Resurrection life! We live in the Body of Christ.

Do you remember that before you belonged to Christ you were held in a prison called Spiritual Death?

The Bible comments clearly on this in Ephesians 2: 1 – 7:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. We were by nature children of wrath.  But God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.

It is this combination of despair and faith that Paul speaks about that reveals the refreshing realism of the Bible. For what Paul does in this passage is to paint a vivid contrast between what humankind is by nature and what we become by grace in and through Jesus Christ, the risen Lord.

This contrast between the spiritual death of humankind and the deliverance of God causes us to rejoice about the privilege to live the Body Life, in other words the true life found in the Church of Christ.

We once were sons and daughters of disobedience. Spiritual death and disobedience characterised our lives before we came to live in Christ. We walked according to the directions of ungodly society before we came nearer to Christ, to live in him.

Why reflect on this? That we may rejoice with enthusiasm about the Body Life we experience in the Church of Christ,  given to us in Jesus our Lord, that we may praise God with all our heart for the resurrection life, when we understand that it delivered us from our sins and from the wrath of God - and made us a people, a community of faith,  who are alive through the Spirit: sanctified, forgiven and saved.

Praise God for the grace of knowing that we now are part of Christ’s Body and a member of his chosen people, his Church. I rejoice because I am one of those who are alive in him.

Only Jesus has the key to unlock the prison of spiritual death.

And he gave me this life because he loves me.  Praise his glorious Name!

Lord, help me to pray!

We need the power of prayer. And we will only experience powerful prayer in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, if our prayers are guided by the Holy Spirit.

John 15:7: Jesus said -  “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you”.

Praying boldly requires first of all that we in faith acknowledge our union with Christ. Those who live in the Body of Christ are able to pray while the Spirit unites us with Jesus Christ.

And yes, those who remain in Christ receive the guidance of the Spirit that helps them to pray.

Listen to what the Bible has to say about this:

Ephesians 6:18:”And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

Jude 20: “But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.”

When we remain in Christ and his words remain in us, his Holy Spirit inspires and leads us in prayer that God the Father answers.

1) True prayer is prayer that the Spirit inspires and directs. Acknowledging our inability to pray according to God’s will, we should look up to the Holy Spirit, depending on him to direct our prayers, to lead our desires, and to guide our words.

2) Christ, our Head, in who’s Name we pray, will teach us how to pray, as he taught the disciples. This happens through the work of the Spirit he will send to guide and inspire us.

3) When we feel least like praying, we should wait quietly before God and tell him how cold and without prayer our hearts are, trusting the Lord to send the Holy Spirit to warm our hearts, teaching and inspiring us to pray.

4) In Mark 11:24 Jesus said:  “Therefore I tell you whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” Prayer that believes that we received what we prayed, follows our consideration of the Scriptures. We believe that we received, because we ask what the Bible promises and proclaims.

The Lord helps us to pray under guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Our union with Christ, our living in his Body and our relationship with him, ensures that his Spirit that dwells in us, inspires and leads our understanding of his Word, and therefore teaches us to pray according to his will.

And every prayer that is in accordance with the will of God, is answered.

Holy Communion: To Supper with Jesus!

On Sunday we will be sitting in our quaint, beautiful chapel, sharing bread and wine. Yet this experience will call upon our senses and our memories and we will find ourselves being taken 2000 years and a continent away, to an upper room in Jerusalem where Jesus and his 12 disciples first shared this very Supper.

That night started as a Jewish Passover meal. They dined on lamb, bread, wine and gravy with the aromas of bitter herbs. They often shared this meal in the past. They shared it with family since their childhood. They remembered God’s strong hand that delivered them as a people from slavery. They remembered that they were a covenant people and that God solemnly promised to be their God, and the God of their children and grandchildren, forever!

But later on, after Jesus went to heaven and they received the daunting task to spread the Good News about him, and when they carried his cross to the ends of the world, what they would have remembered is that as the meal came to a close that night, Jesus blessed the bread, and breaking it came to each one personally saying:“Take and eat, this is my body, which will be broken for you.”

