Marriage is one of the most puzzling things on earth. How can a couple have a fulfilling marriage for life?
There’s no shortage of answers to that question; just search on YouTube and you’ll be inundated. But how many of those answers are truly helpful? Not many.
People are searching for the wrong kind of love. And therein lies the problem. The romantic, feeling driven love was created by the same God who created marriage, but it wasn’t intended to sustain for a lifetime. Its purpose is to attract two people who will soon move into a different kind of love. It’s that love that sustains our marriages for the decades that we live together in matrimony. That love is agape, from the Greeks, and it’s the best kept secret on earth.
Agape-love is exactly the same thing as grace, and it truly is amazing. It’s what Jesus introduced to us by removing our sin with His sacrificial crucifixion-death. Agape-grace-love shows up in my marriage in this way:
My dear wife, I have decided in advance to show you every kindness regardless of what you do or don’t do. You need not earn anything because I have decided to love you without regard to any circumstances. I stand ready to forgive and forget any wrong for which you may or may not be responsible. This is the love with which Jesus has loved me and is the love present in me with His Spirit. Since this love comes from God to me, how can I withhold it from you, my friend, my sister in Christ and my dear wife?
Two other really cool secrets.
First, a married couple who both live in grace toward each other will soon find themselves no longer lacking in the romantic love they once had. That’s right, the path back to marital romance is through grace.
The second and final secret is this. Grace isn’t only the secret to a great marriage, it’s the secret to any relationship. God used it to make our relationships with Him awesome, and it’ll make friendships, business partnerships, parent-child and every other relationship the best they can be.
What’s the secret to a fulfilling marriage? In a word, grace.
This week my wife and I attended the annual Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference at Ridgecrest Conference Center near Ashville, NC. This was my fourth time attending and my wife’s third.
This was a special year for me because the blog I write each week (this one) placed second in the writers’ contest, and my book, Brilliant Faith, was a finalist.
It was special for a couple other reasons, too. Two friends, Lindsay and Courtney, attended for the first time at the encouragement of my wife and me. I first attended in 2016 when my friend, Andrea, a great literary talent, encouraged me, so I wanted to take a page from her book (pardon the pun) and urge some other aspiring authors to attend. They both loved it, along with Lindsay’s son, Braden, a college student who sees himself publishing a book in the future as he pursues other life interests.
Being at the conference always reminds me that authors come in all personality types and backgrounds, with a broad array of varying interests and a diverse range of abilities as writers. The one thing they (actually, we) have in common is we have a literary work within us. It may be a novel, a novella, a devotional, a book of poetry, children’s book or book of photographs It could be an instructional, inspirational or biographical book, or some combination of the aforementioned genres and sorts.
What I’m getting to is that, if you’re reading this, which means you’re literate, I believe you have some sort of publication in you.
Often, the first thought a future author has is “I could never write a book; I’m just not qualified.” If that’s you, I’d love to change your mind. If you’ll honestly search your heart for a second you’ll likely admit that you’ve had the idea to write a book before. Let me tell you a few things that may give you some confidence:
You don’t have to be a “writer” to be an author. One of the best books I’ve ever read is Forgiving the Nightmare. It’s author, Mark Sowersby, tells me that when he wrote his first draft, he used no punctuation and no capitalization. He gave the draft to his wife who did a grammatical edit, being careful to keep in the draft her husband’s personality and intent, and then forwarded the manuscript to the publisher. Mark is intelligent and a great communicator, but the most efficient way for him to write his story (You’ll be amazed if you read it, I promise.) was to just get the words down, knowing more work would be done with them later.
2. Everyone has an interesting story; it just needs to be transferred from their mind to the page. Maybe your story is your life’s story because you’ve lived long enough to include a great many experiences. Or maybe your story would be a certain experience you’ve had or witnessed. Whichever the case, there’s a story in you that just needs to be transferred to the written page.
3. If you feel your strength is in your knowledge or insight, rather than your story, then there are people who would benefit from what you have to offer; they just need you to write it for them.
