The Empty Tomb

“Christ has risen!”  Our day has been full of that amazing truth being proclaimed everywhere we look.  It is on Facebook, it was trending on Twitter, and people were professing it to one another in person.  Our pastors were preaching like the lives of their flock depended on it.  God is alive and moving today!

Last night Andrea and I were discussing what an alive and dynamic God looks like.  We started talking about the story of Jesus.  Jesus is the best image of an alive and dynamic God.  He walked among us and did miracles.  He loved people and was present in their lives.  He loved them to his own death.  That is not a passive love.  That is a love that is alive and dynamic.

Our churches I think have done us a bit of a disservice, though.  We have always been taught that the story centers on the cross, but I don’t think that is entirely true.  Please, please, please don’t get me wrong; the cross is huge.  Without the cross Jesus never could have crushed Satan under his feet. 

By dying on the cross Jesus provided the blood for the new covenant.  It satisfied our need for a spotless sacrifice to be able to repair the damage in our relationship with God.  By Jesus dying, he broke the chains that bound us.  He paid for our life.  We were dead in our sin.  Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  We were dead.  So Jesus became like us and joined the dead through the cross.

That is great, and super important, but we would never know that happened if Jesus had stayed dead.  Jesus, while he was alive, even said “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)  We would never know that we had been set free and given life to the full if he didn't come back to tell us.  We would still be living in the bondage of sin and death if. 

To me, the Gospel isn’t leading up to the cross.  It is leading to the empty tomb on that Sunday morning.  The story cannot stop at Friday, because we have a God of life, not death.    If the story stopped on Friday, if it ended with the cross, then our God would be able to die.  We have a God who is bigger than death.  The empty tomb shows that Jesus stomped death in the face and said it can’t touch those of us who follow him. 

To me, the Gospel is that Jesus came and destroyed the shackles that we were bound by.  He destroyed the sin, death, shame and anything else that keeps us from our God in Heaven who loves us dearly.  Jesus made us free, and more than that, he made us family.  We can only be made family if he is alive to speak for us.  We would never know our righteous lineage if Jesus had not come back on Sunday and let us know he is who he says he is, and we are who he says we are. 

When we accept Jesus and the good news of his resurrection we are crucified with Jesus.  We die with him, but that is not the end.  No, just as we die with him, we are raised with him.  And when we are raised we have a choice.  We can either sit in the tomb, or be like Jesus and leave the tomb and walk among the people spreading the light.  Jesus sent the Holy Spirit after him to live in us and work through us.  In partnering with him, we leave the tomb and share the Good News of life and freedom with the rest of the world. 

So, it is time we leave the realm of the dead and walk with Jesus into the life he paid for.  Take a chance, step into the light.  See what happens.

Adventure

I don’t know what it is about spring, but this time every year my desire to go on an adventure is awakened.  Something about spring makes me hope that Peter Pan would come through my window and tell me the Lost Boys need a mother.  Makes me long for a blue Police Box that is bigger on the inside to bring the Raggedy Doctor into my life, even if it means I have a lot of running in my future.  I want to become the heroine of my story, not a passive bystander.

I never really know how to put this feeling into words.  I do know that it is like a fire burning in the pit of my stomach.  It is in the same place where I feel nervousness or shame, but it is an entirely different feeling.  It moves from my core and spreads through my limbs making me antsy for whatever it is that is coming my way. 

This is the same feeling that has caused me to try to pack a bag and skip town every time there is a natural or man-made disaster.  More than once my mom has walked in on me throwing clothes and toiletries into a dufflebag.  The first time she didn't even know what to do with me.  She stood in my doorway asking me what I was doing.  “Mom, didn't you hear?  There was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  It has killed a lot of people and I need to go help.”  She wouldn't let me go.  In her defense, I was only in High school, and didn't have a passport.  The same feeling was awakened when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.  Once again, I tried to physically go help.  Again, mom wouldn't let me. 

The cycle continued when I watched the Invisible Children movie as a senior in High School.  I tried to leave, mom put me on lock down.  I started to realize that my intentions were good, but my application did not match where I was in my life.  Instead of trying to do it on my own, I started talking to my peers.  This was too big to let go without doing something.  We decided that if we cannot go to help fix the problem, we would help raise money so other people can do what we can’t.  We held a benefit concert to raise money and awareness. 

After all of these my hunger for adventure was satiated, but barely.  Now, nothing is quenching that fire.  I was thinking about this on my way home from giving my siblings a ride to school.  I was struck with how tame our faith has become.  The reason I am so antsy and so hungry for adventure is because that is what we were created for.  When we look at the stories of the Ancients of faith we see them walking closely with God, and their stories are so full of danger, impossibilities, and love.  They live adventurous lives. 

The more time you spend with someone, the more you become like them.  We see this clearly with the disciples.  They spend three years with Jesus, learning to love people alongside their master.  Once Jesus went back to the Father, they were still on earth to finish out the adventure he had sent them on.  They were healing people, casting out demons, facing down angry mobs with stones and a few even took on royalty, all in the name of Christ.  There had to be moments were they looked at each other and asked, “is this real life?”  That life is more real and fiery than all the mediocre, lukewarm lives people live today. 

