Ready for the Resurrection

Back in February when I heard how early Easter was this year, I was not excited. In fact I was kind of sad...it would still be cold, it wouldn't be as pretty outside, we don't have that long to decorate, etc. The closer Easter gets the more and more I am begging for it to be today. Though as a Christian, each day is Easter...each day He is risen, each day He is alive, there is something in me that longs for the corporate worship celebration.

I feel as though I've been living in a Good Friday state of mind for awhile now. I'm ready for the Resurrection, I'm ready to start fresh. I was reading My Utmost for His Highest this morning, good ole' Oswald. Easter has been on mind as we are in the season of Lent and I haven't been able to move past Good Friday for days. This was good for me to hear. Maybe it will be for you as well.

When you have no vision from God, no enthusiam left in your life, and no one watching and encouraging you, it requires the grace of Almighty God to take the next step in your devotion to Him, in the reading and studying of His Word, in your family life, or in your duty to Him. It takes much more of the grace of God, and a much greater awareness of drawing upon Him, to take that next step, than it does to preach the gospel.

Every Christian must experience the essence of the incarnation by bringing the next step down into flesh-and-blood reality and by working it out with his hands. We lose interest and give up when we have no vision, no encouragement, and no improvement, but only experience our everyday life with its trivial tasks. The thing that really testifies for God and for the people of God in the long run is steady perseverance, even when the work cannot be seen by others. And the only way to live an undefeated life is to live looking to God. Ask God to keep the eyes of your spirit open to the risen Christ, and it will be impossible for drudgery to dicourage you. Never allow yourself to think that some tasks are beneath your dignity or too insignificant fo ryou to do, and remind yourself of the example of Christ in John 13:1-17.