Back in high school, I had to have an MRI where they injected a contrast into my blood stream. It wasn’t fun at all (I hate needles AND enclosed spaces), but it was quite intriguing to me. It was blue, so it turned the color of blood vessels a different color. As they were slowly injecting it into my arm, it started to create a stream of heat in my veins. As the contrast reacted to my blood, it started spreading everywhere.

The heat shot to my fingertips as it simultaneously traveled to my heart. It was like a single direct path of heat, and I could feel my heart start to beat faster and faster as it tried to figure out, I guess, what was going on. It quickened my heartbeat and then I felt the contrast reach my heart. In moments, it was being radiated through the pumping of my heart. Nothing since has ever made me more aware of how alive I am.

Romans 6 talks about how sin has affected, how it took ahold of our lives so that we could never get away from it. But God came down to earth in the person of Jesus, and He died for those sins. When Christ died and rose again, we are called to a new life.

Romans 6:8-11 says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (NIV).

For those of you who know Christ personally as their savior, hopefully you know what I mean when I say walking with God is a lot like the moment that the contrast hit my blood stream. Of course, those veins and blood vessels had always been there, but suddenly I could FEEL them. I always knew that God was with me and that Jesus had died to save me, but the moment I felt the Holy Spirit convict me, my perspective changed. You are alive.