Today is Good Friday. The day that Christians all over the world celebrate that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. In our house, we talk about that all the time. We discuss it with our children, we say prayers of thanks at every meal. I thank God in my own private prayers especially when someone I know has died and I know they are now in heaven rejoicing with our risen Savior.
About a week ago, however, I felt a deep conviction in my spirit that I needed to deepen my understanding of what Jesus truly did for me. This conviction took me to 2 Corinthians 5:21 "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
So I pondered, meditated and repeated this verse over and over, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal something new to me.
He who knew no sin - Jesus never sinned. Just think about that for a minute. He never had a lustful thought. He never looked at another person and thought, "what an idiot, I hate that guy!" He never held a grudge over all those people who tried to kill Him. He never lied, not even a little white lie. He never got enraged with the stupidity of man. Until He was hanging on the cross, and the Father turned His face from Jesus, He had never ever experienced shame. I remember the first time I truly felt shame. I don't remember what I had done, but I remember the overwhelming feeling that I just wanted to not exist any longer. I felt hopeless, helpless, worthless.
He became sin - Not only did Jesus feel shame, but in that moment, when He was separate from the Father, he actually was hopeless, helpless and worthless! The bible said He didn't just take our sin on and carry it on His back, He BECAME sin. Ponder it. Let the Spirit show you the gravity of that which Jesus did for you. The faith that it took for the man Jesus to become sin, being separate for the first and only time from the Father, trusting that the Father would rescue Him from the pit of hell and allow Him victory over death is barely comprehensible to me.
And WHY did He do it? For me. For every single face that you will look at today. For every sinner on this earth no matter what their sin may be. No matter what your sin may be.
So we might become the righteousness of God in Him - It wasn't even a sure thing. He didn't die knowing that this would be accepted by everyone. Quite the opposite. Jesus died knowing that a very small percentage of people would actually accept this amazing gift of freedom, love and reconciliation. He knew the return on investment was dismal. He knew that most of the world would still choose to live in the bondage of flesh, rather than the righteousness of Christ.
Today, Good Friday, I ask you to ponder a few questions:
Do you understand the gravity of what Jesus did?
Are you grateful?
Do you live like you are grateful?
Do you look at the faces of others and know that Jesus died for them too?
Do you love them the way Jesus loves them?
Today is very very good, but it came at an extremely high price. A price that we disrespect if we try to do anything other than Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Waiting
Currently, my family is in the middle of a season of change. My girls are growing like weeds; I feel like I send them off to school in the morning and they come home older, bigger, more mature every day. Rich was laid off and is in the process of finding a new job and I am in the middle of job and extended family changes. People often say that change is scary, unsettling, bad. Lately, I have been wondering, why is change so hard? I have decided it is because of one main thing: we hate the waiting.
If we woke up one morning, and everything had changed overnight, the children we older, the new job had already been received, all the answers were known, we would simply adjust. We may have some moments of panic but overall, we would adjust and move on. The part about change that kills us is the "what ifs." What if we haven't raised them right and they make bad decisions? What if the new job doesn't come quickly enough or doesn't pay what we want? What if I can't balance the changes in my job and my responsibilities to family? What if we have to move and start over? Waiting is what stirs up all these emotions and anxieties. If there were no wait, we would know the answers, accept them and move on. So here is the question: Why does God make us wait?
The bible is full of waiting. Abraham had to wait for the birth of Isaac, David had to wait to be king, Joseph had to wait to be the leader, Daniel had to wait in the lion's den. The Hebrews had to wait to enter the promised land, the Israelites had to wait through 400 years of silence before Jesus was born, Mary had to wait for Him to grow up. Jesus had to wait 33 years before fulfilling His destiny and now we wait for His return, over 2,000 years and counting.
