this calls for a celebration.

My co-leader, Kels Sage, wrote this. I really love it and don’t think I can write it better myself, so here you go….

As you know just by walking through the local grocery store, it is almost Easter. The innocent colors of light green, pink, purple and of course chocolate all fill the area near the entrance and cashier lines.

 

I for one have been convicted of the way I celebrate this “holiday”; or should I say lack of celebration. I do much more planning and anticipating for the 4th of July, and Thanksgiving, of course we all get hyped for Christmas. But what is the deal with Easter being just a chocolate-fest and cute pictures with bunnies? Sick.

 

This is what we SHOULD be celebrating, Jesus leaving the tomb empty! Jesus allowing us to live in complete freedom, victory from sin, victory from baggage and meaningless life!! No, I do not have to live with a glimpse of illness or affliction against MY body because of the empty tomb, because Jesus faced Satan right in the face and beat the hell out of him (or beat something else more serious out of him, just couldn’t think of a better word to describe the intensity)! He did that for you and for me. Jesus wept and went through the MOST severe death known to mankind, not so we can eat purple marshmallows in the shape of rabbits but so our entire lives could be in union with God the Father. THAT is worth celebrating, more than any other day of the year, THE victory of LIFE and FREEDOM is the most important, most powerful day of every year we exist.

 

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Romans 6:4

 

Our old sinful, depressed, meaningless life WAS and STILL is crucified and buried. That life is over and done and a new is for us to take and experience.

 

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Romans 6:5

 

If we allow ourselves to be in complete surrender, if we accept and acknowledge the new life Christ paid for us to have, then we will meet death to our old lives of fruitlessness and be resurrected and filled with the Spirit to live a new life. I am a new creature, with new thoughts, new hopes, new power, new authority, new meaning because I died to myself. I am still continuing to surrender things over to the Father, I am continually dying to myself because I know that His ways are greater than my own. (Isaiah 55:9) Thank God. Thank God that I can be in surrender mode to Him and allow my life to be multitudes greater than any life I could create by myself. 

 

So yuh lets hunt those eggs, cause really, who doesn’t want to run around the neighborhood with a cute basket hunting dyed boiled eggs?  Let’s buy the chocolate, let’s have the family over for lunch, let’s go to church.

 

But let us never forget what the victory of the resurrected life truly means and holds for us. This is the day we should have a week off of work and school preparing for… maybe one day the world can wake up and realize Easter the most powerful day of the year.