The Morning You Wake Up New

The Confusion of the First Morning

Tomorrow morning you will wake up and for a few seconds everything will be normal. The alarm. The ceiling. The wall clock. Then, as your consciousness reassembles, you will remember that something large happened yesterday and that you are not quite the same person who went to bed before the thing happened. And there will be a small panic. Who am I now? How do I live this day? What is my identity supposed to feel like from the inside?

Nobody trained you for this morning. No school covered it. No wedding is like it; even marriage, with its transition into a shared life, does not change the substance of the self at the root. This morning is different because it is not a change of circumstance. It is a change of person. The old self is gone. The new self is unfamiliar. And you have to walk into a day as a self you are not yet fluent in.

I am writing this because someone should have warned you about the first morning, and probably no one did. So let me tell you three things.

One: You Are the Same Person

Physically, socially, cognitively — you are who you were yesterday. Your face is the same. Your accent is the same. The knot in your left shoulder from the way you sleep is still there. The argument you had with your spouse last week is still the argument you had last week. Your bank account is exactly where it was. The jokes that made you laugh will still make you laugh. The food that tastes bitter to you will still taste bitter.

This matters because you may have expected an instantaneous transformation — a sudden moral perfection, a total overhaul of your desires, an immediate disappearance of the sins that have troubled you. Paradigm shatters do not work that way. The foundation of your being has been moved from one piece of ground to another. The superstructure — your habits, your thoughts, your reflexes — is still being slowly rebuilt in the new location. It will take years. That is not disappointing. That is how long a life is. The work of grace is a life's work. It is supposed to last as long as you do.

So when tomorrow morning you are short with your coworker, or you look at something you shouldn't, or you feel an anxiety that you thought had left forever, do not take those moments as evidence that the change was not real. Paul, who was more radically converted than almost anyone in history, wrote Romans 7 from inside the new self: "What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Romans 7:15). He was saved. He was converted. He was apostle Paul. And he still struggled. The struggle is not the rebuttal of the new self. The struggle is the new self wrestling in a body that has not yet caught up.

Two: You Are a Different Person

While everything about you is the same, the location of your self has changed. Before yesterday, your self was located in you. You were the center of your life. Even your religion was centered on you — on your performance, your decision, your sincerity, your yes. Today, your self is located in Christ. You have been moved. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).

This is not a nice metaphor. This is an ontological statement. The hinge of your identity has been transferred from your self to a self that is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). You are not, from this morning forward, primarily you. You are primarily the one in whom Christ dwells. That is a different category of person. And though the outward life looks like the old life, the inward life is being run differently. The Holy Spirit — the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead — is now resident in you (Romans 8:11), and the Spirit has begun His work. Every thought He pushes back against, He was not pushing back against yesterday. Every whisper of conviction is His voice in the new home. You are being inhabited. It is the indwelling Christ who will, over time, remake your habits from the inside out.

This will feel strange. You will catch yourself caring about things you did not care about yesterday. You will find yourself reluctant to do things you would have done without thinking last week. You will find that certain shows, certain conversations, certain jokes no longer land the way they did. Your laughter will hesitate where it used to rush. This is not joylessness. This is taste changing. Your palate is being rewired. Foods you found delicious are going to taste odd; foods you thought were bland are going to become your daily bread. This is sanctification. It is slow. It is real. It is not your doing. Let it happen.

Three: You Walk in Newness of Life

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

ROMANS 6:4

The phrase new life in Greek is kainotēti zōēs — literally, in newness of life. It is not a state; it is a mode of walking. You walk, now, in newness. Every step is a new step. Every morning is a new morning. You are not required to figure out tomorrow in advance. You are required only to walk in tomorrow when tomorrow comes. The newness will be supplied as you need it.

This is the answer to the panicked question you will have at 7 a.m.: how do I do this? You do it the way a newborn does the first day. You cry when you need. You eat when you are fed. You sleep when you are tired. You let people hold you. You do not try to deliver a speech. The new self is, in many ways, a child self. Jesus said you had to become like a little child to enter the kingdom (Matthew 18:3). You have. Welcome to the kingdom. Walk the way a child walks. One small step at a time. Falling is allowed. Hand-holding is expected. The Father is nearby. He will catch you.

The Routine That Holds the New Self Together

You are going to need a routine. The new self is real, but it is tender. It needs structures that let it grow. Build three simple ones into your days, starting tomorrow morning, and do not negotiate with yourself about them.

First: feed it. Read the Bible every day. It does not have to be much. A chapter. A Psalm. A Gospel passage. But every day. The new self is sustained by the word the way a body is sustained by food. Skip meals and you weaken. Feed regularly and you grow.

Second: talk to Him. Pray simply. Say His name. Pray a Psalm. Pray the Lord's Prayer. Be short if you need to be. Be long if that is what arises. Just do not stop the conversation. The new self was born in conversation with Him and needs the conversation the way a baby needs her mother's voice.

Third: be with His people. Go to church. Find a congregation that preaches the whole counsel of God — sovereign grace, depravity, Christ crucified and risen. Sit with them. Sing with them. Take the bread and cup with them. You cannot grow alone. The new self is a communal self because it is a self in Christ and Christ has a body. You need the body. Find it. Stay in it.

Do not wait to feel strong enough for these. You will never feel strong enough. Do them because the new self is sustained by them, not because you have mustered enough fervor to deserve them. Fervor will come and go. The disciplines keep you in the stream of grace no matter what tide your emotions are on.

When the Old Self Returns for a Visit

It will. Probably within a week. You will feel a pull toward an old habit, an old sin, an old way of thinking that is comfortable in the worst sense of the word. The old self will knock. It will act like nothing has changed. It will try to get back in the house.

Here is what you say. You do not live here anymore. There is a new tenant. His name is Christ. You can stand on the porch if you like, but you cannot come in. The keys have been changed.

Do not entertain the old self. Do not open the door even a crack. Do not argue. The old self is a very good arguer — he knows all your weaknesses, because he is all your weaknesses. The best thing is to close the door and pray. The Spirit will handle the porch. He has handled more persistent visitors than this one.

Over time, the visits will become less frequent. The old self is not immortal; he is being defeated, slowly, by the advance of the new one. Every day you refuse to let him in is a day he loses an inch of ground. Every day you feed the new self is a day the new self gets a little more obviously the one running the house. You will not finish this process in this life. But you will make real progress. And when you finally step into glory, you will see that the old self had, at the last, no ground at all. He had been walking the hallway of a house that was entirely Christ's.

Tomorrow morning is the first step. Get up when the alarm goes. Make the coffee. Read a Psalm. Say His name. Go about your day. Notice the small differences. Thank Him for them. Do not be shocked by the struggles. Do not be smug about the victories. Walk in newness. That is today's whole assignment.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

LAMENTATIONS 3:22-23

Every morning, new. Including tomorrow. Including the tomorrow after that. Including the tomorrow fifty years from now. The mercies do not run out. Walk into the morning. He has already put fresh mercies on the counter. Eat.