the day after Easter

We all know what the past few days were about. They were about death, but more important they were about Life. They cannot be separated, for to us as Christians, to have one we must have the other. So what does today mean? What does the day after Easter really mean? Well, one thing I see is, to accept the Life we have been given. By that I mean, to put away the things that brought us death, and focus on a life that is about Jesus and others. To operate in the Spirit and the Gifts Our Father has given us. The day after Easter is a “New Day!” A day not filled with things of the flesh, judging one another be it expressed by gossipping or even just in our hearts towards another. No more giving into the things that we know we should not be doing. That will be different for each of us, but leading to the same result. However, God did not raise Jesus from the dead for only those types of things. We always hear people say after a near death experience, “I am going to live each day to the fullest!” Or, “I am going to take time and smell the roses, spend more time with my family, and for other people!” Let us not dismiss their Wisdom as many of us do. “That all sounds good but, I got bills etc., etc..” The Word of God backs up their Wisdom and not ours, when we respond with reasons such as these. We must remember not just today is the day after Easter, every day is a day after Easter. Just because it is not “the” day after Easter, we can still live each day as a gift, as a new day. It is always powerful for us to remember that, we are not powerless to sin, sin is powerless in controlling a Child of God. The person who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior in their life, is no puppet to sin. Do we have weaknesses? Are we able to be tempted? Of course we are. It is foolish to think or even attempt we can face these things on our own. Nonetheless we all have at times. If on the one hand, through the sacrifice Jesus made, sin no longer has a hold on us. Rom 6:6-7,11 6 We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. 11 So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. So the question we must ask ourselves is, why? Why do we so often still fall to the same things. We see in verse 10, 10 When He died, He died once to break the power of sin. But now that He lives, He lives for the glory of God. To live for the Glory of God helps to shed a little light to that question. Why do we still fall to the same sin again and again? We chose to! We make a choice, do we live for the Glory of God, or for ourselves? If it is the later, when temptation comes we will fall. Let it be so, that we live for His Glory and not our own. That we lean on His Power, when temptation comes, say a Prayer and give Thanks for His Strength. Doing things like this, living for His Glory. We will never overcome things if, we are not honest with ourselves in why we do them. 1John 5:1-5 sums much of this up. 1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. 5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.