I firmly believe everyone has something to say. They just need to realize it themselves.
So please consider authoring a book. Then, go ahead and start writing it. Then, keep going until it’s complete. You won’t regret it!
Tom Wolfe’s Novel, YouCan’tGoHomeAgain, makes an assertion few would challenge. The title is a self-evident statement, so it isn’t necessary to read the book to understand its general meaning.
Anyone who’s returned to their former home finds at least two things that have changed, often almost beyond recognition: their home and themselves. Add for consideration that the person’s memory of their home is askew and we realize going “home” again really is impossible.
I learned this reality over the years, each time I would visit my parents. My perspective was evolving and so was my family of origin. It was kind of sad, realizing that ever so often we had to say goodbye to a tradition or familiar set of circumstances and move forward accepting something different.
I’ve realized recently, though, that we can no more leave home than we can go back home. Both of my parents passed away eight years ago, and although they’re never coming back, their almost tangible influence is still very real. I both appreciate and enjoy the memories of lessons they taught me over half a century ago. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get away from my parents.
My siblings and I – all five us – have remained close. Our sibling text group stays pretty busy, each of us sharing thoughts and feelings we’re experiencing that relate somehow to our years growing up together.
Social media has made it much easier to also stay in touch with friends from life’s previous chapters; every time I see a post or message from an old friend, who is very much a part of my home of origin, it, too, keeps me connected to home.
So while it’s true that you can’t go home again, it’s also true that you can’t ever leave home.
It could be said that we’re caught between leaving home and returning home, never fully free to do either. While that’s a precarious position, it’s neither dire nor dangerous. The fact is, whether we realize it or not, we are where we are and we are who we are, and we’re always dependent upon the protective and guiding hand of the Almighty. Being unable to either leave or return home is still an okay place to be. Besides, if I have the choice, I’m not sure whether I would choose leaving or returning. And the best place to be is neither of those, but in the place of walking with God, and He is here walking with us in this no-man’s land between home and away.
This is just another of a multitude of ways of looking at life. And life from any perspective is good and comfortable because we have the promise from Jesus that He’ll never leave us or turn His back on us. So with Him, we can always be at home and leaving is never a desire or reality. There’s one more problem to which Jesus is the answer. A la Romans 7:25, thank You God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. And it always is.
“Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 7:25 NLT
My nephew will be married soon. I wrote some comments to him and his fiancé. I’ve adapted them for a general readership and offer them here to any who are soon to be wed. CONGRATS provides an acrostical structure.)
Choice.
Perhaps you’ve been choosey. Well, I think it’s paid off for you to be choosey. Probably both of you have chosen not to pursue other opportunities; and because of that, you were able to make the choice you’ve made. You’ve chosen wisely. So congrats on the choice you both have made!
Over.
The single phase of your life will soon be over. I encourage you to be completely over that phase. Don’t think, speak or act like a single person. Instead, approach everything together as a married couple, two people in complete unity. The old mentality of singleness will present itself to you and seek to be invited in. Tell it that it’s no longer welcome in your life, that it’s been replaced forever.
Never look back.
Never second guess your decision to marry each other. You’ve given ample thought and prayer to your decision with counsel from wise people who love you. There can never be regrets or “what ifs” about your past. Having a good marriage means looking ahead, not behind.
Grace.
Grace means you’ve decided that, no matter what your spouse does or doesn’t do, you’re going to show them kindness. This is what Jesus has brought to us and it’s the most important factor in a successful marriage.
Relatives.
Relatives can be a negative for a marriage, but you have family (and let’s add close friends, too, because they’re like family) who are for you and not against you. Surround yourselves with those people and keep a safe distance from the others. When you need support of some kind, go to your advocates who will build your marriage up, not the adversaries who would tear it down. Remember, a boxer goes to his own corner between rounds, not to his opponent’s. Speak to your wedding officiate before your wedding and ask them to issue an invitation to your wedding party during your ceremony, asking them to indicate by applause their commitment to always support your marriage and to never undermine it.