Today I realized that when I am craving adventure, what I am really craving is a closer connection with Jesus.  The adventure will come naturally.  First, I need to learn how to walk with Jesus, and hear his voice clearly, and then I can learn to run.  It’s not about what I can do, but about how much I love spending time with God.  If I rest into Him, he will give me the desires of my heart; no deep relationship with Jesus can be dull.  So, let’s do it!  Let’s dive in head first and live the dynamic lives we were created for.  No more boring half asleep lives.  It’s time to wake up and walk so close to the fire of God that we can’t help but light on fire ourselves.  

Spiritual Authority?

I feel like I need to update this.  I haven’t written much recently, I just haven’t had time.  

Work is going well.  I feel like I really am beginning to build relationships with some of the kids at ESOL.  There are still a few who can be a bit ornery, but they are getting better.  I am also building relationships with the volunteers, and that makes me so happy.  It is hard to be the leader of a room when you don’t know the personalities, strengths and passions of the people who are supposed to be helping you.  But we are all learning.  

Impact is doing well.  I have this feeling that it is going to blow up (in a good way) over the summer, so I am really praying for God to raise up leaders who will come along side our kids and invest in their lives.  I have seen so much growth in our current leaders, and am so excited to see what God does with them as they grow older. 

I am still going to Fire, and I love it.  It is so nice to be in a community of believers who are going hard after God.  It is even nicer that they are close to my age!  What a bonus!

For Lent this year I have decided to run hard after the Holy Spirit.  I am spending serious time in prayer and am listening for His voice in my life.  When he tells me to do something I am doing it.  I am praying for dreams and visions.  I am trying to learn how to heal people.  While this may sound crazy to a lot of people, it has been amazing what God has been doing since I started this journey just over a week ago!  Plus, God says:

The Lord says:  These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.  Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” (Isaiah 29:13-14)

I am going to take that and run with it.  I don’t want my faith to be just about what I know, but who I know!

That being said, I have really been struggling with the idea of Spiritual Authority.  In order to walk into the things I feel like I am being called to I need to be able to also walk into my spiritual authority.  That is a hard concept for me.  I have grown up with friends and parts of my home congregation that have said women do not carry the same authority as men.  That has wounded me a lot more than I realized.  I have felt as though I am not as capable in the Spirit as the male counterparts that are around me. 

These wounds are so deep that I second-guess myself often.  I am always sure that God has settled on using me because no one else has stepped up.  That is a blatant lie.  God put me where I am because He wants me there, not because he is settling.  I need to remember that. 

Last night I read a blog about the Priesthood of all Believers.  Jessica Leep Fick is a staff member for InterVarsity.  She was writing about her journey in understanding that she is a part of that priesthood.  She says, “…doubts still linger in my heart from people and churches that have sent me the message- ‘you can’t do this. You aren’t allowed. You didn’t go to seminary. You’re a woman.  You aren’t legit. Who do you think you are?’”  It was like she read my mind.  Ultimately, she decided to believe Jesus, not these lies. 

That is the path I am on now.  I am choosing to believe God’s word, even though I am not sure.  In 1 Peter, God says “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)  If I am walking in authority in a way that declares “praises of him who called [me] out of the darkness” then why wouldn’t He back me up?

If I am healing, or stepping out in faith as a way to bring Him glory He isn’t just going to leave me hanging.  If I am doing those things with an attitude of pride and showing off, then of course I will fall flat.  The only authority I have is found when I humble myself as Christ did.  Then God will raise me up as one of His beloved children, part of His royal priesthood.

New, Not Better

When I was younger, before I really began to grasp the love of God and what Christ did for me, I was incredibly insecure.  I was shy and quiet.  I would let people walk all over me.  I never could trust that people actually liked me and thought I was fun to be around.  I thought so little of myself and allowed people to treat me like crap.  I only ever wanted to be liked and cared for, but was too scared to seek it out. 

On Wednesday I was sharing with the Impact team how I have been really fighting those insecurities; and the feeling that my new friends from a Bible study (Fire) I have started to go to don’t really like me.  I was asking for prayer that I can push the insecurities aside and remain in who God has made me.  Sarah piped up saying that I will always be that secretly shy, socially awkward, girl.  Maggie tried to tell me that was not true.  After the meeting she read 2 Corinthians 5:17 and said that it applies to me.

As I was driving to worship with Fire last night and was thinking about that verse.  “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has gone.”  It says a new creation, not a better person.  New.  As I was thinking about this I started to wonder what that would look like.

I think it’s like when you call Verizon for a new phone.  You always want a brand new phone; one straight from the factory.  Instead they send you a refurbished phone.  Those phones always have issues that show up a few months after they send it to you.  But on that lucky day they you get a straight from the factory, new phone, you have a phone that has no history of brokenness.  There are no “fixed” issues that will show up later. 

