Easter is here! This is a time we look forward to all year long, a time to focus on the saving work of Jesus and the fact that the tomb was empty. It is a time to think and reflect upon the resurrection. I have been thinking about the resurrection a lot this last week and the work God has done in my life. It made me want to write an autobiography because of the massive amount of work God has done in my life (I had/have a lot of work to be done).
“In the beginning God created Dan, and God breathed life into Dan. And then…life happened.” I imagine this to be the first line of my life’s story. It is because of this “life happening” that the Father sent his Son to pay the penalty for me. And for once…the check cleared! I owe no more payments, because the payment was made for me! I am completely debt free! I was saved from something I couldn’t beat, something I couldn’t overcome even on my best day: myself!
But I wasn’t simply saved from something; I was saved for something. There is a reason, a purpose for which I have been saved. This truth eluded me most of my life. I mean, I understood that I was supposed to live a certain way, but I don’t think I equated that with a new purpose for my life. I understood that I was supposed to stay away from sin and to resist temptation, but I didn’t see anything else on the horizon. In other words, I had destroyed my old life and built nothing in its place. I had basically cut out what I believed were all the fun parts of life and replaced those parts with nothing. And nothing…is boring.
Life in the Spirit is exciting, not boring! Life following that bizarre, young Jewish carpenter, Jesus, is adventurous! It isn’t giving up the fun parts of life; it is opening yourself up to what real fun is! Jesus is calling us to follow in his footsteps. He calls us to die to ourselves. But he is also calling us to a resurrection…a resurrection within! We die to ourselves and are raised as new creations complete with purpose for this world and the next! That purpose: to allow God to resurrect His image within us so that the world will be able to see Him when they look at us! That image is buried beneath a mound of sin and hurt brought on by life. But God wants to unearth that image. He wants to bring it back to surface! And in the process…we are healed! We are healed from hurts inflicted either by our own misdeeds or by the sins of others.
Maybe my life story should really begin this way: “In the beginning God created Dan, and God breathed life into Dan. And then…life happened…and then, God gave Dan new life!” I am making a commitment this year. I am not going to view the resurrection as merely a past event, but as a present reality. It is only through experiencing my own resurrection within that I can, as Paul said, “know the power of His resurrection…becoming like Him in death” (Phil 3:10).
