Easter Monday!

SCRIPTURE:  And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.  1 Corinthians 15:19-20 NLT

THOUGHT: I can’t think of another place in Scripture where such thick irony is used. Paul is telling early Christians that if they discount the resurrection, their faith is more than useless, it’s pitiable. It’s like pop that no one put the cap on – no fizz and still you choke it down – with others watching! As one of my pastor’s put it, the Christian life isn’t hard, it’s impossible, and if we empty it of the resurrection, we try to live an impossible life, holding to a form of godliness and yet denying it’s power (2 Timothy 3:5). Trying to follow Jesus without believing that there’s more than just this life is like trying to follow Jesus and not believe that evil exists when he talked more about it than love or money.

On the heels of Easter morning, let’s challenge ourselves with the whole story of God. There is more than this life, and Jesus was given the power to “take up” his life again, and ours as well someday.

SONG: Christ is Risen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mXeA0G_xKc&t=103s

PRAYER: Thank you, God, for the mystery and power and promise of the resurrection – for one who overcame the power of death and leads the way to hope for more than what we see now!

P.S.: A series of devotions I wrote last year has been published by Words of Hope in the spring issue of their devotional guide, and they begin today. I’m going to take a departure from Promises of God share these with you over the next few weeks. You can visit the Words of Hope website to see some of my other published work at https://www.woh.org/author/amy-clemens/, or for the devotion of the day, https://www.woh.org/devotionals/. I pray you’ll be blessed by this study on strength and weakness from a Biblical perspective. I think it’s timely and also hits on issues most of us struggle with on a daily basis. Thank you for your readership – I value you and the feedback I often receive. Here’s the one for today:

BUT I DON’T LIKE WEAKNESS

Read: Isaiah 40:27-31

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. (vv. 30-31)

I’ve been called a racehorse, known for galloping into life like a warrior steed into the heat of battle. Everyone has a breaking point, however, and the more I age the faster I reach it. These days, I fear I might more closely resemble a newborn foal, struggling to untangle awkward legs and find the necessary muscles to stand.

I hate feeling weak, but God has purpose even in the frailty of the human body. As we age, encounter illness, take on too much “bad” stress, or face overwhelming life pressure, it forces us to ask new questions about our faith. As things and people we have trusted in fail, the questions crystalize anew. With more precision we ask, “Is my faith in my strength (or wits or youth or connections or external circumstance) or in God?” We must dig deeper and cling harder to truth on those days.

Every one of us faces God-designed breaking points and the epiphanies that follow: will our faintness, weariness, or complete exhaustion teach us to trust God and wait patiently for his renewal work? Or will we instead redouble our efforts, mounting a campaign to run in our own strength? —Amy Clemens

As you pray, ask God to show you whether you are fully trusting him and leaning into his renewal plans, or off to the races in your own strength.