Romans

Romans 9:1-12:21

“So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.” Romans 10:17

Go with me to the garden for a moment. It‘s first thing Sunday morning. The sun has just broken over the eastern horizon, the dew is still on the roses, the birds are singing their morning praise songs and we are crunching along the cold stone path to Jesus‘ grave to anoint His body properly. It was a holiday weekend, the biggest there is, but it certainly didn‘t feel like a holiday weekend! None of the food tasted any good; it was filled with tears of mourning. Everything we had ever hoped for dreamed of, talked about, loved… died on Friday afternoon. We HAVE nothing to celebrate right now. But, as much as we dislike it, life goes on, and there are things to be done; dishes to wash, laundry to fold. But there is one small bright spot to our day this Monday. We get to go visit Jesus‘ body one last time. Touch His hands and His feet – anoint Him. So here we are on the path in the garden on what is by far the most beautiful morning we‘ve seen in ages. Everything seems alive and vibrant and fresh today, I wonder why. I turn to you in concern, “Oh no! How are we going to roll that huge stone away from the tomb? There‘s no way we‘ll be strong enough to do it! Those are next to impossible to move!“ But you reply, “God will make a way for us. Have faith.“
“Just like Mary,“ I think to myself, “always faithful. God bless her, she‘s right, God will bless us in our efforts, He will make a way for us to honor His son and anoint Him.“ But then we see it! His tomb, it‘s already open! “Wow! God REALLY made a way!“ But as we approach we start to sense something amiss, where‘s Jesus‘ body!?! As we become a flurry of confusion and grief and anger and voices, two men with clothes like lightning appear standing next to us, startling us to silence and immediate prostrate positions of humility with our faces to the ground. (It was either that or faint I think!) The angels questioned us, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He‘s not here! He is risen!…” As an unexplainable joy floods our souls and brings us back to the living, the angels remind us of Jesus‘ words “…crucified and on the third day be raised again.“ Oh how could we have forgotten? We run the entire way back to the house where the disciples are, the birds‘ songs cheering us on, urging our feet to move faster. When we arrive our excitement streams through our lips as fast as we all can speak, causing dazed, shocked, confused, angry and hopeful looks on everyone‘s faces. None of them know what to think, could it really be true? Can our hopes still be alive? What is happening? Was it thievery or a miracle? Can it really be true? Peter, not wanting to be left out of the action I‘m sure, returned to the tomb to investigate, running the entire way. Breathing heavily he entered the tomb to find all the wrappings of death discarded carelessly, and the napkin from His head folded carefully, signifying that He was not finished and that he would return. Not quite knowing how to deal with all this extraordinary information Simon Peter went away to think and pray, but you, Mary, you stayed. You couldn‘t bear to leave could you? Your grief and confusion is so complete so consuming that you simply couldn‘t leave the last known residence of your Lord and love Jesus of Nazareth. He saved you from a horrible life of torment didn‘t He? Those demons had plagued you night and day, filled your head with criticisms and self-doubt, fears and pain unimaginable. But then Jesus came along didn‘t He? He freed you from all of it! The pain, the shame, the torment, the fear, all gone the instant He touched you. It must have been amazing! Obviously it was because you haven‘t left His side since, even in death, you‘re still here at His grave – waiting. Crying because you don‘t know what‘s happening. But more than that, because you don‘t know where He is. All you know is that He‘s not with you and the pain that that is causing you is worse than anything the demons ever did. Your love for Jesus is so pure that nothing can stop you from wanting Him; His presence in your life, His love in your life, His grace in your life. You miss Him like nothing you‘ve ever known. And as you‘re standing there wailing beside the tomb, you just have to look upon His last resting place one more time. But this time there are two angels sitting there. But right now you are too grieved to care that there are two supernatural beings speaking to you. “Woman, why are you crying?“ they ask. You sob, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don‘t know where they have put Him!“

