Read today’s texts first: Psalms 149; 1 Corinthians 15-16
MAXIMize YOUR DAY
The promise of our soon-coming King keeps our
heart in heaven and our feet on the earth.
heart in heaven and our feet on the earth.
The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection – that’s why they were sad-you-see! It’s an old joke, but true. The same teaching was creeping into the early church (15:12), and it was only 25 years after over 500 disciples had seen Jesus rise from the dead. Given enough time, pessimism, cynicism, and even skepticism will eventually infiltrate any community.
Now, after 2000 years, it should be expected that Christians will doubt at least the literal interpretation of Christ’s soon-coming and the final resurrection of the dead. Knowing that, I’m glad the founder of the Foursquare church decided to make that hope one of the four corners of our faith. I’m with Paul - without the fact of Christ’s resurrection and the hope of ours, there is no good-news-gospel. We should be very sad, because, if there is no victory over death, both Christ’s first-coming and the promise of His second-coming are pointless.
It’s the imminence of Christ’s return that compels us to live holy lives and share the gospel as often as we can. It’s what keeps our heart in heaven and our feet on the earth. This world is not our home, but we are here on assignment. We may not agree about the eschatological events to come or their sequence in time, but we must agree that Jesus will return as He promised and that the dead in Christ will rise. That is core to who we are as Christians – and that’s why we’re not sad-you-see!
“Lord, help me to keep my heart focused on Your return and my hands busy doing the work you’ve assigned me until You come again.”
No comments:
Post a Comment