Resurrection Living

Dec 7 – John 11:25

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies…”

Another “I am” statement.  I AM the resurrection.

Resurrection.  I’m going to be honest with you – there is so much power in that word, but I do not even begin to understand it.  I know that somehow “resurrection” means hope for me and hope for this world of ours.  I know that somehow, it speaks of a loving God who exists above and beyond death and who gives us the opportunity to experience part of his nature in that way.

“He who believes in me will live, even though he dies…”  What if it’s true that we don’t live until we die?  Not in the literal sense (though I think that may be true as well) but in the figurative sense.  Until I am willing to give up the things I want in order to pursue the things of God, I haven’t lived.  Maybe people from other religions who try so hard to live without wanting anything, who push away their senses to attain some different level of reality – I think maybe they missed the point.  The point of our lives is not be devoid of emotion or of desire but to surrender both of those things to God.  2 Corthinthians 5:17 says that “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”  New emotions, new desires come!  THAT is the abundant life Jesus talks about.

What better “alternate reality” to live in than a world where we experience only the things of God.  Our desires die, not in a way that removes our humanity but in such a way that what we want is replaced with stronger and purer desires of the One who created us.  That is when we begin to experience life – once we have put aside the desires we are born with that we can often sense are not of God and allow them to be upstaged by the glorious passion of a Father and a risen Savior who wants to live in and through us.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20