If Christianity is true in its promise of a new life, then why don't I feel more … new?

The 1983 film Tender Mercies won Academy Awards for screenwriter Horton Foote and lead actor Robert Duvall. Duvall plays a once-famous but now washed-up country music singer-songwriter named Mac Sledge, who is stringing dead-end jobs together and battling the bottle. A young widow named Rosa Lee, and her little boy, Sonny, befriend Mac. Late in the movie, Mac and the boy both get baptized at the local church and are driving home in a pickup truck when the following conversation ensues:

Sonny: "Well, we've done it, Mac. We're baptized." Mac: "Yeah, we are." Sonny: "Everybody said I was going to feel like a changed person. I guess I do feel a little different. But I don't feel a whole lot different. Do you?" Mac: "Not yet." Sonny: "You don't look any different." (Sonny sits up to look at himself in the rearview mirror.) "Do you think I look any different?" Mac: "Not yet."

Possible Preaching Angles: Baptism; Sanctification; Spiritual growth—In the Christian life spiritual growth is often a slow and lifelong journey of transformation.