Always.
Marriage is for always and without any breaks (the only Scriptural exception being a brief abstention from physical intimacy so you can pray separately without distraction). I encourage you to go into your marriage with no plan B. You will be together for the entire time that you both are on this earth, beginning on your wedding day. Try not to see that as a pressure, but as a privilege. Think about it. You two get to do for the rest of your life the very things you so long for now – being together, tackling challenges together, parenting together, accomplishing things together, talking together, laughing together, crying together and sleeping together. What a wonderful thing – marriage – and God created it for you to enjoy together! Always.
Together.
I encourage you to do everything you can together rather than separately. There’ll be some things you’ll do individually, and you guys will figure out when that’s best. But I think it’s best to have your finances together, rather than his and hers. Spend as much time as possible together and make all your significant decisions together.
Sui Generis.
Sui Generis is a Latin term that means unique. Remember, there isn’t another couple like you. There never has been and never will be. You’ll get a lot of advice. You should prayerfully consider advice from the wise and caring, but remember that your relationship wasn’t created with a cookie cutter, so you can make your own decisions. And some of your decisions may be different from what any other couple would make. Most importantly, seek God in your decision-making. He’s the one who created two unique people and brought you together as an even more unique couple.
Congrats to you soon-to-be-married! I wish and pray God’s will for you, His very best! May the journey you both take together be fulfilling and inspiring! Love and Prayers!
My wife, Sharlene, and I have six children. We’re very proud of all of them. They’re all doing very well in life, but some of them have chosen to reject the life of faith in Jesus that we tried to prepare them for during their formative years. And while we’re so very pleased with pretty much all of their life-paths, the path choice of doing life without friendship with Jesus is heart-breaking for us. I know we aren’t the only Christian parents in this situation. So I want to offer some advice that will, hopefully, be both encouraging and enlightening.
Make sure they know you love them. My wife and I received a letter from our son letting us know he had made some decisions in his life, one of which was to not live by faith in Jesus. This news destroyed us and all we could do for several days was cry, hug and pray.
As we told our other kids about their brother’s letter, they all came straight to me. “Now, Dad, you’ve gotta just love him.”
Every one of them – and Sharlene – said the same words. It bothered me that they thought I needed coaching in my response.
“Of course I’m going to love him! But if I get a chance to talk with him, I’m going to deal with this.” I honestly thought I could change his mind if I could just sit down with him.
“No, just love him. That’s all you need to do. He knows how you feel; he’s heard it his whole life. Now he just needs to know you love him.
Trust God with their journey. As Sharlene and I sat at dinner that week with our son and his wife, the Lord spoke very clearly to me, “The reason you feel you have to deal with this is because you don’t trust Me to do it.”
What my family were all trying to say to me God essentially said in a way that cut straight to my heart. Once I understood His perspective on it, I was able to be at peace with not being in control of it.
Back to the idea of just loving them for a second. It’s challenging to communicate love in an age when people equate love with approval. If you love me, you’ll approve my choices; if you don’t approve how can you expect me to feel love. We’ve learned that love must be shouted, while disapproval must be whispered, if said at all.
Don’t accept condemnation for their choices. One of the thoughts that invaded our minds was that we had made some mistakes that caused our son to reject Jesus. Two truths helped us get past that condemning idea:
Sharlene heard a podcast speaker one day on her drive who pointed out that God Himself created his first two children without sin, placed them in a sinless environment and had fellowship with them every day; and they still chose to go against His plan for them. The point was that, if that can happen to the kids of our perfect Father, why would we take on condemnation if it happens to ours?
Days after receiving the letter, I preached a message on John 9 (The Man Born Blind). In this story, Jesus’ disciples asked him why the man was born blind. Was it his sin or his parents’ sin? Those were the only two possibilities in their minds. But Jesus opened their minds to a completely different possibility. It had nothing to do with the cause of the blindness; more important was the purpose of it. It was neither his or his parents’ sin, Jesus revealed, but so that the work of God could be manifest. The disciples were focused on the cause; Jesus pointed them to the purpose. Then He healed the man (the works of God) and fulfilled the purpose for the man’s blindness. We learned to focus on God’s purpose, knowing it’s ultimately to give our son eternal life and bring glory to God. We decided we’d focus on purpose and not cause.