Jesus knew about the events that would follow that night:  his arrest, his unfair hearing and his cruel crucifixion. So as he passed the cup to them, he said:  “Drink of the blood of the new covenant.”  They would remember that at that moment they did not understand that he was telling them that soon their Redeemer would die for those who crucified him.

They would remember that the new covenant would replace the sacrament of the Passover with the sacrament of the Supper of Christ. They would not remember the deliverance from the slavery in Egypt anymore, but the delivery from the slavery of sin and evil. They would realise that Passover became a lot more than a Jewish feast, but a feast that included both Jews and Gentiles who were made God’s new people - of a new covenant.

Certainly the disciples would later clearly remember that Jesus said: “As often as you repeat this meal, do it in memory of me.”  As if they could ever forget!

Every time we celebrate the holy communion of Christ’s Supper, we will through the work of the Holy Spirit be with the living Lord, hearing his voice, believing his promise and experiencing his love with all our senses.

Our experience will disregard logic and reason.

It will be a mystery. And our experience will be spiritual, and by his grace, through faith, we will see that we are with him, hearing his voice, seeing his love and believing his promise: “This is the blood of the new covenant” and that it means, “I will be your God, and the God of all the many generations that will come after you, who will be my people and I will be their God.”

The mystery that we experience at the Lord’s Table is that it is Christ who breaks bread with us and shares his cup with us. And as we in faith feed on the living Christ, his sacrifice, his resurrection and his grace, we will know that this Meal will never end, until the glorious day when we gather for Christ’s eternal banquet in heaven.

For the disciples who carried the gospel of Jesus to the ends of the earth, the Holy Communion they shared with Jesus on the night he was betrayed, was given to them as comfort and source of strength and faith throughout their earthly lives.

And so it is with us. When we take the bread and the cup, Christ is in our midst, offering himself to us all over again and making covenant with us saying: “This is the blood of the new covenant.” I will be your God and the God of your children, forever!

I pray that you will taste and see the mystery of sharing in the Lord’s Supper on Sunday. And that this Holy Meal will change your life.

Christ has without any doubt, been raised.

God sent his angels to roll away the stone, but not to let Christ out. You see, Christ did not need the stone to be rolled away. We see him later walking into a room which was locked. His resurrection body had the power to walk through walls. No, the stone was not rolled away so that Christ could come out. The stone was rolled away so that we could look in.

1 Corinthians 15: 20 states emphatically: "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead."

On that glorious Sunday morning, as the first rays of sunshine reached the rich man’s grave where they had laid the body of Jesus, God stretched out his mighty arm and raised his Son from the tomb. The powers of hell were petrified at the sight of Jesus coming out of the grave as the chains of death fell from his exalted, risen body and he came to us victorious over sin and death.

He is risen!  Christ has without any doubt been raised

Because Christ has been raised from the dead, we now have true faith, true forgiveness, and true hope.  Our preaching is not useless, nor was the preaching of the apostles. Those who believed their preaching also received a pure faith which saves to the extreme:   a faith which cleanses from sin, a faith which remains standing in the trial, a faith which frees my true humanity made in the image of God:   a living, working faith.

The witness of the apostles was the solid witness of those who had seen the resurrected Lord with their own eyes. They were not deceived. Jesus had appeared to them. They were not giving testimony of some mystical experience with Jesus. They had fellowship with him.  They ate with him. They experienced that Jesus is alive.

They did not expect to see Him.

In fact, Thomas had to be offered touchable evidence that it was indeed the Lord, before he would believe.

Jesus appeared to his disciples over many days. He appeared to 500 people at the same time in broad daylight.

Their testimony was true. Jesus had come out of the grave. In fact, there is more evidence to support the resurrection of Jesus Christ than almost any other ancient historical fact. If the tomb was not empty, why didn’t they produce the body?

The reason was there was no body to produce.

Jesus is risen! The testimony of the Christian faith is without a shadow of a doubt, perfectly true.