Mary, when everyone else left Him, you stayed. When everyone else pondered, you grieved. Maybe you didn‘t understand what was really happening, or maybe you understood better than anyone else. Either way, I can‘t imagine what it felt like to be there that morning. In that new day air, with your eyes brimming with tears saw a man standing near Jesus‘ grave. “Maybe he knows where Jesus is.“ Perhaps that‘s what you thought when you asked Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him and I will get Him.“ Perhaps, at that moment in the garden, Jesus looked so much like His father that that‘s why you mistook Him for the gardener. Oh, but no tears or choking sobs of grief could disguise His voice from you could it? No. Just as the sheep know their shepherd‘s voice, all it took was for Him to say one precious word, your name. “Mary“. And reality came crashing through your tears. He is HERE! He is ALIVE! He is speaking YOUR name! He knows your grief, He knows your pain and He came to you first to end that anguish in your soul and replace it with joy and hope and fire. All with a single word, your name. Because He knows your name, it‘s written on the palm of His hand.

Oh how desperately you wanted to cling to Him, to talk to Him, to hang on His every word and bask in His luminous personality. But alas, just as you could not hang onto your grief this morning because you had word to do, that same is true now. You can not hang onto your joy because there is work to do. OH! But the work that there is to do! It too is joyful. “You Mary“, Jesus explains, “have to tell the others. You must spread the good news! You must tell everyone that I am alive, you have seen me, and that I am returning to My Father and your Father, to my God and your God. No Mary, you may not stay longer here with Me, I know you want to, but there will be plenty of time for that later. Right now, people need to know what has happened and what will happen. I will come again, and we will be together, so be patient. Until that time, tell everyone the good things I have done for you for My glory. O blessed one.”

*Reposted from April 7^th, 2012 – it’s too good not to share it every year don’t you think?

Romans 4:13-8:39

“and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:5

Yesterday I ended up watching the last hour of the Passion of the Christ. As they were putting the crown of thorns on His head and the Roman soldiers were laughing at Him and beating Him it felt like their laughter was going straight through me. They punched Him in His bloody face and I winced and looked away. The moment I closed my eyes the Holy Spirit said to me, “I took your shame. Those who look upon Jesus are radiant, and their faces shall never be covered in shame. Yes, people may laugh at you here, but there will come a day when they will no longer laugh because they will know. They will know why your face was radiant. They will know you were telling the truth. They will know, and they will no longer laugh. Your face will never be covered in shame in My presence any longer because I took your shame. They laughed at Me, so that they can never laugh at you.”

And He did it ALL for YOU!!!

Romans 1:1-4:12

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16

The more I’ve focused on this verse, the more I find! The first time I read it, the phrase “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” caught my eye. Most likely because I spent the last six months in Greek class! But I realized what huge significance there is in the original languages of the Bible!

The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, the native language of the Jews, because it is for the Jews as their heritage and legacy. But the New Testament, which contains the gospel of Christ, it’s written in Greek. If the New Testament writings had been only for the Jewish people the writers – who knew Hebrew – would have written it in Hebrew. But they chose not to because the gospel isn’t for one race or nation (or denomination) alone! It’s for EVERYONE!

Hallelujah!

Than as I read the verse again the word “power” hit my heart with such an amazing force I felt like God’s fist came up through the page punching that word into my very soul. The gospel of Jesus IS the power of God. Period.

This morning I woke up, picked up my phone and like every other time I pick up my phone I cleared out my notifications. One of them was a notification from my Pinterest app letting me know someone had re-pinned one of my pins.

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“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of POWER and of LOVE and of a SOUND MIND.” 2 Timothy 1:7

This verse has played such a huge roll in my battle against the spirit of fear. It has ruled my life with such a heavy hand for such a very long time. And this verse is a powerful sword against the spirit of fear. Fear is not from God. Fear is the absence of love, just like darkness is the absence of light. God is love and light. That’s why in Revelation it talks about heaven and how there will be no darkness or the need for the sun or moon for light because God is light and love.

When we can’t fully see the next step because it is still shrouded in darkness, we fear taking that step into the unknown. Why? We have not been filled, or perfected, in God’s love for us.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected (or filled up to the brim) in (God’s) love (for us).” 1 John 4:18

We have not been given a spirit of fear, but a spirit of POWER and LOVE and of a SOUND MIND! We have living, breathing, dwelling inside us the spirit of LOVE.

