Dedication

Now it's OUR turn!

He is RISEN!

Fellowship

Day 40: 4/7 (FOR Saturday)

In fellowship, we engage in the common activities of worship, study, prayer, celebration, and service with other disciples. This may involve meeting together in a large group or a smaller one. Personalities united can contain more of God and sustain the force of His greater presence much better than scattered individuals. The members of the body of Christ must be in contact if they are to sustain and be sustained by each other (learn more about fellowship - Willard 186).

Jesus had died a day earlier.  All of their hopes and dreams - everything that the disciples believed and hoped for those past three years ended with His death.  According to the Johannine text, Peter and John were together when Mary Magdalene ran back to report that she had just been with the risen Lord.  Today is not the day that Jesus has risen, but I would like for us to focus on the meeting between Peter and John.  What do you think they were talking about?  The mood of their together?  Most of the time, we associate "fellowship" to a "good" time.  It's true, fellowship DOES involve a good and enjoyable time.  However, this isn't so ALL the time - as in the case with Peter and John.  They were sullen, as low as anyone can be.  But they were together - maybe to comfort one another, seeking sollace, explanation?  We're not sure... the text doesn't clearly say.  All we know is that they were together... in their grief.  

Today, will you take some time with a brother and/or sister in Christ, to grieve?  To remember this this was a time of confusion, chaos, a time when the world of the disciples was turned up side down.  We take for granted that we know that the Lord has risen.  However, I think unless we share in the grieving that Peter and John and Mary Magdalene, and the rest His followers experience, we will struggle to come close to the experience of the resurrection... TOMORROW!  Grieve in the way that you choose to.  To help you, take a look at the four gospel account of Jesus' death and put yourself in the shoes of the various witnesses - from the disciples to Jesus' mother, to the criminals hanging next to Jesus, to Mary Magdalene, and so on.  

Love... Sam

Sacrifice

Day 39: 4/6 (FOR Friday) 

This is a tough one. With this discipline, we are abstaining from the possession or enjoyment of what is necessary for our living - not, as in frugality, from what is really to some degree superfluous anyway. This discipline of sacrifice is one in which we forsake the security of meeting our needs with what is in our hands. It is total abandonment to God, a stepping into the darkened abyss in the faith and hope that God will bear us up (to learn more about sacrifice, look at Willard 174).

Today, you are asked to experience just a little of what Jesus experienced in the last hours before His death.  Read Matt. 27:27-44 (have a box of tissues with you!) and notice those things that Jesus said NO to - those things He sacrificed... for us. If you say that He sacrificed His life, you're right.  However, if you think that it is just His biological "life" that He sacrifices for us, you are way off.  If you look carefully, He sacrifices His identity, His relationship with His Father, His dignity, etc., etc.... He sacrifices EVERYTHING.  God does not ask us to sacrifice as Jesus sacrificed - only He could do this.  He does, however, ask us to serve only one Master.  Examine your life today - ask yourself what it is that you have in place in your life that you deem as "NECESSARY" for a joyful, comfortable, and pleasant life.  Ask yourself the difficult question of, "if I were to give that up today," will I still say that He is the Lord of my life?"  It's not as easy as you think.

Love... Sam