Gather an army of prayer warriors. I don’t know how we would’ve gotten through those first weeks after receiving the letter without the prayers and encouragement of so many of our friends. Our small group basically saved our life during that season. That was seven years ago now, and we still depend upon the prayers of our Christian brothers and sisters.
See them as you would someone who isn’t your child who isn’t yet a Christ follower. We meet people all the time who are about our kids’ age who aren’t Jesus followers yet. We never even think of being compulsory or applying pressure to those people to accept Jesus. So why would we think that response would be effective – or appropriate – with our kids? We’ve learned to see our kids as friends. The age of our having authority over our children is gone. And we don’t want to be manipulative parents. We’ve decided to just be friends; that’s all we can really be anyway.
Obviously, I’m referring to prodigal kids who are adults living their own lives. For kids still under their parents roof and/or authority, I’m sure the advice should be different.
If you’re the parent of a prodigal and would enlist Sharlene and me as prayer warriors, please leave your invite in the comments, no names necessary.
There’s a very simply way to raise your IQ. Maybe not easy to do, since it may go against your very nature, but the process is simple.
And it’s easy to understand. It’s also free, financially at least; no costly service or plan to purchase. But it will take some sacrifice.
There are different ways to explain why humans are more intelligent than animals. From a physiological standpoint, we have more neurons in our brains’ cerebral cortex than other mammals do. And our brains’ different regions are able to strategically interact with each other; in other words, we can consider our own thoughts. A more everyday language way of saying it is that we have self-awareness. A human is the only earthly creature that can consciously, intentionally evaluate and make judgments about their inner selves.
So my premise is that if we can sharpen our self-awareness, we will then be increasing our intelligence. We have the opportunity to raise our IQ.
Pride, Scripture says, leads to self-destruction. It precedes a fall, precipitates failure. I think that’s because pride skews our self-awareness. It positions us to see ourselves as better than we actually are and others, including people, God and factors in our situations, as less than they really are. And since we overestimate ourselves and underestimate externals, surprisingly to ourselves, we fall. We fall in performance because we have fallen in intelligence. And we fall in intelligence because of pride.
This disease is known as intelligence deficiency due to pride (IDDTP). It originated in the heart of Satan and is highly contagious. By the way, he serves as the perfect example of IDDTP, having gone from arch angel level intelligence to a being so dumb that he continually challenges the invincible God of all creation. The good news is IDDTP is treatable. Self-administered under the supervision of the Holy Spirit, humility infusion has proven immediately effective at reversing IDDTP. Humility can even elevate intelligence beyond the baseline because it has the opposite effect of pride.
Humility comes from a word that means dirt. It symbolizes the act of positioning oneself on the ground, the lowest possible position. From that perspective, a person can see themselves and externals in a more accurate light, which reactivates the cerebral cortex neuro-function and opens up intra-cerebral pathways, allowing us to assess and judge ourselves more accurately in relation to externals.
In short: pride makes us dumb; humility makes us smart. And the only cost for the treatment is our self-destructive pride. I think I’ll try it.
David was nearly invincible on the battlefield, ten times greater as a warrior than his predecessor, able to hold his own with The Thirty and was as great a general and king as he was a warrior. How could the evil one ever snuff out the light of Israel? Apparently it would never happen, not against this anointed man of war.
A king would normally be with his troops in battle this time of year, but David was not in the arena in which he’d proven so successful. No, he was in a different arena now, and he was far less skillful in this one
What’s that he sees? A beautiful woman bathing. Who is she? Uriah’s wife. Wife? Wife! But David can’t walk away. Heck, he can’t even look away. He’s now in the arena of the lure. And he’s as good as caught. Defeated. Finally.
