the Kingdom of Light.
Day 2 Rest in the Crucifixion
For we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin. Romans 6:6
We should share the Good News of the Gospel with ourselves daily. Every day brings its own evil that we must face. As I rest in the truth that I died with Jesus on the cross, I know that the power of sin has been broken. Please pause to ponder on how different the word “know” is from the word “feel.” There are times I do not feel dead to sin, but I am!
Here’s a little of what I say to myself.
Although, I fall short of God’s glory all the time, I am justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. It’s not by works or achievement or who my parents are.
I am so thankful that I can be as patient with my healing and growth as Jesus is with His disciples. Even when I am cold and irritable with my family, I thank Jesus for being patient and tender. In Luke 22, just before the crucifixion, Jesus asks the disciples to pray while He went to pray. When He returned, they were asleep. Jesus was gentle, I can be that too.
The Power of sin is broken!
If we acted out of a certain attitude or a behavioral pattern for most of our lives, deep change will take time. No one gets to skip this step. We humble ourselves and ask God’s forgiveness for the sinful way we have lived. We do this with grace and mercy because we rest in the crucifixion! We are forgiven, not because we’ve learned to act right, but because of Jesus’s perfect work on the cross.
Let the above truth sink in deep. The beauty of faith is that our faith doesn’t break the power of sin. The completed work has already done so. We are simply raising our hand and telling God we want Him to apply it to us. As we walk in this truth our belief becomes action by living in freedom instead of under the compulsion to continue in old patterns of behavior that brought us pain. Spend some time thinking about one thought or behavioral pattern that is hurtful and apply the grace of Jesus to it. Write out a prayer incorporating the gospel. Start with, “I fall short of God’s glory, but I am freely justified through Christ!”
Rest in the crucifixion today. Replace a sinful behavioral pattern with how Jesus demonstrated a new way to live. Remember that He paid the price, He covered that sin with His blood. Rest in your death on the cross
with Jesus Christ!
Day 3
Rest in Forgiveness
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little. Luke 7:47
For most of us the idea that our many sins can be forgiven is incompatible with reason. I know what I have done. You know what you have done. We are more familiar with punishment and condemnation.
Many Christians continue to carry around feelings of shame and defeat from our sinful past. Sometimes in unbelief we continue to flog ourselves with this past to pay the debt we think we deserve. God is a just, a merciful, and a grace-filled Father. Justice is when God gives us what we deserve. In His mercy, He sent Jesus to take upon Himself the sins of the whole world, satisfying His wrath, giving to Jesus what we deserved. Grace is when God gives us what we don’t deserve, forgiveness. God knew that we could never pay our debts, so He did it for us! Why do we now think that we can make ourselves right by beating ourselves up, by condemning ourselves in our thoughts, or by punishing ourselves by how we live?
The truth is that we don’t deserve forgiveness. But, if someone wanted to give us a gift of a million dollars, would we refuse it? Would we keep carrying around our poverty with the gift of great wealth sitting there? Accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior is accepting His gift of forgiveness. Learning to rest in His forgiveness is allowing the old failures to be buried with Christ (Romans 6:4) and living in the reality that we are raised with Christ to live a new life (Romans 6:10).
Sometimes we continue to battle feelings of guilt and shame because we have not asked others for forgiveness and worked to make amends for the wrong we did. Proverbs 14:9 says, “Only fools mock at making amends, but good will is found among the upright.” Making amends doesn’t pay for our wrongs; they demonstrate our true repentance.
Sometimes we battle feelings of guilt and shame because we must expose old hurts to the Light. Some stories need to be shared in order to heal. Allowing the Light into our deepest hurts exposes them to the truth. We are not innately bad and deserve abuse. Someone sinned against us. Let that person own her/his sin. We can stop carrying it, if we give it to Jesus. We have carried the secret for long enough. Telling Jesus is the first step to finding healing. He knows it. On the cross the weight of every sin was laid on Him. The weight of our secret was already laid on Him on the cross (Isaiah 53). He took it, and paid for it with His blood. Now it’s up to us to put it down and let Him carry it.
Learning to rest in forgiveness will free us from the bondage of working for salvation. When we know we are forgiven, we can love much because we know that we are forgiven much. God’s forgiveness is not reasonable to people who cannot pay for their sins, but Isaiah 53:10 says that it pleased the Lord to crush Jesus for our redemption.
Let’s stop condemning ourselves for what God has forgiven, especially since that forgiveness spilt the blood of Christ Jesus. One definition of rest is to cease work or movement.
Learning to rest in forgiveness is allowing Jesus to carry the weight of sin. Let us cease trying to earn forgiveness and rest in the forgiveness given by living “In Christ.”
Day 4
Rest in Reconciliation
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
Oh! How beautiful is the work of Jesus Christ for us! Two things happen when we come to faith in Christ. Positional reconciliation and experiential reconciliation. “We who believe the gospel are now experiencing the beginning of salvation’s benefits, but we will not know the full blessings until our resurrection” (A Theology for the Church, Danny Akin).
Positional reconciliation occurs at salvation and experiential reconciliation is a life-long process. Ephesians 1:3 assures us that our salvation is a finished reality, and Philippians 2:12-13 emphasizes the ongoing work of reconciliation.
The struggles we now have are with the patterns of behavior that we had prior to salvation. Slowly the Lord increases His spotlight of faith. He digs deeper and deeper into our hearts to root out indwelling sin, so that we can enjoy Him more and more. We grow to love Him more and more as we continue to lay aside our desires, pick up His will for our lives, and accomplish the good works that He set out for us to do (Ephesians 2:10)!
My husband uses the analogy of a wedding to explain positional and relational reconciliation. After the bride and groom say their vows, they are married, but they don’t go home in different cars to different houses. They live together, growing more
