The Long Plan - Day 120 Month 4-30 Week 18-1
Today's Reading (Bible in 1 year)
Deuteronomy 1, Psalm 97, Jeremiah 13:1-11, Luke 23:26-49
The Long Plan
“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Those are the words used to mock Jesus on the cross. Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and died because there was a longer plan at play. He knew that He needed to sacrifice His life if He was to defeat death and complete the long plan. So what did Jesus do? Nothing! He let death happen. Meanwhile, the soldiers mocked Him and the Jewish rulers sneered saying “He saved others; let Him come down and save Himself if this is Christ of God, His chosen One.” Even one of the other prisoners that was being executed hurled abuse at Him.
The other prisoner, however, appealed to Jesus as they were both in their final hours. His words were “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom.” Jesus' response was “today you shall be with me in paradise.” That’s all it took. A moment of clarity in the prisoner's heart, an appeal to Jesus and an immediate destination change.
For someone who has attended church all my life, the word repentance is a common word. Not so much in a non-churched world but the only action required by a person to become a Jesus follower is repentance. According to google, repentance is deep sorrow, regret, or contrition for past actions, sins, or mistakes, accompanied by a firm resolve to change one’s behavior and do what is right. The prisoner repented and Jesus did the rest. The whole reason that Jesus was dying on the cross was to make it possible for that prisoner to enter Jesus’ kingdom (which is eternal with no beginning and no end). He was making it possible for anyone, including you and me, to enter that kingdom. I turned towards Jesus at the age of 11, though I was hardly turning from a life of notorious crimes, I was repenting and turning towards a life with Jesus in it. Sylvia made that decision at the age of 38 after a life of trauma and a season of homelessness, and we know of someone who, on his deathbed, turned to Jesus. Each of us needs to make this decision for ourselves because Jesus will not force us into a relationship with Himself. We have been given a free will, meaning each and every one of us must choose for ourselves, who or what we are going to make a priority.
Three days later Jesus rose from the dead; He was very much alive and well here on planet earth in physical form for 40 days before He returned to Heaven. Jesus had defeated death for the benefit of the world. No matter how good a person we are, we are destined to die - but we were never meant to (read about this truth in the book of Genesis). God chose to take on human form by Jesus living a perfect human life to serve as our visible example of what humans were supposed to be like. Then becoming an unblemished perfect sacrifice to pay the debt of all sin in the world, God, through Jesus, experienced the death we were destined to experience. Because He loves us, He has made it possible for us to avoid eternal death by enabling us to choose life - real physical, eternal life
Have a great day
Steve
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