His Resurrection and You

This is Monday and yesterday was Easter.  As I was cleaning the kitchen from the dinner we had shared with only three members of our family that were able to be with us, I began to think about what Easter means to so many people.  Just as Thanksgiving is beginning to be called "turkey day," and Christmas is all about Santa, Easter, the day that means so much to us as Christians, is now all about bunnies, eggs and candy.  The world is doing their best to crowd God out of our lives.  All the Feast days, new moon and Sabbaths of the Old Covenant, were given by God to Israel to bring identification with Him into their lives.  So many today do not see the significance of those Feasts and are not even aware when they are to be celebrated.  But, as I have pointed out before, everything God does has a threefold fulfillment.  The first Passover delivered them from Egypt, the second Passover delivers "whosoever will" from sin, and the third, yet to come, will deliver us from the human nature and limitation of this realm.  Each had their own particular feast that was connected to it.  The first is still celebrated by those who remember that first Passover deliverance and its significance to the world.  The second is still celebrated by Christians as they remember the deliverance Jesus won for us as we obey His command to partake of the communion table.  But at that Passover meal, Jesus spoke of the next feast He would eat with us in the Kingdom to come when He returned to this earth.

We understand this and are able to identify with God's Word in this, but does the resurrection of Jesus from the dead have a specific identification personally?  Is it a "fact" to be celebrated or is it a step to be a part of our identification process, as His cross is to be in our lives.  Jesus pointed out that each of us has a cross, and we are to take up that cross and follow Him.  Does His resurrection have that same importance to us?  The passage in Hebrews has a degree of mystery that I have not personally heard addressed in such a way that I felt enlightened.  My head has agreed but I am still waiting for my spirit to leap with that anointed moment of enlightenment.  Hebrews 6:1-2 (NASB) ¹ Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,  ² of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.  Each of these steps, up to the resurrection of the dead, has been a distinctive time in the restoration of Truth to the Church.  Beginning with John Huss in the early fifteenth century to the present day, we have seen the Church coming back to the experiential walking in Truth, as Jesus began in His ministry on earth.  This restoration will continue until we become without spot or wrinkle, ready to participate in His return to the earth.

But how do we identify with His resurrection?  We have seen and experienced the restoration up to the truth of the resurrection.  What about this verse?  Romans 8:11 (NASB)  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.  The early church was eagerly waiting for their own resurrection.  They did not know the process the church would experience of stripping and restoration, but they had something through their identification with their personal  resurrection that we need.  It was a willingness to suffer, to endure with thanksgiving and victory, any persecution or seeming defeat and keep claiming "new land" in the Christ-anointing.  I believe this step will ignite the Church of today with a fire of anointing that will be visible to the whole world.