Preparing Our Hearts for Easter & Living The Resurrected Life!
by Virginia Saunders (with excerpts from The Gospel Coalition)
You have heard the question before... “If you knew Jesus was moving into your house next week, how would you prepare?” Clean like crazy? Throw out the stuff that might offend him? Ensure everything was just right? Instead, start with purifying your heart to welcome Him. Our hearts are the center of our feelings. It’s our core, where the Holy Spirit lives within us. It’s where we interact with him. “Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.” Eph. 3:17
“For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statues and ordinances in Israel.” Ezra 7:10. We can look at Ezra, a priest, scribe, and exceptional leader dedicated to serving God. He had just returned to Jerusalem from exile, determined to lead God’s people back into a right relationship. Before he began, he “prepared his heart.” Psalm 10:17 gives us insight into the work God does to prepare our hearts. He hears our prayers and desires. He prepares our hearts as a gift and a blessing. Preparing our hearts is a twofold process. We come before him with humility and deep desire; He fills us with what we need.
Ways To Prepare Your Heart:
- Pray: Jesus made prayer a priority in His life as an example for us to follow. Pray that He gives your attention to what He treasures.
- Immerse yourself in the Easter story. Read Matt. 26-28; Mark 14-16; Luke 22-24; or John 18-20.
- Meditate on the meaning of Easter.
- Reflect on His sacrifice made for you. His sacrifice began when He left the perfection and glory of heaven to come to earth, live, work, teach and die. If not for Jesus’s sacrifice we would still be dead in our sin. If He didn’t rise from the dead, we would not have the hope of eternal life.
- Rejoice in your redemption through Christ! 2 Cor. 5:17; Ezekiel 36:26
- Resolve to live as someone who believes Jesus has given us the victory by his resurrection from the dead.
Living the resurrected life
The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. He gave us new life through His sacrifice. The resurrected life is about how we walk in the light of our future resurrection now. This resurrected life calls us in faith to become more like Christ. We must surrender our lives to Christ. We can’t
create our own path to transformation, we must study his word and spend time in prayer. John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” We cannot grow apart from Him.
Living the resurrected life means renewing your mind, taking every thought captive. Don’t let random thoughts and desires rule the way you live and act. Don’t let doubt dilute your pursuit of Christ. 2 Cor. 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to obey Christ.” This means to capture the thought as you identify it and compare it to God’s Word.
2 Peter 1:3-4 “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life though our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” It is because of God’s promises that we can participate in the divine nature.
During the weeks before Easter let us all come before God with thanksgiving for all His good works, confess and repent of our sins and accept His forgiveness going forth and live the abundant life that has been given to us. Abundant life is the joy of a life transformed by Christ. As believers we can seek the resurrected life now as well as in the age to come. Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Let us submit to Him and live as God’s beloved, trusting in Jesus and the forgiveness that only He gives.
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