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There is a quote: “if anyone has told you that the Christian life is easy – then they had lied to you.” And that is true.
Why is the life of a Christian disciple of Jesus hard?
Because all day, every day, God expects us to ‘die to self’. God expects that we die, in other words God expects that we will completely ignore and refuse to respond to our own selfish desires.
But the Good News, the message of the Bible, is that God does not expect us to that on our own.
And quite simply – we can’t.
We would – and do – fail every time we try to do it on our own.
So what’s the Good News?
God is a miracle working God. God will give us the strength to live, and do, what He desires – if only we will surrender ourselves into His hands and let Him lead and empower us.
I have a t-shirt that says: “Waking The Dead” with the Bible verse “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”
Said in today’s English: “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in Me will live, even after dying.” (John 11:25)
That part: “though he were dead, yet shall he live” or “anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying” refers or symbolises two deaths.
The death to self, to our selfish desires and actions that I have been talking about – and the death that happens when we physically die.
You see God raises the physically dead, and if we surrender ourselves fully to Him He raises the spiritually dead.
God raises the physically dead: Christians, those who are the genuine followers, genuine disciples of Jesus – to heaven to live with God And eventually every other person who has ever lived who denied a relationship with God through salvation in Jesus will be raised to hell.
That is the ‘end game’ so to speak – our physical resurrection.
But more importantly to us now, God raises the spiritually dead.
W.Carl Ketcherside summed it up precisely when he said:
(In the early Church) “Those who were Christians did not speak of ‘entering the ministry.’ They were already in it. Everyone entered the ministry at baptism.
To be in Christ was to be in the ministry.
No one went away to study for ‘the Ministry.’
Each one began where he was and announced the Messiah who had come.
People did not send for a preacher. They just began preaching.
All who had been inducted into the Kingdom could tell what they did and why they did it.
Every Christian was a minister, everyone was a priest.
The congregation was a priesthood – a royal priesthood composed of all believers.”
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2 responses to “Waking The Dead”
Love the quote in BOLD!
Yes, W.Carl Ketcherside summed it up accurately