MY FRIENDS, DOES A RISEN SAVIOR ABIDE WITHIN OUR HEART?

Feb. 1, 2017

MY FRIENDS, DOES A RISEN SAVIOR ABIDE WITHIN OUR HEART?

“Sir, we remembered that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise [from the dead].’ Therefore, give orders to have the tomb made secure and safeguarded until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last deception [the reporting of His resurrection] will be worse than the first, [the reporting that He is the Messiah].”

Pilate then said, “You have a guard [of soldiers]; go [with them], make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure, and along with [stationing] a guard of soldiers [to be on watch] they set a seal on the stone.” Matt 27:63-66 (AMP) And behold there was a great earthquake and the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone from the tomb,” Matt. 28:2 (KJV)

And “That Deceiver” “or Imposter” as the Jewish elders and priest called Him, did rise from the grave. But to give credit to an empty tomb they still alleged that the disciples stole Christ body, paying large sums of money to those soldiers who laid watch to say the disciples stole Jesus body while they slept.

My friends, each day through God’s Spirit we must allow Him to take us beyond where we were the day before spiritually. If not, we become as the Jewish leaders who referred to Christ as an “Imposter.” Not capable of bringing about a change in our lives. But my friends, by beholding Jesus, as the only name, His death and His resurrection as our only avenue towards salvation, He than lives within our heart as the Holy Spirit carries on the work of transformation.

“And the believer [then] advances from grace to grace, from strength to strength, from character to character as [You and I then begin to] conform to the image of Christ, until in spiritual growth [we] attain unto the measure of the full stature in Christ. (E.G. White, Selected Messages, bk. 1, p 395) And that my friends, is when sin is eliminated from our life and we are then set free from the idea of Christ as an “imposter” incapable of making significant changes in our life.

And now, as Christ disciples we must not be afraid to carry our cross to wherever Christ leads as we tell the world, we serve a risen Savior and He lives within us, and He can also live within you if you believe. We as God’s children, cannot keep Christ in the tomb of our own complacency and unwillingness to change while allowing self to live within us instead of Christ.

Because one day soon Christ will come as a thief  to take only those who believe He lives, and who have allowed His Spirit to convict, instruct, restore, and empower each of us into the image of the one who will ascend from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God, as the dead in Christ rises first.

And then After that, [the righteous] who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” [He lives]1 Thess. 4:16-18 (NIV)