Today at church we had a baptism.  We do our baptisms at our local swimming pool which is sooo cold! Julia is an older woman who confessed her sins and identified herself as a follower of Jesus. She has been in Curahuasi a long time and already her son and daughter in law are members of our church.  Before the baptism she shared that in the past she drank, argued, and lived an angry life. But as she had come to know Jesus her life was different. She was gentler, had quit drinking, and she was seeing changes in her spouse as well. That is the power of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot see the Spirit, but when it comes into our lives it changes our character to be more like Christ. We are not the same when we are followers of Christ.  We are a new creation animated by the power of the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.