Are you trying to revive what God has released?

by Jane Mueller

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Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

Read Romans 6:3–11

Some of us are lugging around stories we were never meant to keep alive.

Old habits, old fears, old versions of ourselves – things God has released in Christ. We polish them, defend them, justify them and even call them ‘just how I am’. But resurrection life doesn’t come by dragging the past into the present. It comes by letting the past stay finished.

Paul doesn’t mince words in today’s reading. Baptism is hardly a sentimental symbol. It shows us what God is like – decisive, cleansing and lifegiving. When water is poured over us, it declares that the old ways of living no longer have control. The same God who meets us in that water continues meeting us every day, calling us out of old patterns and into new life.

So why do we keep trying to revive what God has released? Why do we rehearse the same resentments, recycle the same narratives and keep identifying with the same wounds? The perfectionist who can’t stop striving, the leader who keeps replaying old failures, the friend who keeps apologising for taking up space, the parent who still believes they’re not enough? Maybe it’s because the old life is familiar. And sometimes, ‘familiar’ feels safer than ‘free’.

But resurrection doesn’t happen in comfort zones. You can’t keep one foot in the past and one in grace. Paul says, ‘Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.’ That’s an active choice – daily, sometimes hourly.

So maybe it’s time to ask: What’s still taking up oxygen in my soul that should’ve been surrendered by now? What part of me keeps trying to reclaim a life that’s already been transformed?

Stop propping up the old storyline. Step fully into the new one.

Stop trying to become someone new. Start living like the new creation you already are.

And if no-one’s ever spoken this over you, let it land now: the old you is finished. The new you is alive. Walk in it, breathe from it, own it, live it, shine through it.

God of resurrection, expose parts of me still clinging to what you’ve released. Give me the courage to stop rehearsing the things you’ve already finished, and to rise – fully and freely – into the life you’ve given me. Amen.

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