 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Come and Reason
I'm reluctant to even start . . . where do you begin with the Good News? It's like wanting to create the perfect painting while staring at a blank canvas. In your mind you imagine wonderful and then realize you are left with only your hands to try and create it. As you fearfully sit and stare you begin to slowly understand that it's not totally up to you. Someone else is working to turn your feeble attempt into something deeper and more personal. Suddenly, that same fear is accompanied by excitement! Just maybe someone seeing it will understand a more deeper meaning than your hands could have ever conveyed. To your amazement, God has stepped in and used you as an instrument, a vessel of His grace . . . .
The perfect picture is seen in the following:
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation that is to be revealed in the last time." - I Peter 1: 3-6
Over the next . . . well, really as God leads, my plan is to expand on each piece of that beautiful picture, so that maybe as we "come and reason" it will be used of God to become something deeper and more personal to you.
THE RESURRECTION
Why Empty Tomb Graphics? Because of the resurrection of Jesus. I confess I have thought as the disciples did when the women arrived from the empty tomb shouting they had seen Jesus alive after his burial and the disciples told them their words seemed to them like nonsense. Then I begin to look further and many others saw him after he was crucified.
Let's see, there was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James who went to the tomb, Cleopas and Simon on the road to Emmaus, his disciples on a mountain in Galilee and a week later in the upper room and then again by the Sea of Galilee. He appeared to many over a period of 40 days after his death.
I guess it could all be a story of lies handed down through the centuries, but these men and women devoted their lives to following Jesus and many were put to death in like manner. I guess they could have been deceived or just fanatics, but the real proof to me is the change He has wrought in my life by way of his Spirit . . . truly a new creation . . . born again . . . believer.
Yes, call me a freak or out-of-touch, but I believe in the resurrection.
"If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." I Corinthians 15: 13,14 and 17.