[Worship] The Gift and the Victory

["Kevin H. Dougherty" <khdmedic@capital.net>]

May this bless each of you in this most wonderful season, as it has
blessed me in the writing. I wish each of you a Holy and Blessed
Weekend. Kevin


I was thinking about Easter one the way home. We make a big deal about
Easter, and well we should. It is the celebration of the greatest
victory to ever occur, or ever to occur, Christ’s victory over death and
judgment. On this day, He not only snatched away the keys from Satan, He
defeated him once and for all, making an open display (triumphant march)
of it.

Good Friday is equally a day for celebration. When I was growing up in
the Roman Catholic Church, it was a day of morning, cold, somber, with
everything draped in black. That should not be! It should be a cause to
celebrate! Who is not happy to receive a gift, all the more so a special
gift, one that is your heart’s desire? On Good Friday, we received the
most wondrous, the greatest gift of all time. The answer to the very
deepest cry of our hearts. We received salvation, and were restored to
communion, to sonship with our eternal Father. There is nor will there
ever be a greater gift.

How like our God to do it the way He did at the time of Passover. The
celebration He ordained to commemorate the passing over of the first
born of Israel by the angel of death. Why? Because of the blood of the
sacrificial lamb applied to the door posts of their homes. How like our
god to choose the same feast to offer Himself up as the Sacrifice Lamb!
Christ offered Himself up that day, the ultimate sacrifice, pouring out
His blood that He might apply it to the door posts of our hearts. The
same day He delivered Israel, he delivered us. Not only the same day,
but in the sixth hour, the same time the priests sacrificed a lamb in
the temple for the atonement of the sins of Israel. Our God offered
himself up as a sacrifice for us on the very day, at the very time of
the most vivid, direct, graphic shadow of what Christ came to
accomplish.

He doesn’t just point the way, He calls us, woos us, romances us as His
beloved, He comes to us. All we need to do is say yes. How many miss
salvation because they are tripped up by the simplicity of it? Unable to
believe it could be that easy, they walk away, so seek the answer
elsewhere. Here lies the wonder of it. With human eyes we could never
see it, or accept it. Salvation is far to simple, there must be more we
reason. It is only when we allow God to reveal His plan through
spiritual eyes, when we allow the Spirit to work in our hearts, that we
are able to see and accept salvation.

Salvation is foolishness, in the eyes of man, it IS foolish. God did
that on purpose. He chose the foolish things to confound the wise. The
things of God will always be foolishness to the natural eye. It is only
through divine revelation that we can ever begin to understand the
things of God.


Kevin Hyde Dougherty
March 27, 1999


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I'm a fool for Jesus, whose fool are you?

Kevin
Makin' a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!

http://www.angelfire.com/ny/tech6207/index.html

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done,"

and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way." - C.S.
Lewis

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"That's the whole problem with science.  You've got a bunch of
empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder."    -
Calvin (& Hobbes) 8<{)




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