Celebrating Resurrection Day

Disclaimer:  My family celebrates Easter with eggs, baskets, and chocolate as most Christian families do.  My intent is not to take away from family traditions used to teach the importance of Christ's resurrection- rather, my intent is to speak to adult Christians mucking around in a watered-down faith of our modern church to go back to our roots. 

Easter is this Sunday.

 

Hallelujah!  He is Risen!

For some of us this means putting on our nicest church clothes, getting up before the sun has risen, and rushing to a church that only sees us on major holidays to offer a feeble proclamation of praise and worship to a God we ignore the rest of the year.

For some of us this means several days of preparation: coloring eggs, decorating the house, shopping for pretty clothes for Easter pictures in front of the display at church, followed by a family meal that competes with Thanksgiving dinner, and very little thought goes into the actual representation of the day.

Then there are some of us who take great pains to remember Christ on this day, to use traditions and adopted symbolism to teach our friends, family, and children about Christ, His sacrifice, His Victory, and His love for us, while still trying to keep up with cantata's, dawn services, egg hunts, family dinners, etc.  And try as we might, we still miss the big picture.

Easter Sunday, or as I prefer to refer to it, Resurrection Day, is the day we celebrate Christ rising from the dead of HIS OWN accord in victory over death with the debts of sin for every generation paid in full.

Please read that again.  Let it sink in.

He died for our sins.  Mine. Yours.  Our parents.  Our ancestors.  Our children.  Our grandchildren.  Their grandchildren.  He died for every single sin ever committed by every person who has ever lived, and who shall ever live!   Think on that! 

 

We no longer have to atone for our own sins... we merely need to accept that He did that for us, and accept His forgiveness, and offer our thanks, and strive to live better lives.   Yet, we take his death for granted.  We still go out living in sin that we KNOW in our hearts is sin.  We think to ourselves that we are forgiven and that justifies our lack of action to stop sinning.  Shame on us for wasting His gift!

But in addition to His dying for our sins, He willed Himself back to LIFE!  He left the sins He paid for at the feet of Satan, and left the place of eternal damnation to prove to us His power over life and death, to prove to us He is the Son of God.  On the third day after His death, Jesus Christ the Son of God, broke the gates of hell and walked among us once more. 

Jesus Christ fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament freeing us from a life of law and inviting us to a life of peace, love, and freedom under His Grace, Perfect Love, and Mercy with the promise of eternal life at His side.   This too we take for granted.  We assume that living a life of peace, love, and freedom means that we can allow our Faith to become watered down.  We study the Word less and cave into the world's views more.  In the end, we start believing what the world has to say about our faith more than what His Word says about our faith and we are left hollow, confused, angry, and bitter.

 

My encouragement to you for this Resurrection Day, as you follow your family or personal traditions, is to add to your traditions a deliberate return to His Word.  Make the time to lift your face to Heaven and call upon His name.  His death and resurrection offer you the opportunity to directly seek His face.  Raise your voice in prayer and praise.  Tell your friends and family why modern Easter practices are simply icing on the cake of a gift so precious we need to stop taking it for granted.

Celebrate Resurrection Day and let the rest of the world have Easter.

God bless you!

In the Light

I typically frown on Bible Studies and Sermons that take one verse by itself to shape a lesson out of.  (Unless its like a verse from Psalms or Proverbs, where the verses really do stand alone at times.) 

However, as I was reading John 8 today, this verse stuck out to me.

"Jesus once again addressed them: "I am the world's Light.  No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness.  I provide plenty of light to live in."  John 8 v 12 from The Message.

I think this verse really stands out to me because since I have been the stay-at-home mom again, I have been so caught up in worry.  I have really been stumbling in the dark.  I can't sleep.  I am not eating much.  I am completely drained, and tired, and on the verge of depression.  Working through the muck as I am also trying to lead an online Bible Study, be a full-time student, and still be a loving and supportive wife and mom.

This is my conviction this morning.  I have not been truly trusting Him to help us through the next several months as we face career choices, selling a house, buying a house, moving away, uprooting from friends that we consider family, taking the kiddo away from friends (this will be the first move that he is having an active role in.)  Instead, I have been worrying over finances.  I have been worrying over health issues.  I have been worrying over choices that can't be made yet.  I have been worrying over matters that are completely out of my hands!  Then I turn around and try to offer advice on the very things that I am not doing myself!

Jesus is the Light! I follow Him.  But here I am struggling in darkness when He "provide[s] plenty of light to live in!" 

My challenge this week is to refocus my gaze on Him.  Give Him my burdens and worries.   Stand up and get out of the darkness I have been wallowing in, and dance in the Light!  His Light!

Will y'all practice refocusing your gaze on Him with me?  Will y'all remember me in your prayers as I get back into His Light, His Word, and crawl back into His warm embrace, where I know that all my worries are in His capable hands?

God bless!