Eve was without sin and living in the perfect environment with her perfect husband, and they talked everyday with the Perfect One, their Creator.
Don’t eat of that tree” God had said. Probably best to not touch it, not go near it, not even look at it.
Wow, that fruit is impressive. Must taste delicious. Certainly is beautiful. It’s the most potent brain food in the garden, she understands.
With the help of the serpent, Eve finds the fruit irresistible. What was forbidden has now become the lure. She takes. She eats She shares. They disobey. Sin. Fallen.
Satan’s pretty good with this lure thing. Of course the flesh gives him a decided advantage. If only we could somehow gain an advantage over the devil and the flesh.
“Now we [believers in Jesus] have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2:12)
“You are of God, little children, and have overcome [the spirits in the world that are against Christ], because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)
So we actually have gained an advantage over Satan, the flesh and the world (the unholy trinity).
Every time one of us finds ourselves in trouble, in a seemingly vulnerable situation, in circumstances that appear bleak, it’s simply God luring our enemy so He can defeat him for us.
Jesus on the cross was the lure and the empty grave was God defeating our enemy; now we have victory over sin, death, hell and the grave! God is obviously better with the lure than our enemy is. And He uses the same strategy in our lives; He calls us to surrender, to sacrifice, to death, so that He may lure our enemy into the trap that binds him and sets us free.
Let me please end with two encouraging thoughts from Scripture:
God will surely deliver you from the snare of the fowler (see Psalm 91:3)
Since Jesus has set us free, don’t let yourself be caught again by the yoke of our former slavery. (see Galatians 5:1)
Long ago, centuries before the advent of the self-help guru or the first however-many-easy-steps-to-whatever article was written, a formula guaranteeing prosperity and success was given, received and proven completely effective. This was some 3,500 years ago. The recipients of the guarantee immediately faced thirty-two major challenges. In thirty-one of those challenges they followed the plan and were successful. In the one that they didn’t follow the plan, they failed miserably. The guarantee was valid then, and it’s still valid today.
Moses was dead. But what God had given Moses was very much alive. God had given him the promise that this generation of Israelites would enter and occupy the land He had sworn to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He had given Moses the anointing to lead this Jewish nation that He verified with miracle after miracle. Most importantly, He had given Moses the Law. All these gifts were still alive; they just needed to be transferred to the leader God would use next. Enter Joshua.
As Joshua prepared himself and the Hebrew people for the mission – entering the land of Canaan – God delivered to Joshua the timeless foolproof formula for success. It had everything to do with God’s Law, which He had given through Moses. And the formula was very simple:
Think
Speak
Do
Think. The word God actually used for Joshua was meditate. Meditation in the ancient Hebrew sense is in some ways the very opposite of the way many people use it today. When people do meditations today, they’re attempting to achieve mental clarity and emotional calmness.
Biblical meditation is about filling the mind, not clearing it. And the way that’s done is by cycling the message of God through the mind over and over, constantly throughout the day and through the night. It’s doing mentally what cattle and some other animals do physically. These animals have more than one stomach, so when they first swallow their food they aren’t done with it. They bring it up again later and chew it some more. After a series of chewings and swallowings, their food is finally assimilated (the nutrients become living tissue, actually part of the animal’s body)
That’s what God wanted for Joshua and his generation, that His Law would become part of who they were. For that to happen, they would need to follow His instructions to rehearse His precepts when they sat at home, when they walked down the road, when they lay down and when they rose again. Later, King Solomon would pen that a person becomes whatever they embrace mentally. To Joshua God was calling in advance for him to live out this truth He would reveal in a few hundred years through the wisdom of Solomon.
This formula for us today, because of Jesus and the covenant He established for us, expands to include more than the Law of Moses. For us, it means the law of Christ or the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote. The law of Christ is simply: believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son for salvation. It also includes all of New Testament Scripture and the light it sheds on the Old Testament.
Speak. Let every word you say be My Law, whether as a direct quote or in keeping with it’s meaning, God was essentially saying to Joshua. That was the second part of the formula for success, although God actually said it first, before mentioning the meditating/thinking part of the instruction.
