Friday, April 22, 2011

Jesus Died For Us. They Did Not Kill Him.

Today is Good Friday.  It is the day celebrated to commerorate the crucifiction of Jesus Christ, my Great Redeemer. The Passion of The Christ does a remarkable job visually showing the pain and agaony Jesus endured for each of us.  I cannot watch it without weeping.  I am so unworthy, and yet, He gave His life for me and you and anyone who will believe.  However, because He underwent such beatings and mocking and abuse, it may be assumed that Jesus was killed.  He was not. My Lord and Savior gave His life willingly.

The Easter Contata that we will perform Sunday includes a song entitled Behold the Lamb by Dottie Rambo. In it, I narrate several passages between the song lyrics.  My favorite section says this... "No one took his life from Him. He could have stopped the painful parade up to Calvary with a word, but He never uttered it.  Instead, He opened His arms to the beam, He opened His hands to the nails, and He allowed Himself to be crucified.... Behold the Lamb, surrendering His life, bearing our sin, absorbing the wrath of God in our place, and finally dying for our atonement."   They did not kill Him, my friends.  He died for us. Praise God!  He died for us so that we can have eternal life.

All you have to do to receive this blessing is ASK.  There is no great secret or huge hoop to jump through.  Ask. Below is the sinner's prayer in case you are struggling with what to say.  Feel free to put it in your own words.  What is in your heart is what truly matters....

"Heavenly Father, have mercy on me, a sinner. I believe in you and that your word is true. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that he died on the cross so that I may now have forgiveness for my sins and eternal life. I know that without you in my heart my life is meaningless.
I believe in my heart that you, Lord God, raised Him from the dead. Please Jesus forgive me, for every sin I have ever committed or done in my heart, please Lord Jesus forgive me and come into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior today. I need you to be my Father and my friend.
I give you my life and ask you to take full control from this moment on; I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ."
Amen. http://www.intothelight.org/answers/sinners-prayer.asp

If you have said the above prayer and truly meant it, you are now a child of God.  Your old life, whatever sin it may have contained, is over.  Live for Christ.  Grow in Christ.  I will be glad to help you figure out how to do that if you would like me to do so. Leave me a comment or send me an email to trayseetodd@yahoo.com.

3 comments:

  1. What a wonderful post for Easter! A great post for any day of the year actually. We certainly need to remember that Jesus did indeed 'lay His life down'. So easy to believe that he was killed. My youngest kids are 7 and 11 and have taken great interest in learning about Easter. Now I will remember to make this important point to them next time we talk about it.

    Thanks for visiting my blog today. I'm so happy it led me to yours. I'm at the halfway point... been a mom for 26 years already, youngest is 7, and I'm lookin forward to the next half of life as well.

    God bless!

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  2. Thanks for visiting, Mary Ann! I think it is definitely something that we need to stress. He died for us. It was HIS choice. Happy Easter!!

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  3. Thank you for stopping by my blog:) I love the reminder in this post that Jesus wasn't killed, but that he gave his life willingly. I had to stop and reread that several times because it wrong so true.

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