The heart of Jesus

Read John 17

Every moment I spend with Jesus is yet another moment I am filled with wonder. Every minute I spend in prayer is time I spend taking in the beauty of eternity. In Christ and through the Spirit, I have come to know this—Love.

When we come before His throne of grace we find the peace, the hope, the joy of heaven. We find that in Christ we are not alone.

We are not alone because He is our strength, our defender, our refuge in the storm. When we embrace the Spirit so as to step into the heart of Christ we come to find that through all the trials He has always been faithful, bringing healing to our soul.

Let Jesus be your everything. Today, become engulfed in the prayer of Christ—His prayer to the Father for the protection, the blessing and the glory of His beloved.

“I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours” (v8-9).

For the truth of His love is the truth of our eternal joy. He came to wrap us up in His arms so that we might have peace, so that we might know that we are His own. Jesus’ prayer for us should bring our hearts to such a place of worship that we can do nothing but proclaim:

“You amaze me, Redeem me, You call me as Your own.”

If we say we love Jesus, our lives must show we love Jesus and the greatest way to do this is to jump into the “heart of Jesus.” Take a moment and listen to I am not alone by Kari Jobe and let the truth of this song invigorate the glory of your day. Amen Jesus!

The way Jesus did...

Read Luke 22.39-46

The days after Easter can be a time when many of us “get back to the grind.” That is, it can become the road to moving on all the while forgetting the magnitude of what was just celebrated.

If today slides into the realm of “moving on” we fall prey to moving beyond the glory of the empty tomb. So how do we move into the glorious truth of the empty tomb so as to live out the momentous truth of Easter?

Prayer…

In order for the glory of Easter to become the truth of our lives, we must always remember what Jesus stepped into before stepping up to the cross and stepping out of the tomb. We must always remember how He covered Himself in prayer.

Think about it, before He went to the cross so as to bring about the truth of Easter, what did Jesus do? He prayed. In fact, He told His disciples the action they needed most was prayer.

“When He arrived at the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.’” (40).

Jesus knew that when faced with turmoil, chaos and evil, the disciples would be tempted to either run away, or attempt to solve the problem on their own, and such is the case with us today. When the world confronts us how often do we attempt to fight against it on our own? And when we do this, when we seek resolution of our own doing we fail to fight with the most powerful source we have been given—prayer.

When we seek to solve life on our own we act as if we actually believe that prayer is not enough. We act as if prayer is our last solution when in fact, prayer should be our first response…just as it was for Jesus.

In the midst of the chaos and the eruptions of struggle and turmoil, those who know Jesus, need to pray. The world needs more prayer because it needs more Jesus.

“And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (44).

Let us this day seek to continue the Easter miracle by kneeling down in prayer. Let us face our troubles and struggles in life the way Jesus did…

“Jesus offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears…and was heard” (Heb 5.7).

In His Silence

Read Matthew 27.46; Romans 5.1-11

The weekend begins with the brutal, tragic, and paradoxically beautiful death of Jesus Christ. And then there is silence...

It is almost as if time stands still - everyone staring at the limp, beaten and broken body on the Cross. And then they watched as the body is taken down, placed in a tomb and left alone.

Everyone—followers of Jesus, haters of Jesus, those wondering who Jesus was—everyone sat in silence. They could do nothing but wait. And so they did: wait, wonder, hope. Is He the Christ, the Messiah? Or is He nothing more than a false promise, a dream breaker, hope wrecker?

The deafening sound of Saturday’s silence should be a day of contemplation for followers of Christ… Who is this man called Jesus? And what does He want with me?

Truth is, the sound of Saturday's silence is the rumbling of love that explodes from the empty cross of Sunday. It is the sound of the One who abandoned His throne so as embrace us in His arms of love. Saturday’s silence should remind us that the King of Heaven became the least of these so as to usher us into His joy...if only we embrace the silence.

What if today we started living the hope of tomorrow by praying for the world? What if we filled the silence with the sound of our prayers?

Today is a gift from God for in His silence He speaks boldly, asking us, how will we respond to the actions of Christ? Will we step into the shadow of the cross so as to transform the tragedy into a beautiful wedding feast? What if today we stepped into the silence so as to step out into the noise of the world and begin living out the hope of heaven today?

Take a moment and listen to the words from Downhere as they remind us of the truth that Christ was born to save a world torn apart.  

Let us step into the sound of Saturday's silence so that the eruption of Sunday's glorious love will explode from our words, our actions, our lives! Let us embrace the One King who poured out His heart for you and me…

His Passion

Read Hebrews 12.1-2, 28-29

What a week we enter into… Some may point to March for its madness of basketball, but for anyone who loves Jesus, March 2016 finds its madness in this week.

This week is known as Passion week. It is the week that all who love Jesus are freed from the bondage of sin, released from the darkness of evil and elevated to the throne of heaven as they are embraced by the amazing love of the One nailed to the cross.

The cross is the place where the grace of Christ’s kingdom meets with and overcomes the lost state of the kingdom of the world. This week we enter into the shadow of the cross where we find forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation…Amazing Love.

Only love justifies the suffering, only love’s suffering justifies the terrible distress of the world. Only His passion has the power to overcome our pain, darkness and fear. Only His passion offers everything we need…

Let us this week wrestle with the passion of the Christ so as to erupt with the insane love of Jesus. Let us this week wrestle for the passion of the Christ so as to become the insane love of Jesus for the sake of the world. Let us wrestle on the inside with His grace so that our lives might become His grace on the outside. Let us this week seek to offer our hearts to the One who offered His life.

Take a moment and listen to David Crowder’s Here’s My Heart and as you do, ask the Spirit to awaken your heart to the truth of this week...

Open your hearts, open His word and enter into His passion…Amen Jesus!