Jesus would later teach that our words ultimately flow from whatever is in our hearts or minds, so our success in the speak piece depends much on what we do with the think piece.
Still, as James taught through his epistle, it’s wise to be intentional with our words, rather than just leaving our speech up to the natural flow from our hearts’ contents.
The bottom line is this: everything we say should line up with God’s Word.
Do. The whole reason for the think and speak parts of this guarantee is to impact our behavior. If we can act in accordance with what God has spoken, success is ours, guaranteed.
A point I should have made in the beginning is that success is defined as achieving what God has instructed us to achieve. It’s just like God to require something of us and then give us everything we need to meet it. That’s what He’s done here. He’s given us a very simple formula that guarantees our success. Then He’s given us His Word, His Son and His Spirit. He’s given us His guarantee. All that’s left is for us to follow the formula.
Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; but meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8)
Peewee was nearly seventy years old now. As he invited me into the living room of his doublewide, it stood out to me that he moved more slowly, talked more slowly, was less energetic than the younger version of this man I had spent much time with years before. His son, not even thirty years old, had recently passed away. Peewee was hurting. That was the real reason for his slower movements and more subdued demeanor.
But he was still strong. Peewee had always been strong. He and his first wife, Mary, who had passed away years before, had seven children. For nearly twenty years they lived in a tenant house on my family’s farm and helped us on the farm, their family working alongside ours. My siblings and I grew up with Peewee and Mary’s kids.
We endured together the muggy hot summer workdays in the fields of southeastern North Carolina that built our character and took our strength. It seemed to me, though, that Peewee was always strong, no matter how hot the day or how hard the job.
But Peewee did have a weakness. Most weekends much of his very hard-earned money would buy him a bottle. Apparently, the strength we’d all seen in him through the long work week forsook him in his beginning-of-the-weekend money management decisions.
“Did you know your Mama was the reason I quit drinking?” Peewee said in our conversation that had turned from his recently passed son to my parents who had passed a few years before.
“No. I never knew that.”
“She was. One day I was working on a tractor for your daddy and your mama came out to the shop. She said, ‘Peewee I want to talk with before you leave today.’ I said ‘okay.’”
Peewee and I could always talk in an open-hearted way. He and his family were African American, and we had an unusual bond that accommodated our honest conversations about, among other things, racial issues, even personal ones that existed right there on our farm.
My dad had been a prejudiced man and didn’t always treat Peewee the best. Peewee could share his frustrations with me, and I mine with him. He’d had a lot of pressure, feeding a family of nine on the wages of a farm laborer, so weekend binges were his way of coping. (My dad came to Christ years after those days of our two families working together, and Daddy’s racial views improved drastically. One year Peewee’s family and ours celebrated Christmas together.)
“When I was leaving late that afternoon, your mama stopped me in the driveway. She said ‘Peewee, you know, you work so hard for your money, and we depend on you so much. But you can’t get ahead because you spend your money on alcohol. You and Mary could own your own home, and who knows what else you could achieve. But you can’t do it unless you stop drinking.’”
I had not known about that conversation. What I did know was that I was sitting in a house that Peewee owned, situated on a plot of several acres he had bought and built houses on for some of his children. I knew he had given so much money to his local church, which one of his sons now pastored, that they were able to build a nice sanctuary, in which Peewee and all his family gather weekly for worship. I knew this strong man who never could seem to get ahead was now financially strong.
Peewee looked down, fighting back tears. “I never took another drink.”
“I had no idea. Thanks for telling me that, Peewee.”
My mom was a quiet, gentle soul. She had to step squarely out of her comfort zone to speak to Peewee the way she had that day. She never knew the impact of her courageous words to Peewee. But he had obviously remembered them well.
Jesus said to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. If we apply that to the Body of Christ, we shouldn’t go around to the other members of the body pointing out the good things we’ve done.
If we each apply it to our own body, we should be willing to give and help without keeping a record of it, crediting ourselves as deserving of a reward for it.
