April 16, 2023
Greetings and blessings to all of you. Resurrection Sunday is a day that gave us “Zoe”. That means Life in the Spirit which lives in us on a daily. The day is gone but “our new Life” lives in us. Why? Because if we are truly regenerated(saved) and are transforming into the image of God we can say without a doubt “therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation old thing have passed behold all things have become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17) We as followers of Christ do not want Jesus to say to us what He said to the two men on that road to Emmaus when they did not recognize Him after He rose from the tomb. “You are such foolish, foolish people…... You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures! Then Jesus quoted them passage after passage from the writings of prophets beginning with the book of Genesis and going right through the Scriptures explaining what the passages meant and what they said about himself.” (Luke Chapter 24) Did you know that faithfully going to church, hearing the messages from the pulpit, participating in the services and the fellowship -does not automatically make you a Christian and definitely not a mature believer? Like these two followers of Jesus in the first century they did not TRULY believe the teachings of Christ. They were like the people referred to in the book of James which says, “But be doers of the word and not hearers only therefore deceiving yourselves.” These guys were supposedly followers of Christ and did not know Him when He presented Himself to them. We can say they had a close encounter with the Living God. After breaking bread with Jesus and listening again to Jesus Luke 24:31 said, “and their eyes were opened, and they recognize Him.” Have you truly recognized Him? Or is He someone you created in your own image? Does your heart have to be broken with heavy disappointment before you Truly listen to the Lord? Maybe so. Some of us have very hard hearts. We have not totally surrendered ALL to the Lord of Life. Some areas in our lives are kept “off-limit” to the Lord. We have a barrier between ourselves and God. How would you know? This may help…in the Living Bible in 2 Cor. 13:5 it reads, “Check up on yourselves. Are you really Christians? Do you pass the test? Do you feel Christ presence and power more and more within you? Or are you just pretending to be Christians when actually you aren’t at all?
With the Love of Christ
First Lady Vivian C. Currie
Pastor ALC