As I have pondered on waiting and why we wait over the last several months, I keep wandering back to Mary. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be a young unmarried girl and get a visit from the highest ranking angel, telling you that you will be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Then to have to wait 9 months for this child, the Savior of the Universe, her very Creator to be born. But after His birth, she then had to wait again! He was not enthroned immediately. He did not instantly become a full grown man ready for kingship. He was a baby! I wonder if the wise men coming from the East when Jesus was about two years old wasn't an answer to a prayer from Mary. I wonder if she hadn't been on her knees begging God, "God, I trust you. I know you say He IS you, and our Savior. I know the angel came and told me so but please. I need a sign. I need something to bolster my faith. It has been so long and it's not happening like I thought it would." The next day, the wise men show up just to reaffirm her faith. God is pretty cool like that. He does big grand things just to give us a little more strength to persevere. Mary may have received the first visit from Gabriel but all other angelic communication went to Joseph and we don't have any reason to believe that Mary or Joseph were given God's full game plan for Jesus' life. That seems to be a theme with God. He rarely gives us the full game plan. Often when he does give us the plan, like he gave to Moses, we don't believe Him anyway. I like to believe that God sent those wise men to show His love and care for Mary. That she needed some faith building and God was happy to oblige. He usually is when we ask.
Why did Mary (and all of the world for that matter) have to wait for Jesus to grow up? And why so long? In those days, 33 was ancient! A normal boy would have started working around age 8 and be married and well on his way to a full career by late teens. When we first meet Jesus as a young man of the age of twelve in the temple, he should have been on the edge of manhood and yet He is presented as a young boy still having to be looked after by His parents. God used young men half Jesus' age as Prophets, warriors and leaders in the old testament and yet we get to wait twice as long for the most important event in history. Mary had to wait twice as long. The disciples had to wait twice as long. So why all that waiting?
The thing we don't like to hear is that faith building, character building, more often than not, involves lots and lots of time. It takes time to learn to trust someone, to love someone, to know how someone will react to something. It even takes time to do little things, like memorizing a passage or learning to ride a bike. It takes time to learn to cook well or to read a good book. It takes time to clean a house, cut the grass or build a house. Even instant rice takes 90 seconds in the microwave, not to mention all the time it took in the factory being prepared before it hits your pantry shelf.
I don't know what God is doing during that time that we are waiting, but for me, today, I am practicing trust. I am reminding myself that the same God who did give Abraham Isaac, did make David king, did make Joseph a leader, did save Daniel from the lion's den and did send Jesus, is the same God who has asked me to wait on His best. And isn't His best worth the wait?
In waiting, I am learning that my statement that God is my security is not just lip service, but true! When I wake up every morning not knowing the future yet not being anxious about it, I confirm to myself that my security and my hope is in the Lord, not the world. If nothing else happened in my life, I am so deeply thankful that God has allowed me to know that about myself. I wonder if Job felt that at the end of his ordeal? I wonder if he sat back and thanked God, not just for replenishing all that had been taken away, but for the deep knowledge that he was 100% all in with God no matter what came.
There is a peace is knowing that the things we say we believe, once tested, prove to be the things we do truly believe in practice not just speech. In our hearts, not just our heads. I serve a mighty God who is faithful and His plans for me are to prosper me. To give me a future and a hope. So I wait in faithful anticipation of the next stage of life He has for my family. I do not know what that will be. I am not blind to the fact that it may involve hard decisions or possibly hard circumstances, but I know that in the end, it will be amazing and perfectly within God's ultimate plan. I would rather be homeless in a cardboard box in the Will of God, than in the biggest mansion out of His will.
As the song says, "So I wait for you, I am falling of my knees, offering all my needs, Jesus, You're all this heart is living for."
If we woke up one morning, and everything had changed overnight, the children we older, the new job had already been received, all the answers were known, we would simply adjust. We may have some moments of panic but overall, we would adjust and move on. The part about change that kills us is the "what ifs." What if we haven't raised them right and they make bad decisions? What if the new job doesn't come quickly enough or doesn't pay what we want? What if I can't balance the changes in my job and my responsibilities to family? What if we have to move and start over? Waiting is what stirs up all these emotions and anxieties. If there were no wait, we would know the answers, accept them and move on. So here is the question: Why does God make us wait?
