Every now and then a story comes along that reminds us the Gospel has lost none of its power.

This week, a social media influencer with nearly a million followers announced that she is walking away from her lucrative career as an online tarot card reader because she has found something infinitely greater.

Or rather ... Someone infinitely greater.

In a farewell video to the audience she spent years building, Alexandra Ashcroft - the woman known on TikTok as "Alex in the Ordinary" - explained that her journey had not happened overnight. It had been months of praying, questioning, searching, and gradually discovering the truth in Christ.

Then she uttered the words every Christian knows intimately:

Jesus Christ has saved my life.

With that confession came a remarkable decision.

She deleted the content that had made her famous, abandoned the platform she had spent years building, and started over with a new account devoted not to tarot cards, but to Scripture.

In every way, this is a beautiful picture of biblical repentance.

The word "repent" has consistently been reduced in our culture to mean little more than feeling sorry. Biblically, it means something so much deeper. It means an about face, turning around, making the conscious decision to leave one kingdom for another. It's choosing to walk away from the old life because Christ has made all things new.

That is exactly what has apparently happened to Alexandra.

The New Testament repeatedly reminds us that this is precisely what Jesus came to do.

'He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.' (Colossians 1:13)

Notice the language Paul uses in his letter. Salvation is described as a rescue. We are delivered from "the dominion of darkness" and transferred into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. That's because far from reforming itself, darkness yields only when light breaks in.

Some who look at her will inevitably focus on Alexandra's past and question the sincerity of her conversion. She read tarot cards and participated in practices Scripture plainly condemns and warns against. But while all that is true, the greater truth is that Jesus still saves sinners.

• The woman at the well had a past.

• Zacchaeus had a past.

• The thief on the cross had a past.

• Saul of Tarsus had a past.

• Every person reading these words has one too.

The miracle of the Gospel has never been that Jesus discovers good people hiding beneath bad decisions. He raises the spiritually dead to life. As Paul writes, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

That newness comes through repeatedly in Alexandra's testimony.

At one point she admits she has no idea what comes next. "What I do know," she says, "is that Jesus Christ has saved my life."

There is remarkable freedom in that confession. She isn't pretending to have every answer or laying out a detailed ministry strategy. She simply knows the One she is following, and that is enough. There is something refreshingly biblical about that. The first disciples didn't know where Jesus would lead them either. They simply left their nets and followed.

And if God can do this for Alexandra, never stop praying for the people you love.

There is no heart so hardened, no life so entangled, and no person so far gone that Jesus Christ cannot reach them.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.