Heart Tracks - Extraordinary Life

"The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God." I Corinthians 1:18.... "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." John 12:32..."What has the cross done in your life? It is this that we carry out to a dying world. We carry and extraordinary Gospel in an ordinary life." Lisa Bevere...."The one thing we have to do is exhibit Jesus Christ crucified." Oswald Chambers

Lisa Bevere asks a question that we who profess faith in Christ cannot dodge. What, in reality, has the cross done in our life? The center of our faith is found in Christ and His cross. It's reality is born there. That reality is not found in the number of raised hands, recorded professions and baptisms, but in a transformational encounter with Him at His cross. It is where we, like Him, have come to die. And so leave the kingdom of darkness and enter into His Kingdom of Light and Life. It is not a place of encounter that makes us better and improved. It is a place of encounter that makes us completely new. The old really does pass away. The new really has come. As Larnelle Harris sang, "And all I'd ever done before, didn't matter anymore." Sin, the fatal disease of the human race, is dealt with at the cross, and only at the cross. There is no remedy to be found anywhere else. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes unto the Father except through Me." Through Him, and His cross. It is a narrow road indeed, but as I heard someone say, it's a narrow road that leads unto a wide life.

So we get back to Bevere's question. If you profess faith in Christ, what place does His cross have in your profession? If you say you've been to His cross and believed upon Him there, than what has that encounter done in your life? What is it that you carry out to a dying world? The greatest impact upon an unbelieving world will not be made by Christian superstars and shooting stars. It will be made by the ordinary people who have been entrusted with an extraordinary Gospel message. Ordinary people once trapped in darkness and death, now living in the power of His resurrection life. A life the Bible says, "Cannot be destroyed." A life that enables us to say, "Once I was blind, but now I see." A life that is not overcome, but overcomes. A life that will experience all the challenges and problems that are common to the world, but is empowered to be victorious in all of it....because of the cross. That cross marks us, and as we carry it out into the world He sends us to, we, like Paul, bear upon our hearts and lives, "the brand marks of Christ." Marks borne by ordinary people, living ordinary lives in ordinary places, but with extraordinary power and witness in all of it. And here's the amazing thing; such people are always the least aware of it being so. Cross life is their life. They don't know how to live any other way, and that way always points not to them, but Him. To His cross and the newness of life that is found upon it.

So, just what has the cross done in your life, and what kind of life do you, we, exhibit to a dying world? The ordinary made extraordinary by Him? If you really are His today, you've been entrusted with the most extraordinary message ever given to the human race, Christ and His cross. What has your stewardship of that message been? It is the calling of each of us to plant seeds of His life wherever we go, and wherever we are. And not only do we plant seeds of His life, we are to live in such a way as to "water" the seeds that others who've gone before us have planted. Ordinary people being vessels and distributors of His extraordinary life. Have we these seeds and water? They are found in only one place; at the cross of Christ.

Blessings,
Pastor O