Heart Tracks - The Scandal

"The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days, He will rise." Mark 9:31...."Death died when Christ rose." Anonymous

This life will never allow us to fully comprehend the quality of life offered us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think eternity will reveal to us how much of this life we missed....by a huge margin. Someone said that we live in a world where death, and its working gets all the attention. That's true of the world. It should never be true of the church, but it too often is. What gets most of yours?

A true believer in Him should be captive to no one and nothing but Him. Yet we are captive to so many things that aren't Him. In fact are the antithesis of Him. Fear, anxiety, performance, carnal ambition, accumulation, and every type of lust and desire that is counter to His nature and heart. All of these things are the product of death. And strange as it sounds, these things of death live freely in us. Christ won a complete victory on the cross and His emergence from the tomb. The cross was meant to kill Him for all time, and the tomb, the grave, to keep Him for all time. They couldn't. All the working of the enemy of His life and ours was defeated there. This is why the apostle Paul could write, "O death, where is your sting? O grave, your victory?" Both were crushed under His feet as He stepped forth from the grave. And in His doing, He invited us to join Him in that victory. We may have done so with our lips, but have we with our lives, our minds, and our being? What is prevalent in your life? The working of the enemy's death, or the King's life?

Someone said something to the effect that, with all that was won for and given to us in His resurrection, it is a scandal that we live as we do. How much is your life and mine contributing to that scandal? Where are we being held captive by that which Christ made captive to His Lordship in His resurrection? Where does the darkness continue on unchecked in us? Where has His peace been kept from us? His joy? His love, and His freedom? Where are we eating bread crumbs instead of the fullness of His loaves of life? Where are we standing off from His table like orphans instead of at table with Him as His children? Where are we ending each day in exhaustion and fear, and beginning a new one with the same? None of this is the fruit of the resurrection, so why does it mark the fruit of our lives? Isn't such a life indeed a scandal before the world and heaven both?

I love the quote from above. Death died when Christ rose. Has it died for you? Yes, we still live in a fallen world, but we are not ruled by it...unless we believe its lie that we can't be free of it. His Word says that He led captivity captive. That means every chain that holds you is broken at His Word. He came forth from the tomb. He bids you come forth from yours. The night of death is over. The dawn of life has come. Let us each step into it.

Blessings,
Pastor O