Our primary identity is that we have been given Resurrection life, the very resurrection life of Jesus. We are to be formed by this resurrection. Nothing else will ever give us our real selves.
It is not unusual for Christians to start off strong and then regress in their walk with Jesus. We seem to lose vitality! We seem to become dull! This regression is rarely dramatic. It’s not sudden. We start out with life, life, life and more life. God is first and foremost in all that we do. Then we get tangled up in this life, here, now.
We hobble, we regress, we lose our spontaneity, and our exuberance of the very resurrection life that we’ve been given. Life leaks out!
I’ve been pastoring for 25 years and I’m continually appalled by my brothers and sisters who have simply lost interest. There are so many more exciting things to do. Christ simply just isn’t getting their attention.
Resurrection, if you believe in it has something to do with the next life, right? NO and a thousand times no. It is not something that happens to you after you die and are buried and find yourself with God.
The resurrection that we celebrated yesterday took place here, right here, on the Earth. The first witnesses were not in heaven, but on Earth. They were walking the same old roads with the same old people that they had been with the day before.
This is radical. Resurrection affects life as we know it today. Not just in the future but in the present.
We must recover what it means to live in and out of our resurrection identity. We have received this “new life” and we are “new creations.” Now, right now! Though we are still in the same world we are not the same!
He breathed on them and they received and we have received and we are not the same as before.
Just as the heavens opened when He was baptized and the Holy Spirit descended on Him, the beloved Son; we too have received the very same Spirit and the very same Father. Just as He is the “beloved.” We are the “beloved.”
It is now impossible to live like we did before. We are the resurrected sons and daughters of the Father. We now are living empowered by the very Presence of the One who loves us and gave Himself for and to us.
We are now living in this Resurrection Life.
