Category: Easter

Celebrate The Cross


Easter Week is upon us and so much to celebrate meets us this week doesn’t it? We’ve just welcomed our Lord as a gentle King riding on a donkey, as he comes still today, ever so gently, to enter into the hearts of his people ~ to bring Hope, peace, love and salvation to needy souls.

This week now, we’ll nail Him to that outstretched and unbearable cross and pierce Him with a guilt that He knew nothing of in His own personal life. So sinless, spotless, and pure, The lamb of God became our perfect sacrifice, given over to death by His own Father to save the world! Our sin did it and He was willing to take it for the time, just only for us. A grace so great, a mercy so deep, and a love so unconditional it may make us blush with thoughts of it. And So the thing is ~ that scandalous cross of blood shed, becomes beautiful to us, and is still today something to celebrate as it stands for our freedom from death. So yeah, let’s celebrate the cross, and this gentle King who took the death penalty for us. The perfect One who knew no wrong, yet He died covered in ours only to make us right and clean and justified and whole before a Holy God that couldn’t look upon us in our wretchedness! Yeah, so we celebrate the beautiful cross, but we don’t leave it there because this week too, we go on and we move from the cross to see the tombstone, the grave where He laid and then beautiful souls, we see the empty grave, and the victory over death that is ours too in Christ.

Victory In The Cross

Yeah, When the grave couldn’t hold Him and when death couldn’t win, the enemy lost the war and Our King’s victory became our victory! So as we move through this week, this holy week of Easter, take time to look to the cross! While you’re there, kneel at the foot of it and let your heart cry out a big thank you to the One who died there with loving arms outstretched for you and for the world that He loved so unconditionally. Be sad for a moment but then let your brokenness be healed in the hope that is ours now, with His death and resurrection sealing our salvation as believers of Jesus! Oh we do have a lot to celebrate don’t we? Let’s not overlook this powerful, holy week! Let’s see it for the victory and the hope that it brings into our lives today, right now and at this moment. Christ Ones ~ Without the cross of Christ, where would we be?

What a victory He gave us, when death couldn’t defeat Him. Ponder it! Think on it! Saturate yourself in the grace of it! Bask in the mercy of it! Be thankful for the forgiveness in it as we walk through the week.
~k
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices His life for the sheep.”
John 10:11

#Easterweek #HolyWeek #SoulFire

by Categories: Bible, Easter, Inspirational, Soul FireTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

What Kind Of Love?


Hebrews 12: 2.

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12: 1, 2.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge cloud of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down. Especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.” We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting Him, He endured the cross, disregarding it’s shame. Now He is seated in the place of honour beside God’s throne….

Jesus is our supreme example of faithful endurance and all the brutal, lonely way to the cross He proved it. Not that He had to prove it, but rather it gave Him joy to die for the sinner’s hope of forgiveness, salvation and eternal life.

What kind of love is that? What kind of love endures the hard, lonely, struggle and scorns the shame of it? Only one who has his eyes fixed on His heavenly Father and His will. Christ did it for us, let’s run our own personal race for Him. Let’s face our brutal, lonely challenges for His glory. Life gets tough and quickly weighs us down. If we focus on the problem, we’ll quickly lose heart, fall from the race and succumb to the struggle, but if we focus on the Lord, we’ll find renewed strength. He blesses the life of faith in the believer, so let faith arise! Throw off the doubt, fear, worry, failures, discouragement and strongholds so that you can run freely and smoothly, without entanglement, with your eyes focused clearly on Christ, who runs beside you or carries you but also sits today at the right hand of the throne of God, interceding for you and praying for your endurance to make it to the finish line. You can do it with Him! Focus, focus, focus!

by Categories: Bible, Easter, InspirationalTags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Cross Of Obedience

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Luke 9: 23, 24.
“Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”


Christ carried His humiliating and agonizing cross because of an amazing love that He had for His people. In order to bring salvation to a lost and dying world He had to be obedient to His Father’s will. He fulfilled God’s purpose in His life and in His death, when He denied Himself of all rights and gave of Himself, freely and obediently, in His sacrificial death on the cross.