When I was a kid working on the farm I would occasionally suggest to my parents that I be paid for my work “like the others who work on our farm,” I would say. My parents’ response to me was usually, “The work itself is your reward.”
I never made sense of that – that there was value for me in exhausting myself in the hot sun, my body becoming filthy and sore – until I realized years later that those days of work added intrinsic value to me, like work ethic, know-how, sense of accomplishment, and fond memories of working alongside family and friends.
My parents were teaching me, whether intentionally or not, the lesson of your left hand not knowing what your right hand is doing. “Just work well and let that be it” more simply put.
I have no doubt that many, if not all, who are reading this pour, and often, yourselves out without ever thinking what you deserve in return or of telling others so they’ll admire you for it. That’s the lesson of Jesus at work in your real life.
It was cool to learn what my mom did for Peewee some thirty years after she did it. She sowed seed she never harvested. Seed sown with fruit unknown to her.
Or is it? I don’t understand clearly how and when God gives rewards to His children, but I’m confident Mama either has by now received them or will soon receive them. She’s with Jesus now, not because of any good things she did in life, but because she trusted Him to be her Savior. He’ll decide how and when rewards are given. Our job is but to have our seed sown with fruit unknown.
As Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, He rode on a donkey colt, which blends an unlikely combination of the elements of royalty and humility. The people laid down before Him a ground-covering of palm branches, a veritable red carpet for a first-century new king.
They shouted “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!” Surely the crowd wanted salvation from Rome. But give Jesus a week and He’ll bring salvation from a bigger, stronger, more ancient and oppressive empire than Rome could ever be. He’ll deliver a blow to our evil foe and deliver us from the death he wants for us. Jesus will deliver us – save us! – from sin and its consequences.
For the previous three plus years, Jesus had been consistent in His messaging: the Kingdom of Heaven is here! John had shouted the same message as he baptized Jews in preparation for the Messiah. The idea was that John would have them positioned to receive the King and King Jesus would offer Himself to them.
Now here they were. The week He would literally offer Himself, not only to them, but to Father God as the necessary sacrifice for their deliverance. More accurately, for our deliverance.
The Greek word euangiou is translated in the New Testament as “gospel.” Gospel wasn’t first used as pertaining to Jesus. It was used hundreds of years earlier each time the Greek Empire would annex a new territory or conquer a new nation or city. It was also used later by Rome as it would enlarge its territory by expanding its oppression to include new subjects.
Each time, some official would ride into town, set up a pulpit and announce how good life was now going to be under the rule of this latest emperor. The tax burden would be light; protection from threats would make life easy.
Promises, promises. Never fulfilled. The light taxes became unbearable, and the easy life was harder than it had been before.
But Jesus – you know, the One who promised a light burden and an easy yoke – delivered on His promises, even as the one from whom He delivered us was most oppressive, and the One to whom He delivered us is kindest and most generous.
So on the Friday following His triumphal entry into the city, the King humbled Himself most publicly as He delivered on His promise to make things easy and light. He paid the price we couldn’t pay for sin He didn’t commit, all to bring us into His Kingdom of Life. The Kingdom of Heaven had come.
The Kingdom and its King to faithless eyes seemed to have fallen. But on that Sunday, that Kingdom rose with its King. The Kingdom of Heaven, with its King, rose from the dead! As a king goes so goes his kingdom. And, therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven has risen. Higher than Rome. Higher than Greece. Higher than Medo-Persia. Higher than Babylon. Higher than Assyria. Higher than Egypt. Higher than the British, French or Japanese Empire. Higher than any recent or modern empire. Higher than the Kingdom of darkness ever has or ever will. Higher than all the kingdoms of the world in all its history and its pre-history. As Jesus is the King of kings, So Heaven is the Kingdom of kingdoms.
It has risen with its King and lives in the hearts of us, His followers, believers, subjects, children, friends. Heaven is in us! Because, with its King, Heaven is risen! Let us celebrate our King and His Kingdom! Happy Easter, 2023!
