Holy Week

As we celebrate the Holiest of weeks in the Christian faith our prayer is that you would see that Christ satisfies. He satisfied it all on the cross 2013 years ago. What a joy that our King rose three days after Black Friday.  Below is a beautifully written exert on Black Friday and what it means.  May your Easter be filled with all the Hope, all the Love, all the Joy that only Jesus Christ can bring.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV 

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Hebrews 2:9 ESV

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In his Good Friday sermon of 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer drives this cosmic tragedy home like three cold steel stakes pounded through the nerves of humanity's own wrists and feet.

Good Friday is not the darkness that must necessarily yield to light. It is not the winter sleep that contains and nourishes the seed of life within. It is the day on which human beings — human beings who wanted to be like gods — kill the God who became human, the love that became person; the day on which the Holy One of God, that is, God himself, dies, truly dies — voluntarily and yet because of human guilt — without any seed of life remaining in him in such a way that God’s death might resemble sleep.

Good Friday is not, like winter, a transitional stage — no, it is genuinely the end, the end of guilty humanity and the final judgment that humanity has pronounced upon itself. . . .

If God’s history among human beings had ended on Good Friday, then the final pronouncement over humankind would be guilt, rebellion, the unfettering of all titanic human forces, a storming of heaven by human beings, godlessness, godforsakenness, but then ultimately meaninglessness and despair. Then your faith is futile. Then you are still in your guilt. Then we are of all people most to be pitied. That is, the final word would be the human being.¹

This is the awful memory Good Friday presses on us.

Humanity, aspiring in arrogance to become godlike, has slayed the God-man by both murderous intent and by woeful passivity. And in this crime, Bonhoeffer goes on to explain, everything else has been made futile. All our culture, all our art, all our learning, all our hopes, have come to a meaningless end once we have heaped on our own heads the murder of God’s only Son.

Thank God, the story doesn’t end here, but Good Friday presses us to imagine if it did. What if the story ended at the cross? What if the God-rejecting sin of humanity wrought despair to life now and nothing short of a godforsaken despair for eternity?

Divine words of accusation stab into the ribs of humanity:

You have swelled up around him like a wall of unfounded hate and vicious lies (Psalm 69:4).

You have circled him like ravenous dogs (Psalm 22:16).

You have ambushed the beloved son (Mark 12:1–9).

You have killed the Author of Life (Acts 3:15).

Let these hard words sting as we consider for a moment together how stupid and how foolish and how ignorant and how wicked is the human heart to have brought this end upon human history — the darkest day of mankind, the apex of human ignorance, a situation so hopeless that human history seems to have been brought to its very end. What now can we look forward to but only eternal despair and desolation forever?

But sinful mankind does not get the last word. How appropriate the prayer of the dying Christ — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

As a human race we can scarce understand what we've done, what we've unleashed in evil ignorance.

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¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 10, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931 (Fortress, 2008), 487–88.

Amy Carmichael

No book has moved me recently like Amy Carmichael's "Let the Little Children Come". Amy was an everyday person like you and me. She trusted beyond her comforts, her dreams, her hopes, her circumstances in a God she knew was real. Amy was a missionary in India for 53 years without ever taking a furlough. God called her to go to the Indian people and she went. She loved the Indian people and spent the majority of her life rescuing girls who had been dedicated to the temple as prostitutes. The caste system was a brutal taskmaster and tradition upon tradition perpetuated this belief that girl babies were a curse and if they were dedicated to the temple, then surely in the next life the parents would gain favor. Many girls were dedicated from birth and given over at age 4 or 5. It is estimated that Amy rescued over a thousand girls. 

Why does Amy speak so deeply to me?  She has become such a spiritual hero and mentor to me that I find myself reading and rereading so many things she has written. The thing that has gripped my heart lately is she tells a story of a young girl name Mimosa who was born into her spiritual traditions and never heard His name but knew deep down there had to be "a God above all Gods they worshiped". One night she heard the name of Jesus, and she knew He was that God. She knew. She believed. For 26 years after her conversion she never heard a sermon, lecture, read a bible, sang worship songs, had fellowship with any other believers but Amy said "she was kept by Him for 24 years until she arrived safely in Amy's home". 

For 24 years the name of Jesus was enough to sustain her. Only The Name can sustain. So the question I ask myself now is what is sustaining me?  Where is my hope and peace and comfort? When I hear the name of Jesus am I stirred in my spirit?  Does it invoke emotions that cause me to fall down and worship?  Does it motivated me to tell others the glorious news?  

Those are the things I'm mediating on this Easter. We search so hard in this world for peace. I find my thoughts drifting more and more towards people like Mimosa and Amy Carmichael. My spiritual hero's. I bet a young Hindu girl in 1900 never dreamed a girl in North Carolina in 2013 would be praising God for her testimony of faithfulness and endurance. I can't wait to meet her in heaven one day. 

As Easter comes I don't want to forget the beautiful simplicity of the gospel. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31).

With great JOY,
Leeanne

Search me, O God!

Part III

Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

My middle child is much like my younger sister was as a child, which humors me in many ways.  She has a tendency to be sneaky and mischievous only to soon after confess her own sin to me without much prodding.  The guilt overwhelms her and she turns herself in.  Now, my oldest daughter is just like I was as a child.  She can lie with a straight face to the point that even she believes her own lie.  It takes a lot more reasoning and time (days sometimes) for her to admit her sin and ask for forgiveness. 

As Christians, the Bible says that you have died with Christ and it is no longer you who lives, but Christ in you. (Gal. 2:20)  So why do we continue to sin and struggle with the same sins for long periods of time?  The reality of it is that we were born sinners and in our own flesh we will sin until the day we die and are resurrected with Christ in heaven.  Sanctification is a process of getting rid of the old and putting on the new, the newness of Christ that comes from within.  For most, it is certainly not an overnight process.  The Bible says that the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Paul says in Romans 7:21, “So I find this law at work:  when I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”  Isn’t that the truth? 

We are not alone in this battle of the flesh.  We are not adopted into His family of faith and left as orphans.  The more we sin the stronger our flesh becomes.  Fighting our flesh with the Spirit of God takes deliberate effort and work.  The devil is real and entices us to sin and will even help us to justify and excuse our sin with lies that we believe.  God’s conviction to our sin is just as real, but if we are not spending time in the Spirit (God’s Word, prayer, accountability, etc.) than there is nothing in our flesh that will hold up our sin to the Truth.  Some Christians are walking around living like the rest of the world—dead and numb to their sin.  A non-Christian does not feel the weight of sin. There is a sense of entitlement to feel the pleasure their sin brings.  

Pray that God would search your heart and reveal to you your sin so that you can turn from it.  For some, God has revealed to you your sin and you are having a difficult time turning from it.  You are in bondage.  The only way to break that hold is by daily clothing yourself with the full armor of God spoken in Ephesians 6:10-17.  The devil wants to win every battle here on Earth, despite God already winning the war of your salvation.  Fight back and pray the for the Holy Spirit to guide you in your daily battle and against flesh and Satan.  

Warmly,
Jill