But it’s not some namby-pamby, cotton candy, fluffy bunny, rose petal kind of love. Oh no! It’s a POWERFUL kind of love! It’s the kind of love that flips over tables and gets out a whip to make fear flee from between your temples. It’s the kind of powerful love that strips down naked and wears a bloody crown of thorns so that you can be clothed in the finest garments – robes of righteousness, and wear a crown of gold – your helmet of eternal salvation. It’s the kind of powerful love that drives stakes through its hands and feet to a cross so that yours can be freed from it. It’s a powerful love that does all of the work of redemption for you, crying out to its last breath “it is FINISHED” just to make sure you know for certain that there’s nothing left for you to do but to boast not in your own works but in HIS. It’s the kind of powerful love that contains its power when the one’s He’s dying to save are beating and spitting on him.

It’s the kind of powerful love that offers itself up as a slave and washes feet instead of sitting upon the highest throne in all the universe. It’s the kind of powerful love that strokes your cheek instead of striking it when you fall. It’s the powerful kind of love that looks at you with patient eyes when you just can’t seem to get it right, because He recognizes your effort more than your end result. It’s the powerful kind of love that lets you try again. It’s the powerful kind of love that whispers “I love you” in every detail of every moment in your life.

No. We have NOT been given a spirit of fear. We have been given a spirit of POWERFUL LOVE and of a SOUND MIND to better understand the power of that love and to SHARE IT WITH OTHERS because we ALL need the power of the Gospel of God! It’s GOOD NEWS of GREAT joy is it not? God’s powerful love at work in us is a tremendous gift, one not to be taken lightly my friend.

When I wrote The Pink Polka Dot Kitty I experienced the marvelous light of God’s love so strongly for the first time. Since that moment it’s all I want to do. I want others to EXPERIENCE that kind of power in love because it covers over a multitude of sins!

Jesus was no mindless sacrificial animal that had no idea or control over what was happening to Him. Jesus had complete control over the situation and knew exactly what He was doing. An animal sacrifice covered you until your next sin. Jesus’ sacrifice covers you for infinity. Don’t believe me? Read your Bible every day for a year, praying “God show me your Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth so help me God.” And then come talk to me. 😉 His word changes you!

Before reading every day I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t believe that He could possibly forgive me of ALL my sins past, present AND future. But little by little He chipped away at the lies I’d believed and replaced them with the Truths I found in His Word. And day by day I grew in strength until I was finally strong enough to understand that the love of Christ and His sacrifice on that cross was a powerful enough kind of love to forgive me for sins I’d yet to commit. I just had to forgive myself for them.

At the time of the cross weren’t ALL my sins future sins anyway? And if, like it says in Romans 3:25 “God, in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins”, is He not also then much more able to, after the cross, pass over future sins as well?

There was a time that I didn’t think God could be that good. I was wrong. He is. There was a day I was wrestling with the issue on the way to church. I grappled with it back and forth, back and forth until the singing started and I decided to put it aside and grapple with it later. Forgiven for one current sin at a time, or all at once, either way I was forgiven and that was worthy of the praise I was there to give Him. I sang one verse of “Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord“, when He OPENED the eyes of my heart! He isn’t just God; He is a just God who requires payment for sins. A payment that Jesus paid it ALL! ALL to Him I owe, sin has left a crimson stain, but He washed it white as snow! Jesus didn’t just pay the majority of the tab and leave the rest for us, He paid is ALL. There is nothing left for us to ask forgiveness for because He took it all the moment we first asked for His gift of forgiveness. It’s a onetime gift that lasts an eternity. The only thing left for us to do is to REPENT and say, “THANK YOU JESUS!”

We’ve got to repent, change our thinking, turn from our unbelief in His Goodness and the power of His Mercy and Grace! God is love and what kind of love would drink most of the poison of the law of death but not all of it? What kind of love says the debt is paid, but then comes back and says, “Oh wait, there’s more”? The wages of sin are DEATH. And Jesus paid that debt on Good Friday, He died, for YOU.

But Oh! Wait! There’s more! He didn’t just die for you. Oh no! He resurrected for you too! Like a prisoner released from the jail cell where He had paid for His crimes, Jesus walked out of that tomb a FREE MAN having paid the price and the tip, He made you a free “man” too!

Jesus paid it ALL. Now THAT’S a powerful love don’t you think?

*Thank you so much Lizzy Lee for this GREAT picture!!!!!