Alive!

"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." I Corinthians 15:22

Pastor and evangelist Samuel Rodriguez tells the story of an experience involving his daughter. All of his family had contracted Covid-19, and all but his daughter, who had just had a baby, came through with little problem. His daughter had to be hospitalized, and her condition deteriorated to the point of her needing a ventilator to keep her breathing. Rodriguez said that all he could do in his feelings of helplessness was cry out to God, saying "Lord, I don't know what to do, but I am looking to you." He continued in that prayer until one day his daughter texted him, "Dad, heaven has invaded my room." Rodriguez felt deep, freeing power as a result, and it wasn't long after this that his daughter left the hospital and was picked up by her family. Instead of going directly to her home, she asked them to drive to a nearby lake. Though puzzled, they complied. When they got there, she got out of the car, walked to the lakeshore, and placed a tentative foot in the water. Then, to their complete amazement, she dove in, and then rose up crying, "I'm alive!" It was a celebration in which the entire family joined. Rodriguez saw it as an example as to how the redeemed, those transferred from the power of death and darkness into His Light and Life, should live.

Apart from Christ, we may have physical life, but we are spiritually dead. With Adam's sin and rebellion, sin and death entered into the human race, a race powerless to deliver itself. Christ came that we might be free, have life, and "have it abundantly." Abundant life is what we are given in Jesus Christ, but it is a tragedy that so many who profess to have received this life continue to live as if they are still in captivity to death. Rodriguez's daughter knew how close to death she had been. It gave her an overwhelming desire to live, and above all, to fully live in Him. Thus her exclamation of joy; "I'm alive!" This ought to be the exclamation, the statement, the witness and testimony of every truly converted believer. We are alive! The power and sting of death has been broken, and it has been broken over and in me, in us! It is for the people of God to show a lost and dying world what life really looks like. Are we, you and I, showing that world what life, His life, truly is?

It ought to be, must be, our witness in every day that we are alive. We are filled with His life. Whether we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or dwell on the mountaintop of victory, our testimony must be that we are alive. We cannot make this testimony based on feelings and emotions, which come and go, but upon the reality of what it is that He has done in us. When the disciples saw the empty tomb, and beheld the risen Christ, they told all they encountered that, "The Lord is risen! He's alive." That resurrection life is given to everyone who believes in Him. Our lives are to be a testimony and witness to the reality that He lives, that He is risen. He is risen indeed!

It is said that Martin Luther, the great reformer, was once under so heavy a burden that it sent him into deep emotional and spiritual depression. One morning his wife appeared before him dressed in mourning clothes. He asked her why she was clothed so? She replied that it was obvious he believed that the risen Christ no longer lived, and that he gave witness to death, not life. Chastened, Luther repented of his despair, and once more not only looked to His risen Lord, but manifested His risen life in his own. We can do no less. Let us proclaim this day, and every day, to a world that desperately needs to hear it, "I'm alive!' And because we are alive in Him, they can be as well.

Blessings,

Pastor O