As His followers and as His disciples we have been commissioned to Go and make disciples of all nations Matthew 28:18 -20. We have been called to represent Christ in this same world lost in hopelessness and despair and for the job, God has equipped His people with spiritual gifts, talents and skills to use in His work of building others up in the faith. Taking up our cross daily, is to be “obedient” to Christ in the work He has called us to. It may take us into frightening unknown places and places that aren’t pleasant. It may take us to beds of illness, heights of financial despair, rejections and disappointments, but through it all, ‘Self’ must take a back seat to allow us to get out there and be efficient in proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel of Christ to our circles of influence in a world filled with the hopelessness of a lost eternity.

Is it easy? No, it’s not easy! Discouragement sets in time and time again. We become tired, fearful, dissatisfied and discontent. Hurt and broken we can fall away becoming like strangers to our faith on the skid row of our circumstances. Our desires get out of whack and our priorities get all mixed up. No, it’s not easy to be obedient to our Savior and our cross, so our cross for Christ must be a daily evaluation supported and bathed in prayer, for there is no room for ‘me’ on my cross as I carry it for Him. The irony of it is that our cross of obedience is the only way to fulfill His plan for our lives and the only thing that will bring abundant life to our living. We can’t explain it, it’s just His way! To try to hang on to selfish pleasures will only take us into the pit of sin and bring ruin, desolation and hardship and that’s where we don’t want to find ourselves.

Let’s remember, If the Lord calls us to it, He will take us through it, no matter how difficult the calling, if we keep our eyes on Him and off of self. The bonus? He will bring the blessing along the way.
╔═════════ღ❤ღೋ═════════╗
♫❤♫❤♫❤B L E S S I N G S♫❤♫❤♫
╚═════════ღ❤ღೋ═════════╝

by Categories: Easter, Food for Thought, Inspirational, Soul FireTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Closer To the Cross

DSC00077 p
So as we move closer to the cross this week, in anticipation and celebration of that scandalous event in history where sinless, blood-shed mixed with love and mercy, met head-on with mobs of anger, hatred and ridicule, let’s be thankful!! Thankful for the cross that says it all. Let’s be thankful to our one True God, who gave His Son to be our Saviour! Who gave all that He had to save a world that He cared for with a love so pure and so unconditional that it makes us blush with guilt over our failures. Oh, that He should care so much to give so much just to secure us an eternal position with Him in glory and to grace us with abundant life while living in this wretched, sin soiled world. Yeah, in our sin, we were a part of the hatred and ridicule unleashed on Christ that day, long ago! Yet He cared enough to forgive the mobs that tortured, whipped and ridiculed and crucified that day and you know beautiful soul, He cares enough to forgive our trespasses against Him! Yeah, it’s beautiful isn’t it? That cross? That old, rugged cross, bearing the burden of guiltless death and a broken and beaten body of our sinless Saviour? Yeah, it’s beautiful for sure ~ for that cross of Christ made a way for us poor, weary wanderers to find grace in the eyes of a just God and find redemption through His shed blood.
Oh what wonder, what magnificent wonder meets us at that sad but beautiful cross, where justice and mercy meet and all are welcomed equally, in spite of…. and where the ground is level in spite of… and the forgiveness is real in spite of….and where mercy awaits in spite of….
_DSC0042_1
Today the Saviour’s call is for each one of us to bend our hearts in awe before the wonder of it all and only believe. The thief did, and there in that final moment before succumbing to death, he found eternal life with his Lord. The other thief, hung still in his pride and ridicule and entered into a Christless eternity. Which side of Christ are you on today, as we move closer to the celebration of His cross? He is true, He is righteous, and He has everything to offer. Forgiveness is our biggest need and we are soooo blessed when we receive it freely.

“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; love and faithfulness go before You. Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim You, who walk in the light of Your presence, O Lord.” Psalm 89: 14, 15

God Bless pen

by Categories: Bible, Easter, Food for Thought, Inspirational, Soul FireTags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment