationships, it could even lead to death.

But I didn’t want to die, and I knew that God didn’t want me to die. He wanted me to live an abundant life. But when I realized what I had done wrong, I didn’t know how to make up for it, and I didn’t know how to break the power that these harmful attractions held over my life.

Then, as I was reading my Bible on my own one day, I read a story about two blind men who came to Jesus to be healed. I was struck by the way Jesus healed them. He didn’t just touch their eyes as He had done for another blind person, and He didn’t tell them to wash in a certain pool of water, as He had done with someone else. This time, Jesus asked them a question. Matthew 9:28-30 says:

“When He had gone indoors, the blind men came to Him, and He asked them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ they replied. Then He touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith will it be done to you’; and their sight was restored.”

Here I was, wanting to be forgiven and set free from the power these sins had had over my life, yet I didn’t know how to do it myself. But as I thought about Jesus, here was a Man who could heal the sick, walk on water, and raise the dead. If anyone could do it, Jesus could!

I felt like Jesus was asking me the same question He asked the blind men: “Eric, do you believe I am able to do this, too?” I took my hand off my Bible and put it up in the air. Just like the blind men, I said, “Yes, Lord.”

And just like the blind men, Jesus touched me, healed me, and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.”

I was changed in an instant and I knew it. With those two words, “Yes, Lord,” I went from doubt to faith, from unbelief to belief. It wasn’t that Jesus took away all my sexual desires and temptations. But what He did that day was to deal a death blow to the power that those temptations had held over my life.

It was like He picked me up from a path headed towards death and put me on a path headed towards abundant life. On this new path, God has not only forgiven me, but He’s given me a wife and six children of my own. He’s given me purpose, meaning, hope, and most all, the assurance that He’ll take me to be with Him forever when He comes back again.

What difference does it make if Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead on that first Easter morning? For me, it’s made all the difference in the world!

If you’ve never put your faith in Christ--to break the power of sin in your life, to forgive you of your sins, and to give you the assurance of eternal life with Him--I encourage you to do it today.

If you’ve already put your faith in Christ, but need a reminder today that God is still in the life-changing, life-saving business, put your faith in Him again for everything in your life.

Say, “Yes, Lord,” to Jesus today. When you do, I trust that He’ll say to you what He said to the blind men, and what He said to me:

“According to your faith will it be done to you.”

Let’s pray...

Father, I desperately want to put my faith in You again today. Help me to overcome any lingering doubts I have about You and to put my full faith and trust in You for everything in my life. Fill me with Your Spirit, the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, and bring new life to my mortal body as well. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

P.S. If you need encouragement that God will take you back again, even if you’ve strayed far from Him, I’d like you to watch a new short film made by my friend Russell Pond called the “Long Journey Home.” It’s only 7-minutes long and you can watch it for free online at this link:
www.thedoorpost.com/forgiveness/longjourneyhome

And for those who’d like to read a longer version of my story, with additional insights into how God walked me through the various issues He had raised in my life, I’ve written more about them in my book, “What God Says About Sex.” You can order a copy from this link:
theranch.org/The-Ranch-Giftshop.286.0.html

Happy Easter! He has risen! He has risen indeed!