Easter Celebration

Well, peeps. This weekend has come. EASTER. Easter weekend holds a ton of weight in my life as I remember it as a time when I most clearly remember God crushing my flesh. Well, that and having a dance party on the extremely sloped roof of my house at Holik Street with Becca Feagin in the infancy of our friendship. But with this upcoming day of celebration, I wanted to take a second and embrace the magnitude of what April 24 (this year) stands for.

Its no great secret that we as humans have a pretty effed up way of seeing everything (excuse my French). We have this distortion that lies at the core of our beings that screws everything up. And it flows to every part of our lives. It starts with a distorted view of who God is. We, in general, do not see well who He is. We doubt his goodness, we doubt whether or not we can trust him, we doubt whether he sees us as loving children or wicked heathens. We doubt that he loves us unconditionally. We doubt everything about who He says He is. We have a hard time trusting or believing that he will pursue us, care for us, protect us, be there for us. This one distorted view of God leads to a distortion of every other mode of our lives.

With a distorted view of God and who he is, we are led to a distorted view of who WE are and who we are in Christ, which leads to a distorted view of others. We were created for our identity to lie in the fact that we are God’s children, holy and dearly loved. With the freedom to live our lives in blessed communion with Him who created us. This distortion, this iniquity that we are born with that views God wrongly royally messes everything up. Especially our relationships.

We…and lets make this personal, I take that distortion and become a control freak out of some kind of deep fear, trying to control everything, trying to earn the love of others and therefore perverting my relationships with everyone else in my life. With a distorted view of God, and subsequently myself, my relationships are marked with my using and abusing of those around me. I crush them. The illusion that I fall under is that they are there to make me happy so that when I am not happy, its somehow their fault. I end up putting an impossible weight on them.

Matt Chandler claims that if you have a bunch of broken pieces…and you try and smash them together to get a whole, you for dang sure are NOT going to get a whole…you are just going to further break the broken pieces. Which means that when broken people try and find redemption in other broken people, broken people get more broken. CONVICTION.

He says that almost every bit of your sorrow, almost every bit of your suffering and pain, almost all of your loneliness and pain can be traced back to a distorted view of who God is and how He sees you. Of what he thinks about you. AW Tozer says that " what comes into our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us." Since we have this distorted view of God–ourselves-others, we can see why the world is essentially a shit storm, cant we? I mean have y’all watched CNN lately?

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." -Ephesians 2:4-10

Once we understand who God really is, we can start to see ourselves in a correct light, and therefore will be able to view our relationships with others rightly, extending grace and mercy to those around us.

And don’t be fooled. We aren’t worthy. What makes grace so phenomenal isn’t our worth. What makes grace something we worship over isn’t that we are clean, its that we are dirty and God loves us IN IT. God does not love some future version of us. Its not when we screw up that we fall short of the glory of God. Its when we do EVERYTHING RIGHT. Its when we NAIL it, that the bible says God sees us as filthy rags. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” -Isaiah 64 (Told ya)

So the good news is this: “If god reconciles us to himself through Christ, is that not the beginning of healing in the rest of the areas? He is the redeemer; He buys us back from the chains of slavery. He gives Himself so that we might be reconciled to God. So that those who would believe, and repent and by faith alone, that they might become children of God. That is what we are celebrating.

We are celebrating that while we were at our worst Christ died for us. And celebrating that something happened when we became aware of that truth. Something happened in our minds and our hearts when we became aware of Christ dying for us that changed how we lived day to day. Not perfect, we still fail and are still drawn to the flesh. But God is slowly making us more and more like him, and less like the distorted viewing person we were. All the while letting us keep our individuality. It’s the greatest story ever.” -MC

So get up and dance, lets party like its 1999 and celebrate good times COME ON, because this weekend we get to take time and rejoice in the fact that we are LOVED by an Almighty God. He rose from the dead YALL! And I don't know about you but I am going to celebrate with Adam and Blair in Vail, Colorado. It should be full of egg hunts and chocolate bunnies and sunshine and laughter and butterflies, and hopefully no snow. (Fingers crossed) 2nd best Easter ever! (Right after the original)

Raise and praise people! Its EASTER!!!!