Happy Easter Everyone, and God Bless You All!

Have a wonderful weekend.

EASTER MESSAGE

I once was impossibly bound by sin. Hopelessly imprisoned and shackled by moral entropy and the decay that follows a spiritually dead heart. A heart in rebellion against God.

I helplessly wore my guilt like weighted chains and lived without living, each sinful and rebellious act and thought adding to it, link by link.

The Lord looked down from His heavenly throne. He saw my helpless subjugation and the chains around my neck, each link inscribed with my offenses; each offense evidence of my eternal conviction.

His eyes burned in righteous anger; His nostrils flared with fury. Holiness and passion surrounded Him like an all-consuming fire. I trembled in my chains, and as His light flooded my cell, my eyes were opened to what was written. Each link spelled death, and I knew my fate was sealed.

I saw Him rise from His very throne; I saw His fire lay a path before Him as He stepped down from heaven and walked towards me; His robes so white that even the smallest inscriptions were garishly absolute.

His eyes met mine when He reached my cell; His righteous flame rending my spirit and soul. I felt His anger raging at my sin, yet in His eyes, the flames were white-hot compassion.

Bowing my head in shame, I knelt to the ground and surrendered to Him. I had nothing to give Him that He wanted or needed, so I gave Him what I kept from Him up until that point. I gave Him my will to sin and surrendered my heart to Him.

I saw in His eyes that that was all that He wanted. He reached out and grabbed the chains that I bore and lifted them from my shoulders. It was then that I saw His anger turn away from me; it had been fixated on those chains, not on me.

I felt like a feather, so light and so free. I leaped for joy and felt I could fly, but as He placed them around Himself, and bore the weight of my guilt and my shame, I saw that His compassion came with a price.

A tear escaped my eye, as I realized what He'd done; The inscriptions on the chains began to glow white-hot, and the shame of what was written spread like a stain and darkened His robe. A tear fell from His eye as His light began to fade. He'd taken my place.

As each chain link began to glow brighter and brighter, every sin that was written became unmistakably clear. I was so disgusted at what was written that I could barely look at what He had become in my place. It was then that I realized how I must have looked when He first looked at me.

He fell to the ground under all of my weight, and His light went out as He was gripped by those chains. So different He was, from what He was; sacrificing His honor and glory that I might have freedom.

As the color left Him completely, the glow from the inscriptions on the chains began to fade. As His lifeless body lay before me, tears began to well up within my eyelids. I had no light to give and yet He had given so much that I might live.

I sat there with His lifeless body and pondered what I had witnessed as I wept. It was then that I began to realize that I had been imparted with the same love and compassion that I saw in the eyes that gazed so deeply into my heart.

As I reflected upon these things, I began to notice that the chains were once again glowing white. I looked for the inscriptions but to no avail; They were gone. The chains themselves were glowing and hot to the touch.

Taken aback, I scrambled to get away and watched in astonishment as the light became blinding. As it touched the stained robe, it began burning away all of the impurities, and the robe began to glow white-hot. I heard the crack of thunder as the chains snapped and fell away like loosened string.

The lifeless body of He who died that I might live began to rise, and my grief turned to utter amazement as I watched the white-hot glow of what I now know is His presence transform Him before my very eyes and return Him back to His glorious state.

This time His eyes smiled as He walked up to me. There was no anger in Him when He gazed into my heart, but I felt His love burning through me. He placed His hand upon my head, and I felt His glow, His power, and His light course and burn through me like the white fire that was radiating through Him.

His mouth opened, and He spoke three words that caused the ground to shake and the heavens to roar, "It Is Finished!"

Happy Easter!

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8