"If any man be in Christ, he is new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
I can never read these words without thinking of a dear friend of ours, who incidentally was just here mowing our lawn.
Gaspar first came to Tennessee several years ago from Guatemala, and apparently was quite a rowdy individual. Drank a lot, got into brawls in pubs, was arrested more than once Well, this one time while sitting there in jail, he picked up a copy of a Spanish New Testament someone had left,which he looked through. And there something Jesus had said so captured his attention, he couldn't stop thinking about it.
We heard about this experience when he and his wife were having Christmas dinner with us and at the finish of the meal, he said: "I'm not the man I once was." We were not prepared for what he shared with us of his earlier life. We had known Gaspar for several years, and you couldn't find a sweeter, harder working, more meek, reliable individual than he.
That night in jail, he told us, he vowed to become the kind of man he felt Jesus would approve of. He stopped drinking, got a job, led a totally different life from then on. And inspiring to us, when he's not doing the yard work he needs to do to pay his bills, he devotes his time to preaching the words of Christ.
So powerful are the words of our great Master, anyone who takes to heart what he said and taught, and begins living the Truth, will see life made new.
