Monday, April 3, 2017
542 - Opportunity of a Lifetime
Spirituality
Column No. 542
April 4, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Opportunity of a Lifetime
By Bob Walters
April 4, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Opportunity of a Lifetime
By Bob Walters
Our anxious human moments rarely involve actual heart-racing
concern for the spiritual gifts of God in Jesus Christ: salvation,
righteousness, glory and eternal life, for example.
Not without help, anyway. We are more likely to be “Oh my God!” worried
about the tangible but temporal “real” stuff of this world – money, security,
health, home, family, esteem, politics, etc. – than we are about God fulfilling
His unshakable promises. It takes a really
loud preacher, or maybe Satan, to jar our hearts into the realm of worrying
whether God is good for His word to share His glory with us, or if we are good
enough to receive it. Satan and more
than a few preachers want us to fear God’s wrath rather than trust God’s word. God is out to get us; we’re not worthy, yada,
yada, yada.
But hear this: No matter what else
we think we see God doing, every moment of our existence should be cognizant of
the truth that God is out to love us, not hurt us.
With Holy Week approaching – from
this coming Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday next – we encounter a risky
season of tough and misunderstood divine images and often bad doctrine. Depending on the church we attend, we may see
a tortured Jesus on a cross, absorb a withering sermonized assault on our
sinful behavior, or hear a mindless sales pitch about all that Jesus wants to
do for “You!”
Why now? The world pays subtle
and serious attention to Christians and Christianity at Easter. As a holiday, Christmas has so much fun
wrapped up in it that the history-changing fact of the Christ child is
culturally overrun by frivolity, gifts, commerce and folksy tradition. Easter, however – religiously – is all serious
business.
On the one hand, Christian movies
proliferate and promote the Easter season.
On the other, the non-believing world ramps up its dissention and
ridicule of all things sacred. Atheist
groups advertise their “more-reasonable” worldview. The media seeks out and reports whatever bad
or unsettling news it can find about church attendance, diminishing poll
approval for God, imagined faith contradictions, whatever.
Believers at any level of knowledge know that
Good Friday’s spectacle of Jesus dying on the Cross followed by His holy,
bodily and spiritual resurrection on what we now call Easter Sunday is the
solemn core of God’s loving promise to mankind: to come and get us in our sin
and re-attach our hearts to His glory through His son Jesus.
My prayer for you this Easter week
is that you hear an encouraging message that increases your trust in God’s
promises and convinces you more of your place in God’s glory. These seeming abstractions that are the
spiritual gifts of God are mysteries, yes, but truly tangible in our hearts and
minds as peace, joy, rest, freedom, faith and hope.
The message of Jesus Christ is that
we have less to worry about, not more.
God’s love is unconditional, and it’s
the opportunity of a lifetime.
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