Good morning,
Yesterday
was Easter Sunday in America and most of the churches had the best
attendance of the year. It’s wonderful that people flood to the
churches to celebrate the willing death and triumphant resurrection of
Jesus, but it seems that to most people, their coming is an event and
not a real celebration. The story of Easter is true and the Savior and
his disciples were real people, but the problem that we face is that the
majority of the people who attend these services have accepted the
Devil’s interpretation of what happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. To
these people, Easter is just a story of success over the Devil and the
Savior’s willingness to pay the price for their sins. They like the
idea that they can be saved by believing this story, but they are making
a terrible mistake when they think that if they mentally accept this
truth, then God is their father and Jesus is their Savior. When people
look at Easter this way they totally miss the reality of what God
requires from us to begin an eternal relationship with him.
When
Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, he made it quite clear that if our
salvation depends only on what we believe in our minds, we are not saved
at all. For someone to have a real relationship with Jesus requires
that our faith is based on what we believe at the center of our person,
in our hearts. When a person accepts Jesus as Lord of their lives in
their hearts, it gives them a whole different filter for what is right
and wrong. If we believe in our hearts that our Savior is alive and
living with us from the heart level, we look to the Bible and our Savior
for directions on how to live our lives when no one but Jesus is
looking. The Bible is clear that the words that we speak that come from
our hearts will always tell us and others about who is the Lord of our
lives. When we make a clear confession that Jesus is the one who sets
our standards, and that we believe everything he has said to be the
truth, then and only then, will we be people who will never be
disgraced. Alas, if our faith is only in our heads, we will live for
ourselves, follow the values of our Enemy, and end our lives in eternal
disgrace.
Romans 10:9 If you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart
that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your
mouth that you are saved. 11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who
trusts in him will never be disgraced.”
Roy Wisner