The bible is full of waiting. Abraham had to wait for the birth of Isaac, David had to wait to be king, Joseph had to wait to be the leader, Daniel had to wait in the lion's den. The Hebrews had to wait to enter the promised land, the Israelites had to wait through 400 years of silence before Jesus was born, Mary had to wait for Him to grow up. Jesus had to wait 33 years before fulfilling His destiny and now we wait for His return, over 2,000 years and counting.
As I have pondered on waiting and why we wait over the last several months, I keep wandering back to Mary. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be a young unmarried girl and get a visit from the highest ranking angel, telling you that you will be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Then to have to wait 9 months for this child, the Savior of the Universe, her very Creator to be born. But after His birth, she then had to wait again! He was not enthroned immediately. He did not instantly become a full grown man ready for kingship. He was a baby! I wonder if the wise men coming from the East when Jesus was about two years old wasn't an answer to a prayer from Mary. I wonder if she hadn't been on her knees begging God, "God, I trust you. I know you say He IS you, and our Savior. I know the angel came and told me so but please. I need a sign. I need something to bolster my faith. It has been so long and it's not happening like I thought it would." The next day, the wise men show up just to reaffirm her faith. God is pretty cool like that. He does big grand things just to give us a little more strength to persevere. Mary may have received the first visit from Gabriel but all other angelic communication went to Joseph and we don't have any reason to believe that Mary or Joseph were given God's full game plan for Jesus' life. That seems to be a theme with God. He rarely gives us the full game plan. Often when he does give us the plan, like he gave to Moses, we don't believe Him anyway. I like to believe that God sent those wise men to show His love and care for Mary. That she needed some faith building and God was happy to oblige. He usually is when we ask.
Why did Mary (and all of the world for that matter) have to wait for Jesus to grow up? And why so long? In those days, 33 was ancient! A normal boy would have started working around age 8 and be married and well on his way to a full career by late teens. When we first meet Jesus as a young man of the age of twelve in the temple, he should have been on the edge of manhood and yet He is presented as a young boy still having to be looked after by His parents. God used young men half Jesus' age as Prophets, warriors and leaders in the old testament and yet we get to wait twice as long for the most important event in history. Mary had to wait twice as long. The disciples had to wait twice as long. So why all that waiting?
The thing we don't like to hear is that faith building, character building, more often than not, involves lots and lots of time. It takes time to learn to trust someone, to love someone, to know how someone will react to something. It even takes time to do little things, like memorizing a passage or learning to ride a bike. It takes time to learn to cook well or to read a good book. It takes time to clean a house, cut the grass or build a house. Even instant rice takes 90 seconds in the microwave, not to mention all the time it took in the factory being prepared before it hits your pantry shelf.
I don't know what God is doing during that time that we are waiting, but for me, today, I am practicing trust. I am reminding myself that the same God who did give Abraham Isaac, did make David king, did make Joseph a leader, did save Daniel from the lion's den and did send Jesus, is the same God who has asked me to wait on His best. And isn't His best worth the wait?
In waiting, I am learning that my statement that God is my security is not just lip service, but true! When I wake up every morning not knowing the future yet not being anxious about it, I confirm to myself that my security and my hope is in the Lord, not the world. If nothing else happened in my life, I am so deeply thankful that God has allowed me to know that about myself. I wonder if Job felt that at the end of his ordeal? I wonder if he sat back and thanked God, not just for replenishing all that had been taken away, but for the deep knowledge that he was 100% all in with God no matter what came.
There is a peace is knowing that the things we say we believe, once tested, prove to be the things we do truly believe in practice not just speech. In our hearts, not just our heads. I serve a mighty God who is faithful and His plans for me are to prosper me. To give me a future and a hope. So I wait in faithful anticipation of the next stage of life He has for my family. I do not know what that will be. I am not blind to the fact that it may involve hard decisions or possibly hard circumstances, but I know that in the end, it will be amazing and perfectly within God's ultimate plan. I would rather be homeless in a cardboard box in the Will of God, than in the biggest mansion out of His will.
As the song says, "So I wait for you, I am falling of my knees, offering all my needs, Jesus, You're all this heart is living for."
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