*April 17 GOD HAS A PLACE FOR YOU!
TODAY!
It’s called “HIS REST”
EASTER!
A Verse to Remember: Matthew 11:28-30
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.
Hebrews 4:7-9
7 So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted:
“Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”
8 Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. 9 So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.
Gospel Story: Luke 24:35-53 Jesus appears to His Disciples!!!!!
Reflection: Christ is risen! HE IS RISEN INDEED!!!
In a conversation with one of my dear friends, Patty DeRose, I can remember her telling me how she related to the story about Jesus. For her, it was lumped in with the Easter Bunny, merely fiction. A story of value….perhaps, but fiction none-the-less. Read our passage from Luke TODAY and you’ll note this is no fiction for the authors.
The passage blesses me deeply. So much so i am filled with a sense awe and wonder, not being able to fully appreciate the depth of the reality that must have been experienced by those early disciples. And yet, by God’s grace, now both Patty and I take this story at face value. God in His own way has convinced us that this story is no mere fiction.
It is in fact a very real victory over the power of sin, satan and death itself. Because of this victory, I can enter and receive the promise of God’s REST! What needed to be conquered has been defeated and I have been delivered, saved, healed and set free!!!!! As Paul says, I have “no obligation to do what my sinful nature urges me to do” (Rom 12:8). Patty is a free woman! And I am free man! And that place of real rest, real freedom, provides for us the real life God makes possible for us to experience through faith in Jesus Christ, TODAY! Something God has wanted for us as long as there has been a “today” to live in.