Encouragement in the midst of Chaos

Have you ever thought about the resurrection power of God? It’s powerful, right? Jesus was crucified and paid the ultimate price for our sins so that our broken relationship with God could be restored. That in itself is pretty powerful, but then three days later God raised Jesus from the dead. God restored life to Jesus! In Romans 8:11 in the Passion translation the Bible says “Yes, God raised Jesus to life! And since God’s Spirit of Resurrection lives in you, he will also raise your dying body to life by the same Spirit that breathes life into you!” Let’s think about that. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives inside you! In other words, if you have submitted your life to Christ and asked Jesus to forgive your sins, the same resurrection spirit that was powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead now lives inside you! 

If this is true, why do we feel anxious, afraid, fearful and so forth. I think the answer is in the question who we are listening to? The Bible says that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. His tactics really haven’t changed since the Garden of Eden. He talked with Eve and questioned what she knew about God. Did God really say? Why would God want to keep things from you? She listened long enough that she began to doubt and then that doubt took action, and before she knew it, she had agreed with the enemy. I think the same is true today. The enemy talks with us through tv, media, entertainment etc and through all of that he is trying to get us to doubt God and His word. The real power the enemy has is what we choose to give him. When we listen to him and even come into agreement with him, that is when fear, anxiety, worry, doubt have an open door to run rampant in our minds and our lives.

The Bible is full of amazing stories where God shows up and wins. Daniel and the Lion’s Den, Shadrach, Mesheck, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Esther becoming Queen and saving her people. However, as we become very familiar with these stories, what we tend to forget is that these people had to live THROUGH the story. They did not have a book called the Bible to tell them how their story was going to end. Daniel had no guarantee that God would shut the mouths of the lions. The men in the fiery furnace had no idea they would walk back out of the furnace unharmed. Esther had no idea if the King would be favorable toward her and allow her to fight for her people.  They all had to trust God and what He had said to them and live through their story.

So if the very spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives inside us, what do we have to be afraid of? We are all living THROUGH our personal story as well as current events in the world. We don’t have the advantage of knowing how this will all turn out. But what we do have is Jesus! And if we have Him, we have everything! 

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