You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Christ’ tag.
After Jesus died on the cross and was buried, before Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples were hiding out of fear they might meet the same fate. All they knew was that Jesus was gone. They had yet to experience his resurrection. This was a period of fear and doubt, the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
To live without salvation through Christ is to be caught between Good Friday and Easter morning. It is an eternal darkness without the hope offered by the resurrection of Christ. It is a place of constant night with only the fading light of a man-made lamp to illuminate the way. It is a state of hopelessness without any chance of salvation from sin. Yet because of God’s love for us we do not have to remain trapped between Good Friday and Easter.
Salvation is ours through faith in Christ. This Easter embrace the hope of the resurrection. Leave behind doubt and disbelief and run with Peter to see the strips of linen lying in the empty tomb (Luke 24:12). Share the joy of the women who saw the risen Lord and ran to tell the disciples (Matt. 28:8). 1 Peter 1:8-9 tells us, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls (NIV).”
My prayer is that the dawn of this Easter morning will dissipate the darkness of night with the radiant light of the risen Lord. May we express the joy of our salvation with the proclamation, “He has risen!”
Advertisements
Trying to decide what to pack for a trip can be a difficult task. It’s a strange act of anticipating what you might need with what is necessary for the journey. We intuitively know it’s better to pack less, yet we usually bring along more than we need.
The same is true of life. Often we pack too much into our lives – things that can make our journey more difficult and harder to travel. Sometimes this excess baggage weighs us down so much that we are no longer able to move forward. We’re stuck in the same spot, paralyzed and unable to move because of the burden.
So how do you know what to pack for your life journey? How do you know what to leave behind and what to carry with you? The ultimate measuring stick is what will be left behind when we die and what we will take with us into eternity. As Hebrews 12:1 so eloquently says, “Therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. (NLT)
Knowing what to pack for life requires us to remain focused on Christ. As Hebrews 12:2 goes on to say, “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish…” While our fast-paced lifestyle with its 140 character text messages can make that difficult, it can also serve as a model. To write a 140 character message, you have to edit it so only the essential elements of the message remain. Imagine if our lives were edited down so that only the message of Jesus Christ is conveyed clearly to others.
That is the basis for this blog, to explore how to unpack our lives to become a 140 Character Christian. To live a life that is edited down so that only the core message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is communicated to those around us. The journey is about how we pack more of Jesus into our lives and leave behind “the sin that so easily hinders our progress.”
