Red Wednesday's Wisdom - CHG #8, Part Three

Commit to Listening and Making a Decision
Two weeks ago, I invited you to commit/entrust your SW to reflecting on the word LIVE, and to consider its importance in one sentence as you researched the meaning of Passover and then also Easter. 

First of all, the word LIVE for me has a physical as well as spiritual component.  From a physical stand point, LIVE means that while I am on this earth I am alive and breathing.  Spiritually speaking, it means that even though I will die some day, I will LIVE in eternity.  For me, I know that my eternity is in heaven because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.  Without that relationship, my eternity would be apart from Christ, in hell.  Jesus says in John 11:25, “I am the Resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will LIVE again.” Are you listening to what Jesus Himself is proclaiming about who He is in just one sentence?  He is the Resurrection, and He is life. And here is what is so mind boggling.  Jesus proved this during the Passover season 2013 years ago when He arose on Resurrection Sunday, or Easter Sunday.

What is Passover? 

Passover is literally about living rather than dying, and it is a celebration of the deliverance of Israel from the slavery of Egypt. When the Egyptian Pharaoh would not listen to God’s repeated commands to let His people go, God implored severe consequences through a number of plagues.  The final plague was death to all first born sons. In order to protect the first born Hebrew sons, God instructed their families to take the blood of a lamb and spread it over the doorposts of their homes so that the Lord would literally "pass over" their homes, sparing their firstborn sons.  Exodus 12:13 states, "The blood you have smeared on your doorposts will serve as a sign.  When I see the blood, I will pass over you.  The plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

God commanded the Israelites to celebrate that first Passover every year, and every year a lamb was to be slaughtered by every family. On that Passover 2013 years ago, it was Jesus who took the place of all those lambs being slaughtered.  Jesus became the Passover Lamb once and for all.  Passover points us to Jesus Christ who is The Son of God and The Passover Lamb.  He is The Deliverer and The Savior for all people!

What is Easter? 

Like Passover, Easter is about living, rather than dying.  It is a celebration of the deliverance from the slavery of sin for all people through the resurrected Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the only One, ever, to rise from the dead and be living today!
 
John 3:16.  I am sure that we have seen it and heard it more than any other Scripture, especially at large sporting events, but have we ever taken the time to really consider its ever so simplistic life-giving message? It says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

When I think about those Israelites during the first Passover, I imagine that they had many questions going though their heads.  I wonder how much alike we are to them today?  Are we committed to listening and then making a decision based on what God is telling us?  God never changes.  He has always loved us and has always wanted His people to live and be free, but the decision is not His to make for us. What we decide to do with what we see and hear is up to us.  The Israelites had to decide if they would listen to God in order to live.  They had to decide if they would partake in God’s plan to slaughter a lamb and put its blood on their doorpost so that their first born sons would live.  Today, we have the same decision to make about our lives.  We can see and hear what God’s Word tells us, but do we truly listen to it and make the decision to move into action so that we live with God in this life and forever?   It is my hopeful prayer that we will.  The greatest time in my life was when Jesus saved me and said, “Live!”

With regards to your SW, I also asked you to become more in tuned to how you were being listened to/noticed.  For me it had to do with a radio broadcast that got noticed by listeners who wanted to lessen the clutter in their lives.  Because of the needs of these callers and their readiness to learn, I knew I needed to hear from God about what He wanted me to do with them.  That is why there was no post last week.  I needed to focus on what action I was to take.  The outcome of what is taking place is very unexpected, but it is also very exciting.  Home Touched has launched its first on-line clutter group, using the teaching postings that began exactly a year ago here on this blog.  And because of the research I have done on how to do this, we are now looking into doing videos to go along with the posts.  As I said, it is very exciting.

This week, your SW is to look up the two Scriptures from today’s posting and decide what they mean for you: 

John 11:25, “I am the Resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will LIVE again.”

John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”