Resurrection

Today is Resurrection Sunday (Easter) and my beginning the day in prayer was the right response to a tough yesterday.  By beginning in prayer, I was able to confess my weakness, my sadness, my deep need for solutions and joy again.  Yet, prayer did not end there.  I was able to also express my belief and faith in a truly amazing God.  He's a God that sacrificed Himself by choosing to love.  He's a God that gave everything that was needed to much lesser, feebler people.  He's a God then that became victorious--He rose from a grave that could not contain Him.  He scaled the depths of hell to rise into the everlasting light of God the Father.  He burst forth, as the hymn says, and soared so that we may live similarly. 

Why live in defeat?  Why allow this world to taint our love and belief and strength and joy? We are MORE than conquerors.  We are alive with Him who was raised from the dead.  He lives and breathes and makes His home inside of us.  We are His and nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Reading Oswald Chambers this morning (the April 20 devotional from "My Utmost for His Highest") showed us that the Parable of the Talents was not about simple, basic, physical skills or abilities that the Lord has bestowed on each of us.  Chambers says that God has given each of us gifts of the Holy Spirit.  I take that to mean that God has given us gifts of healing, prophesy, teaching, helps, administration, preaching, etc.  He therefore wishes--insists really--on our using these gifts to spread His kingdom.  When we choose to bury these gifts for whatever reason, then we blame God and we see Him as mean, caprecious, or unworthy of our obedience.  In practical terms, if we have been given the gift of teaching, for example, and we choose to not teach, then we are in great disobedience and subject to God's removal of that gift.  If prophesy is our gift and we chose to not speak what has been revealed to us, then the outcome is the same.  As Chambers says, "If we have received the Holy Spirit, God expects the work of the Holy Spirit to be exhibited in us."

So today, Easter Sunday, let us operate in victory.  Let us live listening to a God who gives, loves, and speaks.  Let us attach ourselves to His voice--He is the good shepherd whose sheep know His voice.  Then, once given our marching orders and our calling and our God-confidence (as opposed to self-confidence), let us go into action, into battle, into the realm of the unknown so that He may be known.  There is no other goal in life than to give Him glory.  Let's do that today!

Blessings and a very happy Easter today and everyday!
kim