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Living Out of the Heart Jesus Won for Us
The guests are gone, the good dishes are stored, the decorations are removed, and the Easter story is put away. Wait a minute! The Easter story is not meant to be put away but to be lived year-round! It is so easy to celebrate Easter according to the calendar but neglect to live by the transformational truths every day of our lives. We each have a debt of death to pay to God for our sins, but Christ’s death on the cross cancelled our debt (Rom 6:23; Col 2:13-14). Christ intensely suffered physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in His excruciating death on the cross (in our place). He became sin…
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Tamar’s “Wrong” Makes It Right
Today I’m happy to host guest columnist Katherine Tucker. You can read her bio below. In honor of Women’s History Month, consider the hope of Easter through the story of a woman in the Bible. Her story is obscure, often misunderstood, and frequently passed over. Those familiar with it tend to cringe a little at her name. “Tamar.” It invokes ideas of prostitution, seduction, and revenge. What could this harlot have to do with our LORD, the incarnation, and the resurrection? As it turns out, literally everything. The truth is that we have Tamar “the prostitute” to thank for Jesus’s family tree. Tamar is one of three women named in…
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RESURRECTION, BELIEVE IN IT AND LIVE IT!
Resurrection! It is one of the most important and powerful events in the world. Easter can mean bunnies, chicks, baskets of candy, colored eggs; but to Christians it is a day to celebrate how Christ came back to life securing salvation for those who believe. Paul put it like this: “For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 The truth of the Resurrection makes all the difference to those who believe. But what does it all…
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“I don’t like surprises! I just want to know when Jesus is going to come back.”
As bedtimes so often go, my four-year-old uses the last few minutes of the day in hopes that he can begin a conversation that will require me to linger just a little bit longer. Most recently, he began a line of questioning that started with curiosity about the new heaven and the new earth, and then morphed into an intense desire to understand Jesus’ triumphant return (Rev. 21:1, Matt. 24:42-44). He did not receive the news well when I explained that Jesus says we won’t know when he’s coming back. Worst case scenario, we wait. If you have parented any preschoolers recently, then you know that waiting is not one…
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One of the Impacts of Easter in our Lives
Easter is a particular time we set as a celebration of our God of the gospel—Christ dying on the cross for the payment of our sins, God accepting Jesus’ payment by raising Him from the dead, and the Holy Spirit’s transformative work in our lives for righteousness. One of the beautiful impacts of Easter on my life took form as I reflected on a particular incident. One evening my eye began to hurt. My eye would go from feeling normal, to hurting, to back to feeling normal. After about 18 hours, I had someone look at my eye to see if anything was on it. An eyelash was slowly…
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Living the Resurrection Life
How does one get past the tendency to just celebrate the date and instead, learn how to live a life of resurrection celebration?
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Daniel Foreshadows Easter
My regularly scheduled Bible study provided me with a unique and unexpected Lenten and Easter preparation. I probably learned this years ago in seminary but hearing it anew in a sermon from my former pastor1 cemented the truth that Daniel chapter six contains a foreshadowing—a type—of Jesus Christ. A “type” in the Bible is “a person or thing in the Old Testament that foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament.”2 How amazing that God intentionally pointed to Jesus from the very beginning and throughout history. Here are some ways that Daniel foreshadows the death and resurrection of Christ. Daniel Jesus Christ Daniel was a royal son of Judah…
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What can I give the Lord when I have nothing left?
I grew up in a tradition that observed the season of Lent. Every year as a young person we were encouraged to sacrifice something in order to honor the sacrifice of Jesus’ death on the cross and to help us as believers to focus on the Lord as we prepared for Easter. I believe there are a vast number of ways that Lent is used and observed, but as a young person this is what I understood it to be. My most memorable “sacrifice” was soda. I remember because I was in the sixth grade and after my 40 days of soda sobriety, I can honestly say I have never…
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How Easter helps us Deal with Doubt
True confession: Sometimes I doubt. I doubt lots of things. From nominal things like a beauty product’s guarantee to transform my skin (it probably won’t) to more consequential things, like whether or not a politician is telling the truth (ummm….you be the judge). A degree of doubt is certainly normal and healthy, as the alternative would be gullibility. But what about when our doubts move beyond distrusting imperfect products, humans and institutions to doubting our faith? Doubting Scripture? Doubting the very thing Christians all over the world have set their hope on? True confession: Sometimes I doubt. These under-the-surface doubts regarding my faith rose to the forefront just after my…
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Set Aside Your Mourning Clothes––A Prayer Exercise
The last two years have been a time of prolonged loss, anxiety, and uncertainty for many of us. And whether or not we remember when we put on our mourning clothes, many of us struggle with when we should take them off. How do we know?