"I Still Rise."

On the eve of Easter I decided to go outside and see what the Lord was up to. In the sky above He had painted the sky with clouds illuminated by a bright full moon. A deep desire fell on me to get up and see the sunrise in the morning. I kept hearing three words pound in my heart, "I still rise."

Easter morning. In the car, I head off with my camera to see what sort of sunrise will be painted this morning. Clouds covered the sky and mostly hid the sun. As it broke through the clouds I remembered John 20 which I had read that morning. The empty tomb. The sun broke through just as Christ broke through the veil of death. 
         He is risen!
Staring at the majesty of the morning I saw a bird break through the cloud barrier and I was again reminded that Christ overcame death and separation from the Father.

But before he entered heaven, Jesus went into a garden and, kneeling before the Father, he received your sin onto his own body (Isa. 53:6). Every one of your sins was placed on Jesus (1  Pet. 2:24). He felt the shame and weight that you now feel (Heb. 12:2). On the cross he felt deserted by God as you now feel (Mat. 27:46). God made him to be sin for you (2 Corinthians 5:21). He took your place at the place of execution (Isa. 53:4-5). You do indeed deserve the wrath of God, and so Jesus stood in your place and took the full wrath of God upon his own body (Isa. 53:10).








A bird came up on each side of the bird that I saw in the air as if they appeared out of nowhere. Three birds. I was overwhelmed by the remembrance of the Son being reunited with the Father and the Holy Spirit once He overcame the grave.

You can know what God thinks of your sin by looking at how he responded to his son Jesus. God does indeed hate sin as seen by the cross. That was you hanging on the cross, dying for your sin (Galatians 2:20). You were punished in the body of Jesus (1 Pet. 3:18). God did not forgive you until the steel of vengeance was plunged into Jesus’ flesh, and his life’s blood all ran out (Eph. 2:13; Heb. 9:14; 1 Pet. 1:19; Eph 2:13).
                                                                                           They were reunited!
You can also know what God thinks about you the sinner by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God accepted Jesus’ payment for sin as seen by the fact that God raised him from the dead and received him back into heaven to sit on the Father’s right hand as the overcoming man (Eph. 1:20; Col. 2:12-13; Heb. 9:12; 1 Pet. 1:21).


When God raised Jesus from the dead he also raised you from the dead (Rom. 6). Every sin you have ever committed and will commit were placed on the body of Jesus when he died. You sin has been paid for in full (Heb. 10:10, 12, 14). God remembers your sins no more (Heb. 10:17).

The devil, and maybe even your church, would have you to believe otherwise. There is no such thing as forgiving yourself or personally overcoming the devil. You cannot fight a battle that has already been won by our representative elder brother—the Lord Jesus Christ (Col. 2:15).

The last step is yours. It is called believing, repenting, giving up, trusting, yielding, calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Savior. You can make this complicated, as you have done, or you can confess that you are a hopeless, hell bound sinner who does not deserve forgiveness, yet one for whom Christ died and rose again. If you look inside your soul, as the devil would have you do, you will only see darkness, but if you look without to the one who died for you, there is eternal home and assurance of forgiveness (John 3:14-18; 1 John 1:9; Acts 16:31).

*italics from Michael Pearl.

Comments

Tiffany Atwood said…
Beautiful entry. Nothing short of pure Glory! How awesome is the Lord Most High!

Love you!
Anne Smith said…
oh yes the Kyle sky is alive with Jesus! love it!

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