That is me.  I keep thinking I am a refurbished phone.  I am not.  I am a new phone.  There is no brokenness because Christ has made me new.  My old issues only show up because I expect them to.  I’m only insecure because I am not holding on to the promise that God made me. 

It is easy for me to think 2 Corinthians 5:17 applies to my leaders, my students, or my friends.  It is a lot harder for me to accept that for myself.  I need to remember that God wants to work on me as much as he does them.  I am just as much his beloved child as they are.  It’s time I stop selling myself short and trust God at his word.  I just don't know where to start.

Offended

It has been a long time since I have gotten really mad at something one of the pastors has said on a Sunday.  Today I was livid.  

We were talking about Ezekiel, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible.  Pastor Dan started out talking about King Manasseh.  This was a bad dude.  He worshiped the pagan gods killed so many people it was said the streets ran with blood.  This guy even burned his own son in a sacrifice. 

As we know, God doesn’t let men like that stay in power in the Old Testament.  God allowed the Assyrians to take Manasseh into captivity.  While there he repented.  God, seeing the change in his heart, forgave him and freed him.  Manasseh had a second chance. 

Pastor Dan tried to make the point that this kind of resurrection should offend us.  He went on to talk about the valley of the dry bones later in the book.  This is one of my all time favorite stories in the Bible.  Here’s what happens:  God comes, plucks Ezekiel up and drops him in the middle of a valley of dry bones. 

God has Ezekiel prophesy to the dry bones.  As he is speaking he hears a rattling and sees the bones come together and the tendons are formed and muscle and skin.  God then has Ezekiel call the breath for the bodies.  It comes in and enters the body and they all come back to life; a vast army awakened from a deep slumber. 

Still the pastor tried to say that resurrection should be offensive to us.  That pissed me off.  We should not be anymore offended by the idea of a God of resurrection than a God of love or a God who will fight for us. 

If we as Christians claim to profess the resurrection of Christ, then we should not be offended of resurrection.  It’s what our God is about.  In the Old Testament we see it with the dry bones; we see it with both Elijah and Elisha when they brought people back from the dead.  We see it in the way God continually takes Israel back even though they constantly spit in his face.  And when Christ dies the book of Mark says that the graves are opened and the dead go walking around.  Resurrection is what our God does! 

I am offended by the thought that I should be offended by the resurrection.  When we are claiming ourselves as heirs to the resurrection of Christ we should not be offended by that inheritance.  There are no lost causes with God.  There is no one who doesn’t deserve a second chance.  Everyone gets that who ‘confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.’  You will be saved from damnation; you will be saved from yourself; you will be saved from the things that consume you. 

The resurrection doesn’t offend me, it gives me a reason to live.

My Newest Job

There is a certain peace that comes with doing what you know you were made to do.  Your body may be tired and achy, but your spirit just soars so high it’s like it can touch God.

That is how I felt tonight.  I have started running the Kid’s Club for SON Ministries’ ESOL classes.  Basically, I hang out with anywhere from 50 to 70 kids whose parents are in class learning English.  It is such a cool place to see God moving. 

I filled in for my predecessor last year.  She had fallen and broken her arm playing soccer with some of the kids.  Kim, the woman in charge of SON, called me to see if I could come be the substitute.  I fell in love with those kids.  Most of them are rough around the edges, and they are definitely not church kids, and that is why I love them. 

My first day as the official gym leader I spent fifteen minutes playing catch with a boy who spoke next to no English.  That didn’t stop us from giggling and having a blast.  He would point over my shoulder, as though there was something I needed to look at.  When I would “fall for it” he would just burst into fits of laughter.  It was a beautiful moment. 

Tonight we had a group of the Columbus Young Professionals come in to play games with the kids.  One of the gentlemen brought a backpack with paper in it.  He taught some of the kids origami.  I talked to him briefly afterwards.  He said he had planned on leaving an hour earlier than he actually left.  He still had a job to go to after he left from ESOL.  He seemed a little flustered, but I don’t know that he saw the joy that extra hour brought to the kids.  I had one boy who would not leave when his mom wanted him to, because he just wanting to talk with me about the origami art that the CYP member had made. 

My first night I had the opportunity to speak with a volunteer who had just started that night as well.  She said she had wanted more volunteer opportunities, and this seemed perfect since she was the daughter of immigrants.  She said that the ESOL program, including Kid’s Club, would have been so nice to have had twenty years ago when they moved here and were trying to learn English.  When I connected with her on Thursday she really seemed to be enjoying her time with the kids.  That is huge. 

It is incredible to me the way some of the students matured in the last year.  There is a particular set of twins, a boy and a girl, who were constantly at each other’s throat last year.  So far I have only had to break up one spat between them, knock on wood, and the girl was one of the first students to ask if I needed help with anything on Thursday.

It is so neat to see how God is at work in these students and volunteers.  It is a different atmosphere than I am totally used to, though.  Unlike Impact, at Kid’s Club God is more covert, yet I see him moving so apparently that it brings my heart such joy. 

This is where my heart is right now.  I love it.  

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If you are interested in volunteering with SON Ministries go here.